Battle Maison Discussion & Records

[pokefreak98]

My multi battle with AI streak ended shortly after my last post https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/battle-maison-discussion-records.3492706/page-114#post-5960342 at 52 wins. Unfortunately it seems I either didn't save a record of how I lost or the battles are saved to the SD card and my 3DS is missing and I got another one for trade evolutions and because I got impatient to find it so I lack proof which probably makes the run ineligible for the leaderboard.

I also got a win streak of 511 in super tripples a while back using a team inspired by one I saw here with a Gredinja/Aaron/Garchop lead, but sadly it is probably also inelligable for the leaderboard due to lack of proof, but here is the (deeply flawed) team anyway:


Gredinja @ Life Orb
Protean/Timid
31/20/31/31/31/31 IV's
4/0/0/252/0/252 EV's

Grass Knot
Ice Beam
Mat Block
Surf

Aaron @ Berry Juice
Sturdy
LVL 1, EV's/IV's unkown, has 12 HP. I thought about breeding one with only 11 HP but never bothered

Swagger
Toxic
Endeavor
Protect

I should probably have run sandstorm over Swagger, RNG moves are not great.

Garchomp @ Focus Sash
31/31/31/26/31/31 IV's
4/252/0/0/0/252 EV's
Rough Skin/Jolly

Protect
Dragon Claw
Earthquake
Swords dance

Tyranitar @ Choice Scarf
31/31/31/18/31/31 IV's
4/252/0/0/0/252 EV's
Sand Stream/Jolly

Earthquake
Aerial Ace
Rock slide
Crunch

You may have noticed I don't really know how to optimise EV spreads. Also 90% accuracy on rock slide sucks.

Salamence @ Choice Band
31/31/31/20/31/31 IV's
4/252/0/0/0/252 EV's
Intimidate/Adamant

Rock Tomb
Crunch
Dragon Claw
EarthQuake

This is just the salamence I used in the multi room with some moves swapped out (I think, it has been a long time) I think rock tomb was chosen over rock slide for the extra 5 accuracy. 95% accuracy still sucks.

Kangashkhan@Kangashkhanite
31/31/31/26/31/31 IV's
4/252/0/0/0/252 EV's
Scrappy/Adamant

Crunch
Return
Sucker Punch
Power-Up Punch

Yes, this is just a singles Kangashkhan thrown on to use the mega slot and be generally good.

The leads carry the team though double x4 ice weakness and double fighting weakness with one being x4.

Anyway for some reason I started wanting to play mansion tripples again, this time with the idea of using Escavalier in trick room with arron as bait but also for the endeaver+fell stinger combo to boost attack while being offensive, but I'm not sure about teammates or EV spreads, so I am looking for advice. I am tentitively thinking lum berry levatate bronzong as a TR setter but I'm open to changing the setter.

P.S. If these runs are deemed eligible for the leaderboard by some miricle, please attribute them to WingedEspeon, that is what I go by now.

 

[TailGlowVM]

Triples update: I'm now at 1,655 wins. No particularly notable battles recently, but I feel the team has a ceiling with the big Terrakion2/Heatran3 weaknesses. I'd paused to do some singles, with a team that was created years ago but I could never bring myself to do a proper streak with it:

Posting a completed Super Singles streak of 530 wins with Gliscor / Mega Slowbro / Chansey (just like the last team, it's PKHex'd, so not leaderboard eligible)

The team was based on NoCheese's Mega Slowbro / Chansey core, which has been explained previously. He ran it with Dragonite as the lead in the Battle Maison, which served primarily as an alternative, faster victory path that checked a few big threats to the core like Volcarona, Serperior and Tyrantrum. While I don't doubt for a moment that Dragonite was effective, I thought that there might be a better lead that didn't have to be sacrificed to OHKO move users, wasn't as vulnerable to Armaldo and didn't require just straight attacking and being locked into Outrage to deal with things like Tyrantrum and Druddigon - this was considered by NoCheese previously, as he tested Pressure stall Zapdos and Sheer Force Landorus leads, and later went on to replace Dragonite with Gliscor to better handle setup leads and unpredictability of sets in the Battle Tree.


Gatekeeper (Gliscor) @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 212 HP / 204 SpD / 92 Spe
Careful Nature
- Substitute
- Protect
- Toxic
- Bulldoze

Set details

Your two big questions are probably going to be about the two deviations I make from the standard set. For the EV spread, you might think it counterintuitive to run specially defensive over NoCheese's Jolly Gliscor spread for the Tree, or a physically defensive set what with Slowbro being the less reliable wall of the backups, but I considered it carefully, after reviewing all Pokemon inbetween 0 Speed neutral-natured and 252 Speed Jolly Gliscor:

NoCheese needed near-max speed for the Tree in order to outrun Mega Sharpedo, whereas I had a lot less attackers to stall out in the lead, with all Pokemon above 137 being easily handled by Slowbro and Chansey aside from Medicham3 with its Ice Punch freeze risk (not common enough to be a huge concern), and Sceptile4 and Klinklang4 could have been a little safer but weren't dangerous enough to justify cutting bulk so drastically.

However, the usual 116 Speed spread wasn't an option because l needed to outrun Tyrantrum4, permitting stalling Head Smash. This required 68 Speed, which also handily outruns Gogoat4, Volcarona4 and Landorus1 and 4. A slight increase on that speed was later added to outspeed Mismagius4 and Tyranitar2 and 3 (84 Speed). I initially considered whether I could run 133 Speed for a safer matchup against Braviary4, or even 138 for Sawk4, but I soon realised that Gliscor needed to find some way to deal with one of Slowbro and Chansey's biggest enemies: Serperior4.

Vs: 212/116+ Gliscor (138 Speed): (127, 129, 130, 132, 133, 135, 136, 138, 139, 141, 142, 144, 145, 147, 148, 150)
Vs 212/156+ Gliscor (133 Speed): (121, 123, 124, 126, 127, 129, 130, 132, 133, 135, 136, 138, 139, 141, 142, 144)
Vs 212/204+ Gliscor (127 Speed): (115, 117, 118, 120, 120, 121, 123, 124, 126, 127, 129, 130, 132, 133, 135, 136)

Gliscor has 177 HP with a Substitute that costs 44 HP, and I need to continue to outspeed Mismagius4, so the most I could drop down by is one stat point, which doesn't actually change the Serperior roll, and means tying with Kingdra4, which would not be ideal if Gliscor ever had to take it on. Currently I can use Substitute on Turn 2 13/16 of the time, and while even a couple more points of Special Defense improves the roll here, Serperior would still beat Gliscor with a crit, whereas Tyrantrum and Mismagius are handled reliably with 92 Speed but very dangerous with a slower spread.

I actually came up with 92 Speed Gliscor years before it was used on tobiuo's version of Marathon, and I suppose if two different people have used it then it must be effective.

Regarding Bulldoze, it was first suggested by GG Unit for the Tree, and I think it outweighs Earthquake for this team and would recommend considering it for other teams. Notable examples of Bulldoze's use:

Klinklang and Sceptile: Fast leads that have Toxic, attacks to beat Slowbro, and require Gliscor using a lot of PP to keep a Sub up. With Bulldoze, you outspeed after one use, then switch to Chansey and can beat it without having to worry about Toxic.
Virizion4: Outspeeding makes stalling boosted Leaf Blade safer if necessary.
Scizor: Bulldoze twice, and now Slowbro outspeeds and can no longer be overwhelmed with a crit on the switch.
Accelgor: Outspeeding at -2 helps Gliscor KO it without being Encored.
Garchomp: If it comes out and I don't want to set up Slowbro for any reason, just Bulldoze turn 1 to outspeed and stall its attacks safely.
Unfortunately it can't hit Contrary Serperior or Ground-immune Pokemon, which is quite a lot of Pokemon I'd like it for (Lati@s4, Hydreigon, Aerodactyl, Braviary, Cryogonal3...)

The extra PP also can be helpful sometimes given how stall-focused this team is.

GG Unit has in recent years expressed his dislike of Toxic on Gliscor, believing other crippling moves are more effective at enabling teammates. While I think this might be true if using an unstoppable win-condition like Moody Glalie, Mega Gyarados or Mega Salamence, this team has no 100% safe option like that. I consider Toxic vital for a couple of setup leads like Volcarona and Haxorus, and in a weird way Gliscor is the 'offensive' Pokemon on this team, even if that offense is just putting stuff on a timer and not dying to them. One other thing is that Toxic on Gliscor means I have access to psuedo-Toxic on Chansey, letting me poison Ghosts (other than Froslass and Gengar, but stalling those is fine) and select Pokemon with recovery like Mandibuzz before I switch Chansey in, saving a lot of PP. The same is a bad idea with Slowbro, however, as you won't get enough turns to fully set up.

Possible other moves could be Sand-Attack (nice for some teams, but redundant for Chansey, and Slowbro lacks Substitute to capitalise on the accuracy drop), Confide (likewise pointless with a Chansey in the back), Knock Off (which I might consider to get rid of Life Orb, Choice items, etc but falls flat against Mamoswine and Archeops3) or Rock Tomb (which I would happily use over Bulldoze if it was 100% accurate, though I dislike not having a single accurate offensive option.)

Boy Is Slow (Slowbro) @ Slowbronite
Ability: Regenerator -> Shell Armor
EVs: 244 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA / 4 SpD / 4 Spe
Bold Nature
- Scald
- Iron Defense
- Calm Mind
- Rest

NoCheese has largely explained what Slowbro does. One small thing I don't think has been mentioned before is that 4 SpA EVs are not filler, they do this:
+6 4 SpA Slowbro-Mega Scald vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Haxorus: 151-178 (100 - 117.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Any Haxorus is reliably OHKOed when boosted, saving the risk of Dragon Tail into Chansey and then it setting up with Dragon Dance.


Nurse Joy (Chansey) @ Eviolite
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 4 HP / 244 Def / 4 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Substitute
- Minimize
- Seismic Toss
- Soft-Boiled

I don't feel there is a need to explain much about Chansey, other than that I still like max speed even with a Substitute-using lead to move before things like Articuno and Roserade, as well as being able to hold a Substitute against second Pokemon like Barbaracle. Also I suppose speed has better synergy with Bulldoze.

Threatlist

Contrary Serperior4: Possibly the one threat to this trio that could truly be called a flaw, as it is one of the very few pure special attackers able to overpower Chansey and is handled poorly by both other Pokemon. The best plan is to Protect turn 1, try to Substitute turn 2, Protect turn 3, and if Substitute succeeded on turn 2 you can use it on turn 4. Even if it didn't, +4 Leaf Storm fails to OHKO Chansey without a crit and you can set up while it Struggles. The big worry is a crit turn 2, which OHKOes Gliscor and leaves Serperior with 3 PP and able to overpower Chansey. Even more concerning is that +6 Scald from Slowbro is only a 2HKO while +0 into +2 Leaf Storm KOes. Fortunately, unlike NoCheese in the Tree, I was able to afford Careful Gliscor, which has better odds as explained above.
Remeber this list of trainers can use Serperior4: Aire, Angus, Arabella, Cerese, Chelsea, Colin, Darcy, Deacon, Galton, Hazel, Hunter, Incehon, Joan, Nikita, Parker, Patrice, Perdido, Redd, Remora, Sigurd, Tanner, Teppei, Lalaini, Victoria, Willow

Skarmory4: Obviously not going to KO anything on its own, but in the lead it could easily enable a dangerous backup as it has Whirlwind, can set up hazards, Gliscor cannot touch it, and it has Toxic for Slowbro, limiting future switch options heavily. Note that the AI won't send it in second unless the third Pokemon has no damaging moves as well, so you don't have to worry about it coming in against your Gliscor or tanking boosted Scald with Sturdy and phazing Slowbro.

Haxorus4: It isn't too common, but it has Dragon Dance, can phaze Slowbro, and Mold Breaker allows for a crit through Multiscale. As NoCheese notes in his Tree version, this, along with many other Dragon Dancers, likes to overboost against Gliscor, allowing for a safe Sub, land a Toxic and stall.

Virizion4: While rare, it looks incredibly threatening on paper with Swords Dance and typing to beat Slowbro, Rest to counter Toxic and Sacred Sword to beat Chansey. Put bluntly, though, Virizion is a weak piece of s**t and so it doesn't threaten boosted Slowbro enough to overpower it, and Gliscor takes little enough unboosted damage to throw out a Toxic to pressure it and Bulldoze it to let Slowbro outspeed at -3.

Latios34 and Latias34: Latios3 and Latias3 hit Gliscor extremely hard, potentially OHKOing with a high roll from the former or a crit from either. Unfortunately, their set 4 counterparts have mixed attacking sets with boosting that Slowbro and Chansey cannot handle, forcing the lead play to be Substitute and risking dying to set 3. If set 3 KOed Gliscor and the backups were something like a Sacred Sword-using Musketeer set followed by Landorus1, the team could lose. What's more, the few Latios4 leads I've seen have used Draco Meteor turn 1.

Select OHKO move users: Donphan4 could be extremely dangerous if you've been forced to lose Gliscor, but doing so is rare enough that usually it isn't a problem. Pinsir4 might lock into Guillotine against Gliscor, but usually it locks into X-Scissor against Gliscor or Slowbro and Close Combat against Chansey, and is going to be a risk for any team without Aegislash or Durant to outspeed. It's also uncommon to begin with. If you're setting up Slowbro against a Veteran, make sure to preserve Gliscor to check Landorus1 (you outspeed and so switching directly in is fine.) Cryogonal3 is similarly threatening with high speed, and has the ability to OHKO Gliscor with a regular attack on top, but since only Chef Andrei uses it, generally you can play to assume he has it in the back and Chansey can set up. Gliscor also improves the odds a little in the lead with Protect to stall a couple of PP.

I made a more definitive playlist that I think documents every Pokemon that is not an extremely straightforward Slowbro or Chansey setup. Obviously don't forgo the calculator and spreadsheets, but if you ever found yourself without them, here's the most important things to know. Those with a number are non-set 4s that only require specific play when that set is a possibility.

Playlist

Accelgor: Gliscor outruns after two Bulldozes, and it does very little damage to it, so just KOing it with non-Encored Gliscor is not a problem.
Aerodactyl: Crit Stone Edges hit a little too hard to bring Slowbro in safely, especially with the limited turns you get. My favoured play is Protect turn 1, try to Sub turn 2. If it crit and you failed, Protect turn 3, go to Slowbro turn 4, go to Chansey turn 5 and heal off on the Struggles.
Aggron: Sub, then Bulldoze to break Sturdy. Switch around it to try to get rid of Taunt.
Alakazam: If it Tricks on Protect, set up non-mega Slowbro, otherwise set up Chansey.
Archeops3: If it's set 3, just sacrifice Gliscor once you have confirmed it is that set. Roller Skaters don't threaten Slowbro and Chansey enough to worry.
Armaldo: Sub/Protect stall Stone Edge.
Articuno: Until it has revealed it isn't set 2 (through using Blizzard, Frost Breath or Hail), NEVER SWITCH GLISCOR OUT. It usually Ice Beams Gliscor first, so the safe play is to stall that out, get a Sub to survive through an Ice Shard or a Sheer Cold miss, land a Toxic and win.
Bastiodon: Sub, then Bulldoze to break Sturdy before you set up Slowbro.
Breloom: If it's Poison Heal set up Slowbro, if it isn't, stall with Gliscor.
Carbink: Sub/Protect stall until Explosion.
Charizard1: Against starter breeders with Charizard, go straight to Slowbro to wall this set safely.
Chesnaught: Sub/Protect stall Wood Hammer, set up Slowbro.
Claydol: Sub/Protect stall until Explosion.
Cofagrigus: To save a load of Chansey PP, I would Toxic it before you switch in.
Cryogonal3: Against Chef Cobb, play assuming he has this mon in the back (i.e. set up Gliscor or Chansey whenever possible)
Chandelure: could potentially threaten Chansey if it gets very good luck, and is a long PP stall no matter what. Against Psychics and Hex Maniacs, it's OK to just let Gliscor kill it, as nothing else they run threatens Slowbro and Chansey. Against some other trainers with Chandelure, though, don't risk this, as Gliscor might be too low on health to check threatening backups.
Cresselia34: If it's set 3, pivot Chansey in via Slowbro. If it's set 4, set up Slowbro to avoid losing Eviolite to Trick.
Crobat: Switch-stall between Gliscor and Slowbro. If you can get it out of Taunts you can set up.
Delphox2: If this is a possibility and Delphox uses Mystical Fire or Switcheroo on Gliscor, set up Slowbro to avoid Switcheroo.
Donphan: Stall its non-Ground attacks, then Gliscor walls it.
Dragonite3: Once you have confirmed this set, Sub/Protect stall Outrage.
Drapion: Skip Protect and go straight to Slowbro.
Drifblim: Switch-stall between Gliscor and Chansey.
Druddigon: Sub/Protect stall Outrage.
Durant: For some reason it loves Entraining Slowbro but doesn't use it on Gliscor. As a result, best to use Gliscor to beat it rather than lose Shell Armor on Slowbro.
Dusknoir: Don't let Slowbro attack it until it's used all 5 Destiny Bond PP (which will get thrown in randomly alongside Shadow Sneaks).
Electivire: To reduce risk of Slowbro losing to paralysis hax, the best play is to switch-stall Ice and Thunder Punch between Gliscor and Slowbro before Slowbro sets up. Slowbro will likely be frozen, but Electivire will then use Fire Punch against Gliscor, letting you thaw safely on a switch in to that.
Escavalier: Switch-stall it out of Megahorn PP between Gliscor and Slowbro before setting up Slowbro.
Excadrill: Sub/Protect stall Rock Slide, then get a Sub to survive on a Poison Jab or low-roll Aerial Ace and finish it off with Bulldoze.
Exeggutor: Sub first turn on the Trick Room, then wait for it to Explode.
Feraligatr: Go straight to Slowbro and set up.
Forretress: Not much you can do other than let it set up hazards and wait for it to Explode.
Froslass: Stall Blizzards with Chansey, and then switch-stall Icy Wind between Slowbro and Chansey until it Struggles.
Garchomp: Go straight to Slowbro and set up.
Gengar: Go to Chansey, PP stall Sludge Bomb, switch-stall it out of Thunderbolts and Shadow Balls between Gengar and Gliscor.
Gogoat: Sub/Protect stall Leaf Blades.
Golem: Sub/Protect stall until Explosion.
Gourgeist: Make sure not to be hit by Trick-or-Treat. Land a Toxic, Sub (noting Phantom Force goes through Protect), and win.
Haxorus: Sub, land a Toxic, and win.
Heracross: Sub/Protect stall Megahorn, then set up Slowbro.
Honchkrow: Sub/Protect stall using Life Orb recoil. It often uses Sucker Punch on Gliscor, letting you get a free Substitute.
Hydreigon: Sub on Dragon Rush, stall it out. Alternatively, maybe Chansey has a shot?
Infernape: To get rid of a couple of Encores, Protect, go to Slowbro, then back to Gliscor. It usually Encores Gliscor and Flare Blitz doesn't hit too hard.
Klinklang: Quickest way to set up safely is to Bulldoze once to let Chansey outspeed and not have to worry about Toxic.
Landorus1: Once identified, switch-stall Fissure between Slowbro and Gliscor, then set up Slowbro once out of Fissure. Gliscor outspeeds, so it is safe to switch directly in from Slowbro.
Landorus4: It'll probably Explode on your Protect, or soon after.
Lapras: Sub turn 1. Wait for it to use Perish Song and count to drop to 2, then switch to Chansey and back to Gliscor to reset the battle.
Latias34: Essential to Sub turn 1. If it's set 3 and Tricks Gliscor or you die to a crit, you can probably manage fine by setting up Chansey. If it's set 4, then stall it with Life Orb recoil.
Latios34: Essential to Sub turn 1. If it's set 3 and Tricks Gliscor or you die to a high roll or crit, you can probably manage fine by setting up Chansey. If it's set 4, then stall it with Life Orb recoil.
Leafeon: Don't risk Toxic, even if you get a free Substitute on a Detect. The danger to Gliscor is too high with Leaf Blade's increased crit rate and Quick Claw's randomness. Just stall Leaf Blade and set up Slowbro.
Lickilicky: Sub/Protect stall until Explosion.
Machamp: Sub/Protect stall it with Flame Orb damage.
Mamoswine: Switching Slowbro in is too risky with its high damage and freeze risk, so stall it out with Gliscor using Life Orb recoil.
Manectric: If it used Trick on your Protect set up non-mega Slowbro, otherwise set up Chansey.
Metagross: Keep Slowbro non-mega so it continues to spam Trick rather than attacking.
Mismagius: SUB TURN 1. Protect does NOT block Mean Look. Wait for it to use Perish Song and count to drop to 2, then switch to Chansey and back to Gliscor to reset the battle. Note that a max roll crit from Anastasia's set 3 can OHKO Gliscor, but Slowbro and Chansey handle her team fine.
Muk: Sub/Protect stall until Explosion.
Nidoqueen: Grab a Substitute, then Bulldoze 3HKO.
Pinsir: If it locks into Guillotine then there's not much you can do, but it usually prefers X-Scissor.
Porygon-Z: Go to Chansey and stall out Tri-Attack, then switch-stall Shadow Ball and Thunderbolt between Gliscor and Chansey.
Poliwrath: Sub/Protect stall Waterfall, then land a Toxic and win.
Quagsire: If it comes out and Gliscor is down, all is not lost. Just spam Scald with Slowbro and fish for a burn. Normally this sort of play would be highly discouraged in battle facilities, but it either Earthquakes Slowbro for no damage or spends a long time setting up, and burning allows Slowbro to safely stall +6 Earthquake. What's more, you probably lost Gliscor either to hax somewhere or bad luck against Serperior4, so a little more RNG can't hurt.
Rampardos: Sub/Protect stall Head Smash, then set up Slowbro. Don't use Bulldoze, as Rampardos has to not die to recoil for you to be able to set up.
Regigigas: You can set up Chansey or Slowbro, but with the sets' various forms of hax and outrunning Chansey post-Slow Start, I prefer Toxic stalling with Gliscor.
Regirock: Sub/Protect stall until Explosion. If it reveals a set without Explosion, Slowbro can set up. If set 4 is a possibility, Sub first in case it uses Rock Polish.
Reuniclus: Set up non-mega Slowbro, and ideally do a straight switch out of Gliscor for more setup turns. Never switch Chansey in or you risk Trick, even from Slowbro as the AI doesn't recognise the fact that ORAS mega stones are untrickable.
Sawk: Best to switch-stall it between Gliscor and Slowbro until it dies to Life Orb recoil.
Scizor: Use Bulldoze twice before switching Slowbro in, so you can outspeed it.
Serperior: Best you can do is Protect, try to Sub, Protect, if you could Sub before do so again, then Protect. If that succeeded, you win, otherwise, go to Chansey and try to stall any remaining PP.
Skarmory: Protect. Go to Chansey and straight Seismic Toss KO. Don't keep Slowbro in or you risk Toxic.
Skuntank: Sub/Protect stall until Explosion.
Talonflame: Go straight to Slowbro and set up.
Terrakion3: Sub turn 1. Stall Rock Slides, and once it's out of those you can try to Toxic it (it will usually set up to +6 before it tries Sacred Sword).
Throh: Sub/Protect stall it with Flame Orb damage.
Toxicroak: Bulldoze to slow it down, Sub and Bulldoze again to KO while not Taunted.
Tyrantrum: Sub/Protect stall Head Smash.
Tyranitar: Stall Rock Slide, and after that it usually Superpowers Gliscor, allowing for a free Toxic and win. If against Rasmus open with Substitute. The threatening set 2/3 either uses Ice Beam, which won't OHKO, or it Dragon Dances and you got the free Substitute you need to stall it. If it just repeatedly attacks, let it KO Gliscor with Ice Beam, Slowbro can set up, and Rasmus's sets all are demolished by +6 Slowbro bar Storm Drain Gastrodon and Cradily, both of which can be stalled by Chansey.
Vanilluxe: DO NOT try to switch-stall Ice Beam with Gliscor. I tried that first time and got Gliscor KOed by an Ice Beam on the switch... It sometimes Taunts Gliscor too, so the best play is to stick to Slowbro and Chansey against it to be safe.
Vespiquen: Sub, land a Toxic and win.
Virizion: Sub, Bulldoze it to slow it down, land a Toxic and win. If set 4 is a possibility you want to get Slowbro in on a Rest.
Volcarona: Sub, land a Toxic, and win.
Walrein: Sub/Protect stall Sheer Cold before switching Gliscor out. It uses Sleep Talk next, so if you like you are safe to switch in Chansey to stall out the Fissure PP.
Weavile: Don't mess about with this one. Just switch Slowbro in, Mega, and Scald 2HKO.
Zapdos: Chansey's PP are more important to preserve versus Veterans, so best to Toxic set 2 with Gliscor if possible.
Zebstrika: Rather than mess around with Volt Switch and paralysis, I prefer Gliscor Sub and take the Bulldoze 2HKO.

If you're interested in trying a different lead for Slowbro/Chansey (because I'm sure there are other possibilities that NoCheese and I haven't considered), it absolutely must cover Donphan4 (so I think a Ground immunity or Sturdy is required), Volcarona, Haxorus, Serperior, Lati@s4 and PerishTrap Lapras and Mismagius, and I'd consult the playlist above to see how it matches up into other leads that don't give an easy victory. I know GG Unit has proposed a TrickScarf lead, but I don't think that would work well because trading one Pokemon to get another set up is an unreliable path when the sweeper is not a guaranteed win condition.

The loss: I'm afraid this was truly, utterly horrendous. I lost to a Roller Skater with Drifblim3/Aerodactyl4/Lanturn4 due to getting incredibly lazy. I Toxiced Drifblim before I let Chansey set up, not noticing this was a Roller Skater and they could use Drifblim3 with Wise Glasses Icy Wind, so Gliscor took more chip than usual. Chansey set up and Aerodactyl came out. Sloppy play led to Chansey dying to CB Aerial Ace, after which I set up Slowbro. Water Absorb Lanturn4 came out, and I went for the 'fast' route I'd devised for lastmon Rest users, where I Toxic them, let Gliscor be weakened into KO range, then they'll usually not Rest because they see a KO. Unfortunately Ice Beam crit and KOed Gliscor, and Slowbro couldn't stall Charge Beam on its own.

While I enjoyed playing up to that point, the team is absurdly slow and I clearly lack the patience to play it properly. I could go for another streak, but I don't feel there are any great benchmarks beyond showing the team works (no, this will not do 4000 with the big Serperior4 weakness, amongst other little limitations noted above). But if anyone feels like they want to do 4 digits and has more patience than me, you could do a lot worse than using this.

On the positive side, losing means I have an excuse to go back to Triples, and maybe do a proper Doubles team. I also finally get to complete and post this writeup, which has been sitting half-finished in my sandbox since 2022.

In future, if I do more singles I'll do teams with Salamence or Kangaskhan or something that plays a bit faster to avoid the kind of temptation seen here, or perhaps look into crippler teams so I'm forced into the slow route.

 

[pokefreak98]

Crappy blurry picture of the super tripples win streak for proof of the win streak. I have also started reruning the streak so I can note down some close calls and how the team loses. I belive the last loss involved getting haxxed (of course lol) and getting outsped and wrecked by weavile ice punch but my memory is fuzzy because 10 year old streak. I had a somewhat close call at 182 due to trick room going up, but I managed to muscle though and it was only close because I played rather poorly, not being used to playing under trick room. I can try to get a better picture if needed.

 

[pokefreak98]

I have abandoned my old triples team as it had too many glaring flaws and instead built a new team that I feel is actually good. I had to restart with a new winstreak as mega mence isn't avalible in XY. I hit 250 wins so far which isn't that impressive but things seem to be going well enough that I am confident the team can hit a large winstreak.

Here it is in showdown format. The attack IV's on Greninja and Sylveon are calculated with an IV calculator and may not be accurate, but any inaccuracy is irrelevant because that stats would be the same. 18 is simply a stand in for x in Scizor's IV's.

Hide

Mud Master (Greninja) (M) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Protean
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 4 Def / 248 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 4 Atk / 30 SpA / 30 SpD
- Mat Block
- Scald
- Hidden Power [Ground]
- Dark Pulse

Sylveon (M) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Pixilate
Level: 50
EVs: 36 HP / 132 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 84 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 14 Atk
- Hyper Voice
- Moonblast
- Swift
- Psyshock

Salamence-Mega (F) @ Salamencite
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 164 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 76 SpD / 12 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Tailwind
- Hyper Voice
- Dragon Pulse
- Flamethrower

Heatran (M) @ Wide Lens
Ability: Flash Fire
Level: 50
EVs: 140 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 108 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 2 Atk
- Heat Wave
- Flash Cannon
- Earth Power
- Protect

Not Mega (Scizor) (M) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Technician
Level: 50
EVs: 236 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 4 SpD / 12 Spe
Adamant Nature
IVs: 18 SpA
- Bullet Punch
- Bug Bite
- Superpower
- Tailwind

Sapphire (Suicune) @ Lum Berry
Ability: Pressure
Level: 50
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 236 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 12 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 2 Atk
- Scald
- Tailwind
- Ice Beam
- Calm Mind

I had to get transfers from Gen 4 working to build the team, which may or may not have involved pirating Pokemon bank with the eshop down. I would rather play though 2 gen 4 games to RNG Heatran and Suicune than deal with learning gen 6 RNG, and I would rather deal with learning gen 6 RNG than soft reset for 5 IV's. I enclosed my RNG manipulation war stories in case anyone doubts the legitimacy of the legends.

The team has no shared weaknesses between the Non protean pokemon, which feels a lot better than double x4 ice weakness and x3 fairy weakness+aron+Greninja+non fairy resist. The team is basicaly just bulky offense+tailwind to move first anyway.

Here to use mat block to keep Sylveon safe on turn 1. HP ground lets him go electric immune after baiting an electric attack with water typing. Ground also hits all types that resist fairy for SE damage. Scald is the highest power reliable accuracy water move Greninja can learn that doesn't hit my own team. Turning back into a water type to bait electric attacks is great, and more coverage on fire types that resist both Sylveons stab and both of Heatrans stabs is great. Dark pulse is cross field damge which is great, hits most trick room setters for SE damage which is also great. Fighting typing from mat block lets him bait psychic type attacks, and then dark pulse lets him dodge them completely.

The star of the show. Also a bit of a glass cannon. By glass, I mean gets OHKOed by Muk 4 SE guck shot and Crobat 4 SE cross poison crit. He isn't actualy that frail. The EV spread lets him outspeed base 110 speed max speed investment mons under tailwind, and outspeed base 70 no investment mons (noteabley luxray 4) outside of tailwind. 36 HP EV's gives 175 HP, one point shot of taking more hail/sandstorm damage. The rest of the EV's are in defense to balace his defenses some with 4 leftover is Spdef. Getting off a single choice boosted Hyper Voice can silge handedly put you in a winning position. Choice boosted Hyper voice 2 KO's most things that don't resist it, has OHKO's on some frailer targets, and even 2 KO's Gengar with NVE Hyper voice. You can reasonably expect the AI to lose 1/4+ of the total HP on their entire team to a single Hyper Voice turn 1. With mat block, you are probably going to get al least that first hyper voice off. Moon blast is wide gaurd coverage. Moonblast is here because Sylveon has poor enough of a movepool when it comes to type coverage that wide gaurd coverage is worth running. Moonblast also deals slightly more single target damage than spread Hyper voice, but unfortunatly fails to reliably OHKO Aerodactly 4. It also covers soundproof mons. Swift is evasion+soundproof coverage. Psyshock hits poison types for SE damage. Everything other than Hyper Voice rarely gets used, one of the other moves could probably be cut for protect or heal bell.

More support for Sylveon. The EV spread puts her HP at a good hail/sandstorm number with some Spdef to Balace the defenses and screw over download porygons. 12 speed puts it over Milotic 4 in base for just incase Greninja gets hit with Thunder para->full para or prankster taunt befor mat block goes up. Intimadate puts Sylveons physical defense to slightly higher than his Spdef... unless there is a crit. With intimate becoming useless after switching in, Mega mence effectively has two abilities, which is completely OP. Good thing having tow abilities is so obviouly overpowered gamefreak won't do it in later gens ;). Tailwind is what carries the team. After setting up tailwind she supports Sylveon by helping to inflect the extremely powerful fained status condition to the opposing team, thereby reducing the damage Sylveon recieves. Hyper voice+dragon pulse is dual stab with spread+cross field utility. Flamethrower is needed for steel coverage.

Placeholder.

Placeholder.

Placeholder. Will finish writeup when carpel tunnel calms down.

Here are some select videos of mostly the team handling trick room:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlVHV0Rw0T2hqIlRwzl_xUET_WAKREDcn

 

[tobiuo]

Hi? It’s been like three months since I last updated, about two months of which were varying degrees of quasihiatus, but the steak lives. Given the loss of 3DS online services to pass battle videos around, I tried streaming handcam a few weeks back but the screen glare turned out laughably bad; I leave it up to uhhh demonstrate the mechanics of tap-tap-tapping, but rerecorded the corresponding battle videos. Manifest:

#5141 vs “Mixed” Ace Colin Samurott/Hippowdon/Probopass—This is almost the normal Samurott4 play except that I was derusting and forgot to go for the early Head which ensures we don’t kill it immediately after a crit, which … realistically barely matters, actually. It’s fine. Note the importance of Aegislash outspeeding with Iron Head on Hippowdon (60 speed) here; this is one of the reasons why 58 speed Aegi is gratuitously bad.

#5012 vs “B” Waitress Donphan/Carracosta/Bastiodon

#5013 vs Furisode Umbreon1/Jolteon2/Espeon3

#5014 vs “A” Owner Trevenant/Toxicroak/Barbaracle—Trevenant4 is not a totally satisfying setup, but +4 Aegi under TR is quite good and I consider it a reasonable tradeoff in a matchup that otherwise eats a fuckton of PP without even getting to a nice setup. The follow-up Toxicroak4 leads to a hilarious situation where we get forced out into still just an Aegi setup but +6 and full hp.

#5015 vs Azure Probopass/Gastrodon/Golurk—As I mentioned before, DT Gliscor gets full combo out of Probopass4 something like 98% of the time in spite of LO, though I think if it doesn’t get some early misses it might be safer to kill it outright to avoid running dry on PP.

#5016 vs Ranger Chesnaught/Torterra/Golem—A nifty minor optimization here is that if we facetank some whammers to make sure Chesnaught ends at <50% to ensure the +6 Waterfall KO, we can spend an extra EQ to drop its Atk again to save some Subtect PP. This does not matter.

#5017 vs Black Belt Carbink/Poliwrath/Aggron

#5018 vs generic Breeder Rhyperior/Eelektross/Accelgor

#5019 vs “B” Tourist Chandelure/Haxorus/Arcanine—This matchup sucks. I like the turn 1 Mega Sub on Chandelure4 for complicated reasons.

#5020 vs Sun Chef Roux Arcanine3/Delphox3/Exeggutor4

#5021 vs “A” Artist Blaziken/Ludicolo/Slowbro—Not a happy matchup. I miscount and switch Gyarados into GK when I thought I needed to facetank a Hydro; ultimately not a huge deal in a 3v2 but crit + bad backup could’ve potentially caused problems?

This is a somewhat more boring lineup than last time since it’s literally just last video of a batch + a slice of 10 battles in a row that I did on stream. Enjoy(?).

and I’m flattered that this is the team that caught your eye rather than the more typical stuff that people have tried to copy before (“…have I actually made an impression?”).

It’s not really something I bothered touching on much earlier, not least because it was already on the record, but this team is, you know, kind of fun to play, if in deranged sadist control freak sort of way. Well, that’s singles, right? It’s one of the striking features of (at least Maison) singles that distinguishes it, obviously from doubles/triples, but even rotations which is superficially similar at a surface level diverges wildly for “real” streaks precisely in that, in singles, the vast majority of the time inspecting the state of the battle lets you anticipate what move the AI opponent is going to select or at least sharply constrain the set of possible outcomes—like it’s actually a red flag when you have to “hope” you don’t eat a crit/secondary, since you usually actually get to deal with it by making it Not Matter (thanks, Sub). I mean, you know this, obviously, just rambling at the fourth wall here.

At this point, I’ve played more or less this team way out of proportion to anything else (like, I’ve been feeling that it’d take me a couple of months at Some Point after this streak ends to take Aegimensey out for another whirl, because without that I don’t feel like I can really give it a fair shake because all my experience with it was just when I was a substantially worse pilot, and in all honestly that’s likelier than not to never happen in full due to the level of commitment for what would feel like retreading old ground in at least three senses), but there’s just something deeply satisfying about this genre of team that honestly I don’t think even takes more than mid 3 digits to really get into. You mention (non-)linearity and depth, and there’s a sense in which that’s true and engaging in a way that pre-plotting your outs for the short, almost practically enumerable list of things that can go wrong with Tru-ant setup has never quite done for me. But on the flip side, it being nevertheless still singles imo still pushes the “problems” here up more to the level of lead planning than piloting per se, even though with this kind of team there’s enough variety in the positions you end up in that in practice it occasionally become reasonable to put down the screen to sketch out a course for the current matchup and identify the key decision points (if any) to execute on, in principle it’s almost always a situation where you ought to be able to boot up another copy of the game and experiment there until you arrive at a reasonable plan before continuing. (The mechanics of gen 6-7 battle videos pbuh are fantastic for this, hence my borderline obsessive collection of them, it’s good not to have to wait until you next run into a matchup “live” and then … I guess have to choose between settling for the old strat and save that video or risk discovering under live fire exactly why your clever idea doesn’t work.)

Yeah, I’m not really sure what to say here, posting a copycat streak is … not maximally satisfying, there’s a reason I ended up posting the Masquerain streaks first even though they’re kind of meme/flex junk and I had a Marathon variant streak at that time (mentioned but kind of glossed over in the post!) at just under 3k?? I guess at least to me, the crux of the matter is, and obviously people don’t feel this way and certainly others wouldn’t exactly put it this way, it doesn’t really feel good or worth it to post without having some novelty to contribute. A silly moth streak, even if it’s backed up by basically just a goodstuffs pile, has at least that much going for it, you know?

At the end of the day, it’s not like goodstuffs is a well-defined concept with firm criteria, but I strongly feel that “three mons with baseline synergy” wildly undersells what you ended up actually putting together, even if largely by accident. There’s a qualitative difference between this and the genres of team who rhyme with “pick a switch-in to 1v1 the thing in your face” or “a pile of mons that individually 1v3 broad, complementary swaths of possible opponents”. Something happened here! I’m not sure it fits in a nice clean package, but there’s something…

I’ve always always seen this thread primarily as a place where people tell their stories about the teams they’ve been playing with and how they got to those teams, and people that just drop by to share their numbers don’t get it at all.

… but this, yeah, my take has been that even though the leaderboards grade heavily on execution, the meat of these threads is really in the write-ups; the reason to read them at all is that there’s non-obvious takeaways to pick up from people’s descriptions of how they play their teams. I had a lot of words I was going to write here, but the gist is basically that facilities play demands a way of approaching the game (“to win”…) so unlike other contexts we tend to be familiar with that, well, I for one don’t think I’d be here without them.

I never really engaged in the Minimize vs Toxic Chansey debate when it was a thing here, mostly due to wanting to let people do their own thing while also genuinely not understanding the evasion strat from a practical pov; while logically this is less of a thing with Bulldoze Gliscor, the bottom line is just “do I really want to spend my battling life worrying that faster physical or boosted attackers will hit through boosted evasion twice in a row”, which I am sure is where my lack of experience with sets like these is showing and would rightfully be called out as ignorant, but avoiding strats that would be more stressful for me personally to play is its own good I think.

I think the real answer is that DTdoze Gliscor doesn’t actually play any differently from Toxquake against things that you can’t help being faster and threatening with b2b crits; Toxic doesn’t really solve a problem in that case either, you just have to Subtect stall them until they run out of the threatening move(s); think something like Lati1s.

The tradeoff that DT vs Toxic represents is more like having “generic skip turn button” vs “ability to kill a handful of specific threats”; the fact that DT does actually reduce damage (or framed more usefully: increase sub “survivability”, in particular even picking up +1 making it so that you accumulate free turns while PP stalling) from a wide range of enemies is of course not absolutely nothing but the most important consequence which sets it ahead of other skip turn buttons is that its effect makes it save Subtect PP “normally” against “anything” slower that doesn’t immediately threaten a kill rather than only against stuff that actually fails to break a sub. But even that much is hardly critical in most cases, it just kind of extends the important part of Gliscor’s PP in case something weird happens, which practically speaking mostly rounds off to feeling less bad about spending it on an Aegi setup than it would to hard burn Subtects.

The only situation that comes to mind where Toxic missing actually saliently caused a “problem” was a Vaporeon4 backup after the lead drained a bunch of PP, but even with Toxic I don’t think I’d prefer that line nowadays anyway. Still, this is emblematic of a category of matchups where Toxic’s miss chance can be moderately problematic: slower backups with threatening attacks that you get one chance to land your Toxic on. But those are kind of problematic matchups even when you do land your Toxic; you end on naked Gliscor with somewhat drained PP against unknown lastmon. Kind of rarely a genuinely problematic situation since the list of things that can 1v3 you is small, but it’s not zero measure (hi Haxorus, hi Talonflame). So I think, for the most part, planning to Bulldoze to outspeed and kill with a sub up, or just hard stall to set up either teammate from the start, depending on what comes out, makes for a more comprehensive game plan (except Talonflame; fuck you too, warm surveillance drone), but even then Gliscor with a sub is my least favorite setup to go into an unknown backup. I think there are a few situations where you prefer Gliscor out over a viable Aegi setup? but I feel that the latter is so much harder to get into an unfortunate situation since “backups we can handle from +6 Aegi” corresponds so much better to “leads we can handle from +0 Gyara” (which is of course supposed to be “all of them”).

The Chansey thing: I’m not sure Minimize vs Toxic is really a defining difference between the sets; it’s not like there’s some fundamental incompatibility to running Toxic/Sub/Minimize/SB (“I don’t have access to Mawile”). After SB being generally considered a no-brainer, the dfs I see in blob sets are (a) Sub/Toss/Toxic; (b) skip turn button; and (c) fat blob vs fast blob. (Never got on the menu: +25%/+20%ish bulk vs a real item… probably because the realest item has always been too contested.) The main takeaway imo is basically that sets which slot in the best move in the game are broadly better the ones that don’t… from there, Sub/ST/evasion/fast seems like the most cohesive bundle of synergy, but both moves I can see being team-dependent (also ST is incompatible with Charm…), whereas I don’t think you’ll ever catch me dropping 106 and Sub.

LVL 1, EV’s/IV’s unkown, has 12 HP. I thought about breeding one with only 11 HP but never bothered

You can’t actually get down to 11 hp; Aron has 50 base HP, which gives the +1 by itself even if you have a 0 IV. The only stats I think you can conceivably manipulate in a way that matters on a level 1 Aron are the defenses… if you have a -Def nature, you can make Def=SpD=6. It is not actually clear to me that this is even particularly desirable.

funniest Aron cope filler slot is Spite tho :-)

ok now how about something actually worth reading

So also I did a couple of (emulator, tool-assisted) proof-of-concept Maison trainer and opponent lead RNG-manips.

While the practical ramifications are … questionable (there are way more wieldy ways to cheat, and afaik retail Tiny manips aren’t really feasible yet(?)), I consider this a neat little demonstration that, no surprise, counterteaming isn’t real, opponent trainers are selected randomly ~uniformly from the list of possible trainers (b2b appearances rerolled) and teams are selected from the top from that trainer’s set list. This has the obvious implications on set frequencies, I guess.

(The astute reader will note that I can say whatever shit I want here, but it’d only be convincing if you actually inspected the RNG sequence to confirm it matches up. Indeed. The astute reader is advised to check the RNG outputs for the seeds displayed onscreen.)

 

[TailGlowVM]

Triples streak over at 2,231 wins, with a team I've retroactively named Top and Tail Eruption. Previous notes here. This was much higher than I'd originally expected, as I started with a goal of 1,000. It would seem Heatran is indeed just as viable as any of the other spread attackers for a big Triples streak.

Some assorted ramblings about the team:

• I hardly ever use Shift with this team. I possibly could make more use of it, but I find wasting Tailwind turns disadvantageous and most of the time I can Protect or kill the enemy just as effectively.
• I declined to note Latios1 and Latias1 as threats to my team. The closest battle from 1655 to 2217 involved one dodging a couple of attacks in conjunction with a backline Terrakion2. I still won comfortably, but I'd have been in trouble if I missed a couple more times. Basically I have to deal with them by aiming as many attacks as I can at them and praying for no misses. I have 4 mons that do reasonable damage to them and they don't OHKO anything unboosted, so it's worked out so far.
• I chose to put Greninja on the left and Talonflame on the right without thinking about it too much. I think this is better because the AI prefers to send out backups with higher move base power first, so it's more useful to Taunt the last Pokemon than to hit it with Ice Beam/Grass Knot.
• I originally conceived Greninja/Heatran/Talonflame/Garchomp/Rotom-W/filler several years ago as a substitute to Mega Blastoise teams in case we ever got a facility with Triples but no Megas in the future, which is part of the reason I don't have a Mega Evolution myself. That looks less and less likely by the year, unfortunately, but I would strongly recommend it if it is ever doable.

The loss

I had a close call at 2217 vs Ace Trainer Bunny, who led with Probopass2/Hydro Pump Milotic/Ferrothorn. Probopass was Magnet Pull and paralysed Greninja and Heatran (who doesn't even 2HKO with Eruption due to the MegaCalm EV spread), and the fourth Pokemon was Venusaur1, which EQd Heatran to kill it and counters Rotom with Power Whip. Then Gardevoir2 came out and Traced Protean, setting up Calm Mind to overpower most of what was left of my team. I was saved by Bastiodon1 not Metal Bursting Garchomp, allowing Chomp to survive and win 1v1 vs weakened Gardevoir, connecting the key Earthquake to win.

The real loss came less than 20 battles later. This was not the Heatran3/Terrakion2 Veteran lineup I'd feared, but a Roller Skater with Talonflame3/Intimidate Gyarados3/Aerodactyl3 leads. You can see this isn't a good lead lineup, but I neglected to do the winning play of switching out Heatran for Rotom turn 1 and went for Mat Block/Protect/Tailwind. The opposing Talonflame set up Swords Dance and took out Greninja with Gale Wings Acrobatics turn 2, and Aerodactyl EQd Heatran and killed it. I mistakenly believed Aerodactyl was set 4 and could be left a few turns while I spammed Wide Guard, which probably didn't matter. Talonflame did about 90% to Hitmontop with cross-field Acrobatics and I couldn't Sitrus because of Aerodactyl having Unnerve. Garchomp and Rotom killed Talonflame and Gyarados (with Volt because I didn't want to 'commit' Rotom yet in case of backline Lightning Rod or suchlike), and then Eelektross and Ampharos come in. I go for Protect on Talonflame and Earthquake on Garchomp because Ampharos must go to allow the other three to function, and maybe Eelektross is set 4 and I can buy a couple of turns with Protect. Sadly it's Eelektross3 and targets Hitmontop rather than Talonflame. I panic as the last mon is Intimidate Staraptor, and forgot Talonflame had Protected last turn, mistakenly trying a double Protect which failed. This time Eelektross does target Talonflame, and there's not much to do from there. I ended up with Rotom 1v1 vs Eelektross, which it always loses thanks to the latter's max Attack investment and Assault Vest.

While my play was really bad, the big dealbreaker from the opposition here seems to be Talonflame a) having Gale Wings and b) using Swords Dance turn 1. If it isn't Gale Wings, then Greninja doesn't get killed turn 2 and I ought to be fine. Swords Dance is not particularly likely from it judging by Mock Battles, and though Greninja still dies either way it doesn't do the big damage on Hitmontop if it hasn't set up.

If I'm being completely honest I'm not too sad to see the streak go, as I'm not even a third of the way to 6840 and it still felt like it was taking forever. And since it was less than 20 battles from a team that nearly checkmated me and I by rights could have lost against, killing the streak with misplay doesn't make me feel that bad, though I have tried to learn from it.

I did have a lot of fun still, and this isn't the end of my facility play, stay tuned for some other exciting streaks!

Possible improvements for the future

• Regarding my previous concerns with Fire-types: I'd not heard of Hidden Power Rock on Greninja when I created the team (if you want to know, ask turskain about it). I've considered it and the damage on Talonflame and Flash Fire users would be nice, but I've found cross-field sniping too valuable to pass up on, even if I can handle Trick Room well enough at the moment.
• I'd also not heard of Wide Lens High Jump Kick as an option on Hitmontop. I think this would be a downgrade for this team as I don't actually use Close Combat that much (most of the time, Top either switches in early on and spams Fake Out or Wide Guard while teammates kill stuff, or replaces a KOed ally in the endgame to clean up with Fake Out and Sucker Punch) and Sitrus Berry helps in situations where I have to take an allied Earthquake. Also it makes Blissey4 much worse, which was a matchup I had in mind with it.
• Following my mention of the 2217 battle in Discord, turskain suggested Lum Berry on Heatran to mitigate the paralysis risk. This could be interesting to try on a future Heatran team, but I'm not certain that paralysis occurs often enough to be relevant. Of common Thunder Wave users, Honchkrow is OHKOed before it gets to move thanks to the Charcoal, Zebstrika overwhelmingly prefers Wild Charge, Luxray, Regigigas and Porygon2 get Taunted and Regice is killed if it can be hit by Eruption + Brave Bird. There are some other Thunder Wave users carried by Roller Skaters, but Rotom and Garchomp are the MVPs against those teams anyway. And as you would imagine with the frail Greninja and Talonflame alongside, Heatran never takes Thunderbolt/Thunder unless it's really weakened already.
• He also suggested that swapping Rotom and Heatran might make the team easier to play and create greater flexibility, in a similar lineup to his LukeNinja and Therian Solar Shield teams whereby you bring in Heatran with Volt Switch when Eruption is useful and have Rotom deal with Aerodactyl, Terrakion, Quick Claw holders and friends, on top of addressing the paralysis concerns because you can guarantee side Thunder Wave users will aim into the other slots. This is something I'd be willing to try, but I don't really have the motivation to do another Triples streak at the moment. A notable advantage of Heatran for this is that when the big Eruption nuke isn't needed, it can double as a slot with actual utility thanks to the awesome defensive typing.
• Hitmontop might be replaceable. As the loss shows, the synergy with Fighting Greninja is poor. I don't know what would be better though. Possibly Scizor, but I was cautious of using another Pokemon with a big Heatran weakness.
• Possibly the best thing would be never again playing while distracted, which I was during the loss battle.

Also, if I do another run with the Singles team, I'm going back to Earthquake on Gliscor, and you should too if you want to play this team. The greater power is much more valuable for a self-sufficient Gliscor set (especially against Chandelure and Bisharp) and most of my suggested Bulldoze targets don't need it.

 

[TailGlowVM]

While the speed tier sheet available is very handy, I've found occasionally it's been confusing seeing a load of things that don't appear past battle 40 in the list, along with impossible speed tiers like Aerodactyl1's 300. I've created another speed tier list that is restricted to post-40 sets in the style of atsync's Tree list. I retained the indicators for the following:

A red hash symbol ( # ) represents a Pokemon that holds a Choice Scarf; the speed tier given already has the Choice Scarf factored in. If the opponent loses the Choice Scarf (for example, by Knock Off or Trick), divide the speed tier by 1.5 and round down to get the new speed value.

A blue asterisk symbol ( * ) represents a Pokemon that holds an Iron Ball; the speed tier given already has the Iron Ball factored in. If the opponent loses the Iron Ball (for example, by Knock Off or Fling), multiply the speed tier given by 2 to get the new speed value.

I've probably made a mistake in the lists somewhere, so if you notice it, please inform me and I can fix it!

This one covers everything post-40:

Full speed tiers

258
Manectric 4 #
250
Entei 3 #
240
Terrakion 2 #
231
Garchomp 3 #
229
Landorus 2 #
228
Staraptor 2 #, Typhlosion 3 #
225
Pinsir 4 #
220
Darmanitan 4 #
216
Accelgor 4
211
Charizard 3 #, Electrode 3, Electrode 4, Heatran 4 #
201
Skarmory 3 #
200
Aerodactyl 3, Aerodactyl 4, Crobat 3, Crobat 4, Jolteon 1, Jolteon 2, Jolteon 3, Jolteon 4
198
Braviary 3 #
195
Talonflame 2, Talonflame 3
194
Weavile 4
191
Greninja 2, Greninja 3
189
Alakazam 1, Alakazam 2, Alakazam 3, Alakazam 4, Dugtrio 1, Dugtrio 3, Dugtrio 4, Sceptile 1, Sceptile 2, Sceptile 3
187
Hawlucha 4
184
Zebstrika 2, Zebstrika 3, Zebstrika 4
183
Ambipom 4, Floatzel 1, Floatzel 2, Floatzel 3, Floatzel 4, Raikou 1, Raikou 2, Raikou 3, Raikou 4, Starmie 3, Starmie 4
179
Thundurus 2, Thundurus 3, Thundurus 4, Tornadus 1, Tornadus 4
178
Archeops 3, Archeops 4, Espeon 1, Espeon 2, Espeon 4, Froslass 1, Froslass 3, Froslass 4, Gengar 1, Gengar 2, Gengar 3, Gengar 4, Latias 2, Latias 3, Latios 2, Latios 3, Raichu 3, 4, Talonflame 4, Tauros 2, Tauros 3
177
Torterra 2 #, Durant 4
176
Cobalion 3, Cobalion 4, Infernape 1, Infernape 3, Infernape 4, Terrakion 1,Terrakion 3, Terrakion 4, Virizion 1, Virizion 2, Virizion 3
175
Noivern 3, Noivern 4
174
Greninja 4
173
Pyroar 2
172
Cryogonal 3, Cryogonal 4, Dugtrio 2, Lopunny 4, Manectric 3, Mismagius 3, Rapidash 2, Rapidash 4, Zoroark 1, Zoroark 2, Zoroark 3, Zoroark 4
171
Delphox 1, Delphox 3
170
Hawlucha 3
169
Serperior 1, Garchomp 1, Garchomp 2, Garchomp 4
168
Landorus 3
167
Miltank 4, Ninetales 4, Salamence 3, Salamence 4, Slaking 4, Staraptor 1, Staraptor 4, Tentacruel 1, Tentacruel 2, Typhlosion 2, Volcarona 2, Zapdos 1, Zapdos 3, Zapdos 4
165
Hydreigon 3, Hydreigon 4, Serperior 4
163
Haxorus 4
162
Espeon 3, Froslass 2, Latias 4, Latios 4, Tauros 1
161
Arcanine 3, Arcanine 4, Electivire 4, Gliscor 4, Houndoom 4, Jynx 4, Leafeon 2
159
Unfezant 3
158
Pyroar 4, Krookodile 4
156
Delphox 2, Delphox 4, Kangaskhan 4, Lilligant 1, Moltres 3, Moltres 4, Porygon-Z 4, Roserade 3
152
Charizard 2, Charizard 4, Entei 1, Flygon 4, Staraptor 3, Typhlosion 1, Typhlosion 4, Volcarona 1
150
Articuno 3, Heracross 4, Hydreigon 1, Suicune 4
149
Infernape 2
148
Magmortar 3, Magmortar 4
147
Arcanine 1, Arcanine 2, Electivire 3, Gliscor 1, Jynx 3, Leafeon 1, Yanmega 3, Yanmega 4
146
Gyarados 3
145
Altaria 3, Chandelure 2, Drifblim 3, Gallade 4, Gardevoir 1, Gardevoir 2, Gardevoir 3, Medicham 3, Togekiss 3, Venusaur 3
142
Greninja 1, Klinklang 4, Moltres 1, Moltres 2, Mr. Mime 4, Porygon-Z 1, Porygon-Z 2, Roserade 2
141
Charizard 1, Salamence 2
140
Sceptile 4
139
Absol 4, Hydreigon 2
138
Seismitoad 3, Seismitoad 4
137
Articuno 4, Nidoking 4, Sawk 4, Toxicroak 4
135
Magmortar 2
133
Gyarados 2, Serperior 3
132
Blaziken 3, Blaziken 4, Braviary 4, Dragonite 4, Drifblim 4, Exploud 4, Gardevoir 4, Medicham 4, Shiftry 2, Togekiss 4
131
Lucario 4, Thundurus 1, Tornadus 2, Tornadus 3
130
Feraligatr 4, Latias 1, Latios 1, Tauros 4
128
Emboar 4, Cobalion 1, Virizion 4
126
Kingdra 1, Kingdra 3, Kingdra 4, Lilligant 4
125
Mienshao 4, Mismagius 4
124
Slurpuff 4, Tyranitar 2, Tyranitar 3
123
Tyrantrum 4
122
Gyarados 1, Ludicolo 4, Victreebel 2, Victreebel 3, Victreebel 4
121
Blaziken 1, Blaziken 2, Chandelure 1, Landorus 1, Landorus 4, Mamoswine 1
120
Entei 2, Entei 4, Gogoat 4, Regigigas 1 after Slow Start, Regigigas 3 after Slow Start, Regigigas 4 after Slow Start, Salamence 1, Tentacruel 3, Tentacruel 4, Volcarona 3, Volcarona 4, Zapdos 2
119
Feraligatr 2, Serperior 2
115
Cobalion 2, Drapion 4, Gliscor 2, Gliscor 3, Leafeon 3, Leafeon 4
113
Unfezant 4
112
Beartic 4, Krookodile 1, Krookodile 2, Krookodile 3, Regirock 4, Registeel 2
111
Clawitzer 4
110
Lilligant 2, Lilligant 3, Mr. Mime 3, Porygon-Z 3, Roserade 1, Roserade 4
108
Excadrill 1, Excadrill 2, Excadrill 3, Excadrill 4, Regigigas 2 after Slow Start
106
Marowak 4
105
Articuno 1, Articuno 2, Cresselia 1, Cresselia 2, Cresselia 3, Kingdra 2, Suicune 1, Suicune 2, Suicune 3
104
Gourgeist 3, Gourgeist 4
103
Magmortar 1
102
Tangrowth 2, Vileplume 1, Vileplume 4
101
Gyarados 4, Milotic 1, Milotic 3, Milotic 4
100
Altaria 4, Chandelure 3, Chandelure 4, Dragonite 3, Gallade 3, Goodra 1, Goodra 2, Goodra 3, Goodra 4, Mamoswine 3, Mamoswine 4, Mandibuzz 3, Mandibuzz 4, Meganium 1, Meganium 2, Meganium 3, Meganium 4, Regice 2, Shiftry 3, Shiftry 4, Togekiss 1, Venusaur 1, Venusaur 4
99
Vanilluxe 1, Vanilluxe 2, Vanilluxe 3, Vanilluxe 4
98
Blastoise 3, Blastoise 4, Feraligatr 1, Feraligatr 3
97
Granbull 3, Granbull 4, Heatran 1, Heatran 2, Heatran 3
96
Exeggutor 1, Nidoqueen 4
95
Claydol 1, Claydol 2, Claydol 3, Claydol 4, Florges 3, Florges 4
94
Seismitoad 1
93
Skuntank 4
91
Honchkrow 3, Honchkrow 4
90
Bisharp 4, Breloom 4, Dewgong 1, Dewgong 4, Ludicolo 1, Ludicolo 2, Ludicolo 3, Luxray 1, Luxray 2, Luxray 3, Luxray 4, Mamoswine 2, Metagross 3, Metagross 4, Milotic 2, Politoed 4, Poliwrath 4, Samurott 1, Samurott 3, Samurott 4, Skarmory 4, Togekiss 2, Venusaur 2
88
Barbaracle 2, Barbaracle 4, Blastoise 1, Blastoise 2
87
Lanturn 3, Lanturn 4
85
Emboar 1, Emboar 3, Flareon 1, Flareon 2, Flareon 4, Florges 1, Florges 2, Glaceon 1, Glaceon 2, Glaceon 3, Glaceon 4, Gothitelle 3, Gothitelle 4, Scizor 4, Umbreon 1, Umbreon 2, Umbreon 3, Umbreon 4, Vaporeon 2, Vaporeon 3, Vaporeon 4, Walrein 1, Walrein 2, Walrein 3, Walrein 4
84
Chesnaught 1, Chesnaught 2, Chesnaught 3, Chesnaught 4, Carracosta 3, Carracosta 4
81
Politoed 2, Samurott 2, Victreebel 1
80
Abomasnow 1, Abomasnow 2, Empoleon 1, Empoleon 2, Empoleon 4, Lapras 4, Magnezone 1, Magnezone 3, Magnezone 4, Porygon2 1, Porygon2 4, Swampert 2, Swampert 3, Swampert 4, Sylveon 1, Sylveon 2, Sylveon 3, Sylveon 4, Wailord 4, Weezing 3, Weezing 4, Whiscash 3, Whiscash 4
78
Aurorus 2, Aurorus 4, Scrafty 4
76
Emboar 2, Flareon 3, Torterra 1, Torterra 3, Torterra 4, Trevenant 3, Vaporeon 1
75
Ampharos 3, Blissey 1, Blissey 2, Blissey 3, Blissey 4, Bouffalant 4, Exeggutor 3, Machamp 4, Ursaring 4
72
Abomasnow 3, Abomasnow 4, Empoleon 3, Lapras 1, Magnezone 2, Swampert 1, Tyranitar 4
70
Beartic 2, Beartic 3, Carbink 2, Donphan 4, Eelektross 4, Hariyama 4, Lickilicky 4, Muk 4, Rampardos 4, Regice 1, Regice 3, Regice 4, Regirock 1, Regirock 2, Regirock 3, Registeel 1, Registeel 3, Registeel 4, Tangrowth 1, Tangrowth 3, Tangrowth 4, Vileplume 2, Vileplume 3
68
Druddigon 4
67
Ampharos 4, Exeggutor 2, Exeggutor 4, Hippowdon 1, Hippowdon 2, Hippowdon 3
65
Armaldo 4, Dusknoir 1, Granbull 2
63
Aggron 4, Beartic 1, Carbink 4, Eelektross 3
60
Forretress 4, Hippowdon 4, Probopass 1, Probopass 2, Probopass 3, Probopass 4, Vespiquen 3, Regigigas 1 during Slow Start, Regigigas 3 during Slow Start, Regigigas 4 during Slow Start
59
Gastrodon 2, Gastrodon 4
58
Dusknoir 3, Dusknoir 4, Granbull 1, Throh 4
56
Cradily 3, Cradily 4
55
Quagsire 4, Spiritomb 3, Spiritomb 4
54
Rhyperior 4, Vespiquen 4, Regigigas 2 during Slow Start
53
Bronzong 1, Bronzong 3, Gastrodon 3
52
Gourgeist 2 *, Carracosta 2
50
Bastiodon 1, Bastiodon 2, Bastiodon 3, Cofagrigus 4, Reuniclus 1, Slowbro 3, Slowking 1, Slowking 3, Snorlax 4
49
Aromatisse 3, Musharna 2, Musharna 3
48
Avalugg 2, Avalugg 3
47
Bronzong 2, Bronzong 4, Cresselia 4 *
45
Bastiodon 4, Cofagrigus 3, Gigalith 2, Gigalith 3, Reuniclus 2, Reuniclus 3, Reuniclus 4, Shiftry 1 *, Slowbro 4, Slowking 4
44
Aromatisse 4, Musharna 4
43
Avalugg 1
42
Seismitoad 2 *
40
Escavalier 4, Ferrothorn 1, Ferrothorn 2, Gigalith 4, Tyranitar 1 *
36
Ferrothorn 3, Ferrothorn 4
34
Trevenant 4 *
33
Golurk 4 *
31
Carbink 3 *
29
Conkeldurr 2 *, Conkeldurr 4 *, Dusknoir 2 *, Golem 4 *, Marowak 2 *
27
Quagsire 2 *, Forretress 3 *
25
Shuckle 1, Shuckle 2
22
Shuckle 3, Shuckle 4, Steelix 4 *
21
Avalugg 4 *

And here's another list where I trimmed it to just the most common Pokemon post-40, which I settled on defining as all set 4s, all legendary sets and set 3 from Roller Skater species:

Common speed tiers

258
Manectric 4 #
250
Entei 3 #
240
Terrakion 2 #
229
Landorus 2 #
225
Pinsir 4 #
220
Darmanitan 4 #
216
Accelgor 4
211
Charizard 3 #, Electrode 3, Electrode 4, Heatran 4 #
201
Skarmory 3 #
200
Aerodactyl 3, Aerodactyl 4, Crobat 3, Crobat 4, Jolteon 3, Jolteon 4
198
Braviary 3 #
195
Talonflame 3
194
Weavile 4
189
Alakazam 4, Dugtrio 4
187
Hawlucha 4
184
Zebstrika 3, Zebstrika 4
183
Ambipom 4, Floatzel 4, Raikou 1, Raikou 2, Raikou 3, Raikou 4, Starmie 4
179
Thundurus 2, Thundurus 3, Thundurus 4, Tornadus 1, Tornadus 4
178
Archeops 3, Archeops 4, Espeon 4, Froslass 4, Gengar 4, Latias 2, Latias 3, Latios 2, Latios 3, Raichu 3, Raichu 4, Talonflame 4
177
Durant 4
176
Cobalion 3, Cobalion 4, Infernape 4, Terrakion 1,Terrakion 3, Terrakion 4, Virizion 1, Virizion 2, Virizion 3
175
Noivern 3, Noivern 4
174
Greninja 4
172
Cryogonal 4, Lopunny 4, Manectric 3, Rapidash 4, Zoroark 4
170
Hawlucha 3
169
Garchomp 4
168
Landorus 3
167
Miltank 4, Ninetales 4, Salamence 3, Salamence 4, Slaking 4, Staraptor 4, Zapdos 1, Zapdos 3, Zapdos 4
165
Hydreigon 3, Hydreigon 4, Serperior 4
163
Haxorus 4
162
Latias 4, Latios 4
161
Arcanine 4, Electivire 4, Gliscor 4, Houndoom 4, Jynx 4
159
Unfezant 3
158
Pyroar 4, Krookodile 4
156
Delphox 4, Kangaskhan 4, Moltres 3, Moltres 4, Porygon-Z 4
152
Charizard 4, Entei 1, Flygon 4, Staraptor 3, Typhlosion 4
150
Articuno 3, Heracross 4, Suicune 4
148
Magmortar 4
147
Electivire 3, Yanmega 3, Yanmega 4
146
Gyarados 3
145
Altaria 3, Drifblim 3, Gallade 4, Togekiss 3
142
Klinklang 4, Moltres 1, Moltres 2, Mr. Mime 4
140
Sceptile 4
139
Absol 4
138
Seismitoad 4
137
Articuno 4, Nidoking 4, Sawk 4, Toxicroak 4
132
Blaziken 4, Braviary 4, Dragonite 4, Drifblim 4, Exploud 4, Gardevoir 4, Medicham 4, Togekiss 4
131
Lucario 4, Thundurus 1, Tornadus 2, Tornadus 3
130
Feraligatr 4, Latias 1, Latios 1, Tauros 4
128
Emboar 4, Cobalion 1, Virizion 4
126
Kingdra 4, Lilligant 4
125
Mienshao 4, Mismagius 4
124
Slurpuff 4
123
Tyrantrum 4
122
Ludicolo 4, Victreebel 4
121
Landorus 1, Landorus 4
120
Entei 2, Entei 4, Gogoat 4, Regigigas 1 after Slow Start, Regigigas 3 after Slow Start, Regigigas 4 after Slow Start, Tentacruel 4, Volcarona 4, Zapdos 2
115
Cobalion 2, Drapion 4, Leafeon 4
113
Unfezant 4
112
Beartic 4, Regirock 4, Registeel 2
111
Clawitzer 4
110
Roserade 4
108
Excadrill 4, Regigigas 2 after Slow Start
106
Marowak 4
105
Articuno 1, Articuno 2, Cresselia 1, Cresselia 2, Cresselia 3, Suicune 1, Suicune 2, Suicune 3
104
Gourgeist 4
102
Vileplume 4
101
Gyarados 4, Milotic 4
100
Altaria 4, Chandelure 4, Dragonite 3, Goodra 4, Mamoswine 4, Mandibuzz 3, Mandibuzz 4, Meganium 4, Regice 2, Shiftry 4, Venusaur 4
99
Vanilluxe 4
98
Blastoise 4
97
Granbull 4, Heatran 1, Heatran 2, Heatran 3
96
Nidoqueen 4
95
Claydol 4, Florges 4
93
Skuntank 4
91
Honchkrow 3, Honchkrow 4
90
Bisharp 4, Breloom 4, Dewgong 4, Luxray 3, Luxray 4, Metagross 4, Politoed 4, Poliwrath 4, Samurott 4, Skarmory 4
88
Barbaracle 4
87
Lanturn 3, Lanturn 4
85
Flareon 4, Glaceon 4, Gothitelle 4, Scizor 4, Umbreon 4, Vaporeon 4, Walrein 4
84
Chesnaught 4, Carracosta 4
80
Empoleon 4, Lapras 4, Magnezone 3, Magnezone 4, Porygon2 4, Swampert 4, Sylveon 4, Wailord 4, Weezing 4, Whiscash 4
78
Aurorus 4, Scrafty 4
76
Torterra 4
75
Ampharos 3, Blissey 4, Bouffalant 4, Machamp 4, Ursaring 4
72
Abomasnow 4, Tyranitar 4
70
Donphan 4, Eelektross 4, Hariyama 4, Lickilicky 4, Muk 4, Rampardos 4, Regice 1, Regice 3, Regice 4, Regirock 1, Regirock 2, Regirock 3, Registeel 1, Registeel 3, Registeel 4, Tangrowth 4
68
Druddigon 4
67
Ampharos 4, Exeggutor 4
65
Armaldo 4
63
Aggron 4, Carbink 4
60
Forretress 4, Hippowdon 4, Probopass 4, Vespiquen 3, Regigigas 1 during Slow Start, Regigigas 3 during Slow Start, Regigigas 4 during Slow Start
59
Gastrodon 4
58
Dusknoir 4, Throh 4
56
Cradily 4
55
Quagsire 4, Spiritomb 4
54
Rhyperior 4, Vespiquen 4, Regigigas 2 during Slow Start
50
Cofagrigus 4, Snorlax 4
47
Bronzong 4, Cresselia 4 *
45
Bastiodon 4, Reuniclus 4, Slowbro 4, Slowking 4
44
Aromatisse 4, Musharna 4
40
Escavalier 4, Gigalith 4
36
Ferrothorn 4
34
Trevenant 4 *
33
Golurk 4 *
29
Conkeldurr 4 *, Golem 4 *
22
Shuckle 4, Steelix 4 *
21
Avalugg 4 *

 

[Lumari]

Hi, so I wanted to play Doubles here again, and rather than phoning in another WeavGarde attempt, I was hoping to do something nice with a team I hadn't used yet this time around; since drawing inspiration from old scribbles is a thing people do sometimes in these situations, for this one we're dipping into my (admittedly small) "vault". In like 2015, from what I remember at some point during the Marathon streak, I felt like having some quick fun with the Sylveon I had collecting dust in my boxes. In extremely linear makeshift WeavGarde fashion, I paired it up with Mega Kangaskhan for a Fake Out + spread move combo, and for the backups I first tossed on Latios for a switch-in against Fighting-types and an extra answer against Poison-types plus the option of a Tailwind mode; then, I rounded it out with Sash Bisharp for a priority user with an okay anti-counter game with Latios plus the perpetually cherished Steel typing and ability to beat a lot of stuff 1v1 if it ever came down to that. Now, this team pretty obviously played as an inferior WeavGarde as is, and on the few spins I gave it it reached the numbers to match; I can't find any replays that I saved way back when so I can't give any exact numbers, but I'm pretty much entirely positive it at least reached triple digits a few times but always fell short of Starf Berry range. Honestly no major surprise there anyways; with Sylveon's issues with physical bulk and Speed it needs a lot of babysitting that even Kangaskhan has trouble giving it, and Kangaskhan also doesn't quite have the Speed either for the expected offensive synergy with "Sylveon handling Fighting-types" to really flourish. Sylveon's Choice Specs did not help much either and was where it really turned this pairing into an inferior WeavGarde; those two were so good in particular because of their massive flexibility between all of Fake Out, multiple straight attacks, and baiting, and any pairing where neither runs Protect, both Pokemon are noticeably slower, and one of said Pokemon is literally locked into a single move is always gonna come out a cheap knockoff.

Now, fast forward to 2024, when I offhandedly mentioned this team on Discord and the response was that Sylveon really does need Tailwind (or Trick Room) to function. Which of course is true with how much its Speed issues held it back at the time, and while I did have the Tailwind mode option with Latios, it never really worked as intended at the time, when Latios coming in after Sylveon by default plus Sylveon also not running Protect for a safe setup just made it way too awkward to get to work consistently. If I was gonna do something nice with Sylveon, this was not the way.

So, since no one will ever catch me using more brain cells than the bare minimum, I simply swapped Latios and Sylveon's places on the team, making for a Kangaskhan + Latios lead with Sylveon joining Bisharp in the backline instead, and rolled with it. The results were, well, certainly better than I expected. This is the second real run with this team; a first one fell at 493 in part due to forgetting to reset my damage calc and mistakenly assuming that Bisharp's Sucker Punch is an OHKO on -1 Darmanitan4, after which I lost another two of them before the 100 mark to clicking too hard when I was trying to speedrun back up (and took a justified break after haha...), but after that things went well. Posting a streak of 795 wins in ORAS Super Doubles.

Kangaskhan @ Kangaskhanite
Ability: Scrappy -> Parental Bond
Nature: Jolly
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
- Double-Edge
- Sucker Punch
- Low Kick
- Fake Out

kangaskhan

I've obviously used and posted about this set before in multis with both Wally and Archie not to mention that a million other people have used Mega Kangaskhan as well, so I'll keep it short here out of fear of getting borderline condescending. In general, the angle I'm taking here is the most immediately offensive Kangaskhan possible so that it can do the best possible job removing threats to its partner + itself. That means Jolly (and by extension Double-Edge) to make up for average pre-Mega Speed and just outspeed and one-shot a lot of Fighting-type checks (think Gallade) that otherwise get annoying, and for the coverage move I'm going with Low Kick; avoiding momentum loss versus Steel-type enemies in particular is extremely important, and Low Kick does just that, where Drain Punch is overall too weak and PuP is hardly an offensive move to speak of in practice (if anyone still believes in that one in doubles in the first place). Bonus points for getting very important OHKOs on certain non-Steel enemies too such as Mamoswine and giving me an extra OHKO option against Tyrantrum when Latios is occupied.

Now, one thing that I do want to discuss is an alternative Kangaskhan set in JEJUNUM, which is (usually) bulky Seismic Toss for those not in the know and if I'm not misreading the room it's okay for me to participate in a meme that I wasn't originally part of. It's been used a bunch in the Tree, not at all so in the Maison both because it was a comparatively late discovery in competitive and also because it's a gen 3 tutor move therefore requires some of the most masochist RNG abuse known to man to acquire one with perfect IVs, without gen 7's option to sidestep the most painful parts of it via hyper training. The idea of the set is to 2HKO "everything" thanks to Seismic Toss's set 2*50 HP damage, which potentially allows a bunch of EVs to be moved into bulk as well. It is obviously a good set no questions asked in gen 6 and gen 7 metas alike; one thing, however, is that it got a massive indirect buff from the gen 7 Parental Bond nerf (which didn't affect Seismic Toss), and while that does not make Seismic Toss a worse option in gen 6 per se, it does close the gap between sets when all other moves by definition are better in gen 6. And of course there's actual targets as well; Registeel was one that I was particularly scared of where admittedly Seismic Toss did have the niche of always 2HKOing through Curse boosts, but even for non-Steel-types I would lose out on Low Kick's OHKOs on certain extremely valuable targets like Mamoswine and Tyranitar, while "Seismic Toss 2HKOes everything" was not actually giving me a whole lot back that I wasn't getting out of Low Kick anyways. Escavalier was a decent example though still impossible to 2HKO via Kanga + Latios focus fire, but almost everything else was category Shuckle, i.e. overall nonthreatening things that I actually actively want to leave alive so that they keep taking up space on the field where a potentially more dangerous enemy could come in otherwise.

As a result I had substantial trouble visualising JEJUNUM's niche on gen 6 teams, until I realised I was looking at it entirely the wrong way and that it was not actually supposed to be a damage source in the way I'd been using my Kanga, and that instead its set damage made it very good at facilitating tons of focus fire 2HKOs alongside teammates, rather than being supposed to OHKO everything itself. Basically my read became that it's much more of a late-game set by nature, with a big niche of Seismic Toss being in taking on boosted enemies plus the whole "missing KOs" thing being much less of a factor when it comes in to clean up. As a result, yes we're still with Low Kick Kanga here; I very much do want to bring JEJUNUM to the Maison one day as well, but with the aforementioned profile being much more of a gluemon, I can't build around it like I'd do otherwise as effectively and it'll have to wait until another core pops into my head that it fits in cleanly. To be continued hopefully?

Latios @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
Nature: Timid
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
- Dragon Pulse
- Psyshock
- Tailwind
- Protect

latios

Hey look it's a Latios, that one Pokemon that might be up there for the most represented ones on the Subway Doubles boards but is literally entirely absent from here other than some of turskain's more modest runs, despite still occasionally being namedropped itt as a gluemon option on a lot of compositions. I'm not quite sure what happened, since even with all the mechanics changes going against it it shouldn't have fallen off This hard, but acquisition might also be a factor (and for the comparative absence of legendaries on the boards in general); generation 6 is in a funny spot in that it's actually the only generation where there's a (very) steep difficulty difference in obtaining good legendaries vs good everything else, with later gens having the hyper training option available and earlier gens mandating RNG abuse for legendaries and breedables alike. Whatever the case, Latios obviously hits the necessary boxes for a Kangaskhan partner from an offensive synergy / handling each other's checks angle, since Kangaskhan mostly just needs something to handle Fighting-types and Latios does exactly that while also providing the right Speed tier to not be messed up by most of the fast ones, and Latios's checks are also handled alright between Sucker Punch, Low Kick, "might as well be super effective" Double-Edge to handle the Maison's weak Fairy roster, and Latios covering opposing Dragons itself, minus opposing Lati which obv have plenty of lines around them (such as Sucker Punch!) The set should be mostly straightforward, where idk if ppl would wonder about Psyshock > Psychic other than "Blissey", but in general the "coverage" on physically frail threats (Raichu, heavily favoured rolls on Flareon and Jolteon, and that's just the OHKOs that are coming to mind) does a much better job increasing Latios's offensive coverage than the 5 extra BP on the "neutral" hit. If I was gonna run Psychic I'd rather also run a coverage move over Dragon Pulse.

Tailwind is the one thing I would like to say more about. I hadn't actually used Tailwind in doubles before this, and while I had used it in triples, it was more or less specifically when Volt Switching in teammates that would personally benefit from it; nothing like the Water Spout Mega Blastoise teams that other people liked to use a lot and that would click it turn 1 like 95% of the time or more. What I'm getting at is, I'm not exactly at all in the habit of clicking Tailwind much and if anything actually unhabitised it from the days where I would insta click it only to have Greninja + mono Flying STAB Talonflame + Speed Boost Blaziken or Mega Manectric on the field which is just as pointless as it sounds, but this turned out to be an unhealthy habit with this team in particular. Kangaskhan and Latios are both "fine" in the Speed department, but they're not exactly Greninja; both of them (Kangaskhan in particular, but also Latios is still pretty mid against Veterans in particular) are still outrun by plenty of things, so I used to have a lot of battles where turn 1 was a straightforward KO the one enemy and chip the other, then turn 2 something would come in that could outspeed the one of my Pokemon that had just gotten chipped by the surviving enemy and I had to figure out a way to claw my momentum back. Since then I've gotten a lot better about just clicking Tailwind in situations where Latios can only chip one of the enemies but said enemy can't exactly do a whole lot back to me either; much better to have the safeguard versus whatever it is they could have in the back (especially vs Roller Skaters / Scientists / Veterans) than give an overall not so threatening enemy a measly free turn. And with Kangaskhan + Latios's substantial defensive presence the list of not so threatening enemies is surprisingly extensive. Tailwind's applications outside of this are mostly straightforward, namely flipping the Speed tiers in Kangaskhan's favour vs Veterans in particular or setting up a Sylveon Hyper Voice romp; I would not call this a Tailwind team by any means and it certainly doesn't get used close to every battle, but it's still an important part in this team's toolkit to give it options against as many different matchups as possible.

Sylveon @ Choice Specs
Ability: Pixilate
Nature: Modest
EVs: 76 HP / 60 Def / 208 SpA / 164 Spe (raw stat: 101)
IVs: 31/x/31/30/30/31
- Hyper Voice
- Hidden Power Ground
- Shadow Ball
- Swift

sylveon

Choice Specs Sylveon as we all know has one of the most comically powerful "click this and watch things die" moves in Pixilate Hyper Voice, to the point that some of the Tailwind spread move spam Triples streaks it's been used on have straight up spelled out "not used" for all the other moves and that Sylveon sets do tend to give off "Hyper Voice is my only move" energy in general. Hidden Power Ground used to be Psyshock on my Sylveon from nine years ago because "standard", but I really was not clicking that one even once, and obviously KangaLati hardly needs additional Poison insurance in the first place; conversely, some of the Low Kick targets such as the 4x Ground weaks (Heatran and Magnezone in particular) and Registeel were in "major problem if Kangaskhan goes down" category, so taking another page out of the WeavGarde playbook made complete sense here, and in fact it was like ten battles after swapping in a new Sylveon that I ran into a Heatran situation that would have been a clean loss without HP Ground. Shadow Ball has similar "I guess this is not entirely useless and I do have 4 moveslots to fill" energy as Psyshock and is definitely the least used move on the current version of the set, but at least it has actual targets (in a late-game Sylveon vacuum) like Metagross, Bronzong, Chandelure, and Gengar, which did end up eating it at least once on the runs. Swift is obviously a Hyper Voice alternative that doesn't care about evasion users, which has similar turbo filler energy, but in practice it saw about as much use as Hidden Power Ground, if not more. Potential meme energy aside it's actually not that weak at all (as strong as non-Specs Hyper Voice, after all), and it also has a solid niche from the lens of "proactive momentum management". Specifically think a situation where I'm up 4v3 or whatever against a Veteran with one of their evasion spammers on the field, where locking into Swift over Hyper Voice is the straight up better option unless you really need the extra damage for the other Pokemon on the field; in these situations it still does its job of providing enough chip on the other enemy for Sylveon's ally to finish them off while at least keeping reliable pressure on the evasion spammer, while compared to Hyper Voice the lesser damage makes for less of a risk than back-to-back misses would. And of course there's also the assured revenge kill on chipped evasion spammers with recovery.

The EV spread used to be a generic 12 HP / 4 Def / 248 SpA / 244 Spe that I stole off one of the Triples teams nine years ago before I had concrete plans on using Sylveon myself, which I maintained during the first run and the first couple hundred battles of the second; overall it was taking the right angle from a momentum management pov and played the way I wanted, but with Sylveon's lacking physical bulk it always made sense to move some of the overkill EVs there for some extra insurance. I first ended up cutting Speed to an effective 101; this generally loses out on very little of substance, only a couple enemies that even in scenarios where Sylveon is coming out its teammates should be picking them off instead (mainly Darmanitan4 under Tailwind and Excadrill outside of it) and a couple that can't really hurt Sylveon in general so where we'd be dealing with corner case scenarios of Sylveon picking them off before they can hurt its ally (primarily Accelgor under Tailwind and Suicune without). Special Attack was trickier and was where my "I suck at EVing" really came in, but I needed to drop a little bit there too since I wasn't quite getting some of the calcs I wanted. 168 was the lowest I could go for the guaranteed KO on Spiritomb4 after Scrappy Fake Out, but between chip damage from allies being a factor so often mass calcs really weren't an effective way of confirming that I wouldn't lose out on too much, and in practice I also ran into off-script situations like max Hyper Voice KOing Mamoswine4 after Fake Out, which the 168 cut would lose out on. I rounded this out in the most "I suck at EVing" way possible by just compromising to 208, also in part due to the jump point being at 240 anyways off the top of my head (not that I've ever understood why those would be a non-arbitrary benchmark in practice in the first place), which got me some of the defensive calcs I wanted and also made me slightly less paranoid about having cut too much and caused any trouble with unpredictable gamestates that used to go fine until that point.

Defensively, the main calc I was worried about that was actually in patchable range was Leafeon's crit Leaf Blade, which could actually one-shot the minimum bulk Sylveon I was using on a medium to high roll and also can't be avoided reliably thanks to Quick Claw (and Leafeon did seem to like the Sylveon target a lot in practice). This was extra concerning because Sylveon is my go-to response to Umbreon, which I guess is not literally in "if Sylveon is dead I just lose" category but really does not need a whole lot of momentum to 1v3 Kangaskhan + Latios + Bisharp if they're forced to give it some space and with Furisode Girls existing obviously also has a habit of popping up on the same team as Leafeon. The Speed cut alone actually gave me enough EVs to rule out the OHKO here, but in practice I'd often switch Sylveon in on Umbreon's Payback turn 1 while using Fake Out on its partner, so something to account for the chip damage would also be helpful. The cuts actually did not give me enough EVs to fully rule out a KO here, but iirc it's like a 25% chance tops that's left (on top of the crit plus actually taking Payback on the switch in the first place), so it'll have to do; and this also fully rules out KOs from some nasty attacks from threatening enemies that used to be rolls, such as Technician Scizor's Bullet Punch and Aerodactyl's Stone Edge. Hopefully this is not a completely abject failure on the EVing front overall.

Bisharp @ Focus Sash
Ability: Defiant
Nature: Adamant
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
- Sucker Punch
- Iron Head
- Knock Off
- Protect

bisharp

When I was rounding out the lead Sylveon version of the team, I remember mostly looking for something with priority (notably for momentum under Trick Room ofc), a good anti-counter game with Latios, and a good "last mon standing". For the last criterion I always think of Azumarill's ability to beat even things like Raikou one-on-one with a STAB move into Aqua Jet, but obviously that one has no real matchup to speak of into Latios's counters. Bisharp does an okay job replicating Azumarill's bulk with Focus Sash and a quirky defensive typing, obviously has one of the strongest priority moves in the game, and actually does match up great into a lot of Pokemon that Latios hates; and while Focus Sash's artificial bulk only goes so far ofc, it does help a lot with Bisharp's bait qualities in a similar way as Weavile on WeavGarde. Bisharp's inclusion on this team does mean that I've now officially beaten the allegations that I can't build a functional Doubles team without Scizor (woo!!!), but I can't say I haven't wondered if I should be going with Scizor after all. I don't think Scizor would be an insane fit here either, especially after Latios's move to the front negates the whole anti-counter game argument, but it would be lame to cave right back after finally getting something good going with a different Pokemon in its role, and Bisharp also is a slightly more organic fit in that this team is better at handling Bisharp's answers across the board than it is with Fire-types. More than anything else though it clearly was doing fine anyways and I just wanted to stick with what had been working so far.

In terms of the way it fits into this team, I think it's ended up having some sort of type spam-ish beneficial redundancy with Kangaskhan in particular; of course it does not quite bring the same ability to OHKO half the Maison with a neutral hit, and I'm absolutely not gonna do a good job wording this properly, but what I mean is that it pretty seamlessly replicates Kangaskhan's coverage on Psychics or Ghosts and its ability to function properly under Trick Room. In that sense I really don't lose much momentum at all if I lose Kangaskhan in situations where I'm using it for anything other than its raw power when Bisharp is always ready to jump in, and there's also plenty of situations where I'm basically battling with some sort of turbo Kangaskhan if I have both of them on the field (e.g. dual Sucker Punch assault, which is almost as strong as Parental Bond Double-Edge). I'm sure there is a Tatsugiri + Dondozo analogy here somewhere. Setwise, I'm uh not really sure what to explain lmao since it really is the most standard thing ever, but it's (unfortunately) worth highlighting that Defiant is kind of a waste on a backliner, especially on a team that rarely loses momentum on lead; it's still extremely convenient to have on like Shadow Ball hax or Icy Wind of course though (especially with Sucker Punch) and definitely gives increased manoeuvrability against Jensen. Just, it really does not do a whole lot to help with Kangaskhan's Intimidate vulnerability, and if the idea is to counter that in particular you'll really need a Bisharp lead team.

So I didn't have fantastic expectations for this team going in, since one way or another it had always failed to reach Starf Berry and surely a simple swap was not gonna ramp it up That much, plus the lack of Registeel counterplay after lead Kangaskhan would go down was not gonna be helpful. My "300-400 if I'm lucky" expectations were quickly exceeded though, and not just numerically but also in terms of just how /solid/ it felt to play. Latios in particular I was a bit wary of because of its reliance on medium power moves but they still destroyed pretty much everything they hit super effectively plus a bunch of frailer neutral targets, and of course that was all complemented by Kangaskhan's Double-Edge which might as well be super effective on anything without a resistance or substantial bulk investment. I was also worried about their lack of ultra speed combined with their relative lack of super effective coverage; however, of them also have very solid defensive presence to the point that they're actually difficult to remove without super effective hits, to the point that it actually really does not matter a whole lot if they need to rely on 2HKOs more often than expected. I'm serious that a lot of battles, ballpark 60-70% but I obv never kept actual track so that may be a bit too optimistic, are won by KangaLati alone, which granted includes battles where one of the two goes down but the backup's only role is come in on the final turn and watch my other lead bring it home; and when both Bisharp and Sylveon can come in and keep covering a lot of the same targets that the leads do (which I already mentioned with Bisharp for Kangaskhan but Sylveon and Latios have a similar kind of positive redundancy on Dragons) and on top of that are capable of putting in serious chokeholds in their own right, this team puts up some pretty unrelenting offensive pressure while also having the defensive presence and other tools to claw back fine if it does fall on the back foot.

I would not call this team an easy pilot though; sometimes it really does feel like it plays itself, but at the same time I was punished very quickly for playing on autopilot when I tried to do 100 battles in one session two attempts in a row after the 493 loss to speedrun back up. One telling anecdote is that I was watching a replay of a close call from one of these runs and basically gave myself an aneurysm by insta-identifying multiple suboptimal or outright awful plays pretty much literally every turn, showing that autopilot avoidance and taking the extra five seconds to think another turn or two ahead really are essential with this team.

In general this team has made me focus a lot on what can be called "proactive momentum management"; I've alluded to this earlier with the description of Tailwind in the Latios section in particular, where the tl;dr is that it's important to identify "dead" turns where Latios can't contribute meaningfully damage wise (read: can't KO an enemy nor is required to put one in range next turn) and just use those to set up a preemptive Tailwind to avoid losing momentum just in case a faster enemy comes in or Sylveon has to switch in later. There is a lot of room for minor optically unintuitive but technically optimised plays like this. Let's say for the sake of argument the AI leads like idk say Victreebel + Kingdra, where intuition may dictate you one-shot Kingdra with Dragon Pulse and Victreebel with Double-Edge, but it's actually better to use Fake Out on Victreebel instead. The double KO could give the AI room to switch in a nasty backline like uhhh Volcarona + Rapidash, while keeping Victreebel around as a sitting duck ready to snipe whenever gives them only a single slot to try and retake momentum, which of course is all but impossible. This is probably not the best example out there, since you just focus fire Volcarona and no way Rapidash is gonna 1v4 from that position, but you get the point and one way or another it's a good habit to develop, and there's always gonna be That One Battle where it actually did matter (see replays below hopefully!). There are plenty of similar examples out there, like I've also referenced a few times the habit of intentionally leaving sitting duck Pokemon like Shuckle alive so that you can 2v1 the other slot, and on the Tailwind front if your options are trading one of your Pokemon with the AI vs sacking one of yours in exchange for a Sylveon Tailwind romp then the latter is probably better. Obviously there's a million different shades of those that surface in a million different in-battle situations; I just want to highlight the importance of prioritising the maximum momentum option over the maximum damage/KO option, which is obviously extremely standard singles play but I hadn't fully processed as conventional doubles wisdom until now (not consciously at least). Yet it's been very important for taking this team in particular far.


A lot of threats to this team are dependent on board states or whether my primary check has gone down (such as the repeatedly mentioned Registeel and Heatran), but there are a couple worth highlighting in particular, a lot of which will end up falling into vague and/or overlapping categories; hopefully that means there aren't a lot that stand out individually though!

threats

- Unpredictable or hard-to-KO powerful physical attackers: think dudes like Armaldo and Barbaracle, which can OHKO both Kangaskhan and Latios, meaning I can't predict who they're going after, and I can't OHKO directly. Fake Out and focus fire 2HKOs work, but those obviously depend on board states, and sometimes there's no avoiding a sack. The Bug/Steels are major threats too and Escavalier deserves a special mention here because it hits incredibly hard and I can't even 2HKO it, meaning it requires multiple turns of full attention (either through focus fire or Latios Protect baiting if HP on my leads is still high enough that I can try this reliably), but Scizor is similarly yuck especially if it has Technician, since between unpredictable targeting and priority potentially sniping my Pokemon there's really no other way around it than overloading it with brute force, and Durant is another major pain between outspeeding Kangaskhan, tanking Dragon Pulse + Sucker Punch, and having a bunch of disruptive moves and being just weak enough to also be okay using them. Explosion users fall under this category too, with Kangaskhan also being unable to KO dudes like Lickilicky. Fake Out, properly mapped-out turns, and making sure to use Protect on Latios for damage control are helpful tools for controlling them, but if both Kangaskhan and Latios take the full blast then that may suck. Thankfully the intersection of these two categories, namely Forretress, is a textbook case of "just ignore and 2v1 the other slot" lol.....

- Sucker Punch: This is a funny one to highlight fsr, but there's no getting around it when using a Latios lead. Thankfully it's mostly STAB Sucker Punch we're talking about here, with e.g. Toxicroak being weak enough that it won't use it and can safely be taken out by Psyshock or Double-Edge, but forgetting it exists on other Pokemon can make for some of the worst misplays ever. Thankfully with Sucker Punch working the way it does I can sometimes dance around it via funny moves even on stale Protect turns like a double Protect for the sake of it with 0 interest in whether it actually goes through or a galactically "proactive" Tailwind, and Kangaskhan also OHKOes both Bisharp and Honchkrow on sight, but it's annoying when they massively restrict my options simply through being on the field. Shiftry deserves a particular mention; between Sucker Punch, Fake Out, Protect, and Focus Sash it's a royally disruptive pain for pretty much any team as is, but toss on the ability to snipe and one-shot Latios as well and it really becomes just about the most frustrating Pokemon to face.

- Select fast attackers: I've mentioned this before, but since base 100 and base 110 are solid-but-not-fantastic, there's a pretty wide range of enemies that outspeed both Latios and Kangaskhan (or just Kangaskhan while heavily threatening Latios). Many of these are fine on account of being weak to Sucker Punch (or mild annoyances like Aerodactyl forcing Protect on Latios, which it reliably-enough targets with Crunch, for a Sucker Punch 2HKO) or just not causing significant damage while I set up Tailwind to flip momentum around; Veteran rosters though have a wide cast of these like genies, Terrakion, and opposing Latis, Rapidash is actually surprisingly annoying between its ability to outspeed Kangaskhan, potentially OHKO Latios, and be disruptive with Protect, and even backline Hawlucha tends be a "well guess I'm just risking the Sky Attack flinch as I try to set up Tailwind here huh". Fake Out, Tailwind, "proactive momentum", and just good in-battle decisions get around of these fortunately, but this team is way more vulnerable to them than anything featuring Greninja or Weavile.

- Contact abilities: I am using Mega Kangaskhan, next lol. Is honestly how short I could have left this, but for the sake of being a bit more thorough: a lot of regular status users (Thunder Wave in particular) are not actually much of a problem because I can simply KO them first (e.g. Luxray4 actually just being one-shot by Double-Edge), but Static and Flame Body are especially notable for being found on some enemies that can heavily damage Kangaskhan as well such as Ampharos and Talonflame. Often it's possible to find safer lines around them (such as Psyshock + Double-Edge risking only a single Static proc versus Ampharos as opposed to four), but often there's no getting around weathering the storm. Granted you still have Kangaskhan's bulk and power to rely on which is a lot better than most things, and it's often perfectly doable to not risk things until later in the game, but I don't need to teach people here basic piloting. Also word to the wise, never Fake Out enemy Sylveon lol, thankfully it was a Double-Edge OHKO (and therefore fully inconsequential) that taught me this lesson.

- Glaceon: frickin Glaceon.

- Miscellaneous: Nobody likes opposing Trick Room, and this team is no exception, though between raw bulk, good defensive typings, and Sucker Punch spam it's certainly manageable if it goes up, and between Fake Out and the lead pairing's ability to snipe almost any setter it usually never happens in the first place as long as there's a favourable board state. Weather is a bit less of a threat; Latios in particular has a fantastic matchup into both rain and sun, with the ability to negate Swift Swim and Chlorophyll via Tailwind as a cherry on top, hail is Not Too Bad(tm) between brute force and ability to use Latios as bait, and while Rasmus is the worst of the bunch (and can bring Sand Rush Excadrill lol) he has an overall janky roster that my team matches up against okay. Other typical Kangaskhan threats in bulky status ghosts and Intimidate apply as well. Intimidate is not always the worst thing ever with Kangaskhan being the only one affected by it, but since it's my main damage dealer it can complicate lead matchups in particular; Chandelure, Spiritomb, and Cofagrigus are the main Ghosts, which have enough ways around them (Chandelure being 2HKOed by Psyshock or Scrappy Double-Edge, Spiritomb going down to Hyper Voice after Scrappy Fake Out, Cofagrigus being annoying and you know lol negating Scrappy and Parental Bond but also often terrible at smart move usage, and Bisharp existing as well), but all of them are very disruptive if I can't focus all my attention on them.

Unlike certain streaks that I've blown to fun stuff like forgetting to Mega Evolve or using Mat Block against lead Raichu3, the loss here was one of the more blatant cases of the Maison simply telling me "okay Mari this is as far as you'll go." Let's get into it.

loss and warstory

#796: vs. Roller Skater Aurora
Turn 1

vs.

Two potentially annoying ones here versus Roller Skater rosters in particular; Magnezone and Charizard are normally both straightforward Kangaskhan KOs, but Magnezone3 avoids the OHKO from Low Kick and turns things into a Thunder Wave party and obviously is not at all something I want left alive if something were to happen to Kangaskhan, while Charizard3 is, well, fast and can be a threat whatever it locks into, usually Crunch which is why I'm not turbo worried but Blaze Heat Wave is also a risk if I attack it too blindly. Not to mention set ambiguity with set 4 also makes an immediate KO unwise from an optimal turn usage pov. Since this is not a fantastic turn for Latios from a damage pov, potentially wasting a turn on Magnezone if it's set 4 or knocking Charizard into Blaze range, and Tailwind is "always" good versus Roller Skater rosters, I feel like Tailwind + Low Kick Magnezone is the best balance between neutering dangerous threats and maximising my odds for good positioning the next turn.

- Charizard uses Heat Wave--Kangaskhan was burned! Latios was burned!
- Latios uses Tailwind;
- Kangaskhan uses Low Kick on Magnezone; 50% left;
- Magnezone uses Thunderbolt on Kangaskhan; some HP left;
- Latios and Kangaskhan take burn damage--Kangaskhan KO;
- Go! Bisharp!

Turn 2

vs.

Okay yes this is one of the more ridiculous turns I've seen in my time (understatement). First things first, Charizard3 has normally preferred Crunch in this position against Latios; then, the double Heat Wave burn speaks for itself, but Magnezone also needed to be Analytic to knock Kangaskhan into burn range from this HP, which otherwise still would have sucked hard but Kangaskhan would have remained alive to at least make it a clean trade with Magnezone. Sending out Bisharp I guess might be debatable, but in this position I figure having something that can Protect bait makes more sense than a Sylveon that is gonna have to lock into Hidden Power Ground (and switch out again after) to avoid straight up dying to Analytic Flash Cannon. I target Charizard with Psyshock and click Protect on Bisharp so that I don't have to eat a Blaze Heat Wave if I finish off Magnezone.

- Bisharp uses Protect;
- Latios uses Psyshock on Charizard--it's a critical hit! Charizard KO;
- Magnezone uses Flash Cannon on Latios--Latios KO;
- Aurora sends out Togekiss;
- Go! Sylveon!

Turn 3

vs.

Okay that ALSO went wrong, since I was pretty much fully expecting Magnezone to gun after Bisharp, and this is also where the burn on Latios actually matters, since the burn damage was what pushed Latios into Analytic Flash Cannon KO range, enabling said move as opposed to just the always-guaranteed Analytic Thunderbolt KO on Bisharp. We're 2v3 now, but all is not lost, with Sylveon active under Tailwind mode and the speed advantage really being half the work against Roller Skaters.

- Bisharp uses Knock Off on Magnezone--Magnezone KO;
- Sylveon uses Hyper Voice on Togekiss--like 90% damage;
- Togekiss uses Aura Sphere on Bisharp--1 HP;
- Aurora sends out Electrode.

Turn 4

vs.

Electrode? I could do worse than a frail enemy that barely tickles Sylveon, but obviously Soundproof exists here and I can't get rid of being locked into Hyper Voice anymore, so this is an unfunny dice roll. At least it's weighted in my favour.

- Bisharp uses Sucker Punch on Togekiss--Togekiss KO;
- Electrode uses Thunderbolt on Bisharp--Bisharp KO;
- Sylveon uses Hyper Voice on Electrode--Electrode's Soundproof blocked the attack!

Turns 5-8

vs.


...you know how it goes and there's no point in writing this out to the end.

I don't normally bother with breaking down hax odds, but needless to say my luck could have been better here, and the AI really did need all of these to take me out here.

- Heat Wave burning Kangaskhan--obvious;
- Heat Wave burning Latios--Latios is kept out of Flash Cannon range so Magnezone targets Bisharp, Latios + Bisharp get a double KO next turn and Togekiss + Electrode is fodder;
- Magnezone being Analytic--Kangaskhan survives the one turn to take out Magnezone, Latios + Bisharp get a double KO on Togekiss + Charizard, Electrode is fodder;
- Electrode being Soundproof--obvious;

and that's not even getting into more subjective stuff like the crit on Charizard messing with board state to the point that I actually could have won without it but that also involves giving me the credit that I'd have the guts to permanently lock Sylveon into HP Ground versus a Flying specialist so meh. Odds of a double Heat Wave burn is 0,81% (yes Heat Wave also needs to actually hit both times); if we add on the 1/9 odds of both those bad abilities then we get to a chance of less than 1/1000, on top of me rolling the objectively difficult Magnezone + Charizard lead matchup as is, and if even one of those things does not happen then we're still going here and who knows where it would have ended. I struggle to identify misplays as well; going for the Bisharp Protect turn 2 is the main one that stands out, and with the crit it was actually a losing play since it would have been a double KO after Knock Off got redirected into Magnezone, but when all is said and done you're still giving Magnezone the free shot and without the crit there's really no way to stop it from taking out Latios if it's got its mind set on that. So, it feels kinda moot overall and taking the dice roll of it going after Bisharp might not even be actually worse. I guess I also "should" have targeted Electrode with Knock Off, but that needs like a max roll or a crit to OHKO so Surely would not have helped. The main interesting other option would have been actually locking into Swift, which like I mentioned in the Sylveon blurb I have done before if it's strong enough regardless to assist the ally in picking up KOs; however, that seems to be a level of foresight that's really not reasonable to expect of myself especially since it's literally only for Soundproof Electrode when who knows what else could have shown up, and when single target Swift into double target Swift does not actually KO Togekiss it's not even "good enough" from a power angle either. Mock battles don't help because obviously there is no replicating that turn 1 ever, not to mention Charizard as expected prefers to lock into Crunch, and they're all standard free wins. So yea I'm pretty sure this was one of those battles where the Maison bouncers just got a hold of me and there's nothing I can really say other than "could you not have waited another 205 battles please."

I have a couple more replays as well! Most of these serve to highlight tricky matchups and the importance of truly fully optimised play.

replays and warstories

#697: vs. Beauty Naveen
I picked this first one as an example I had saved of the team's ability to manoeuvre around momentum loss versus disruptive threats picking their worst moves. Full warstory because there's no real abridging this one, press alt twice or resize your screen if the quote doesn't expand:

Turn 1

vs.

This is a funny lead matchup where both Pokemon are destroyed by Kangaskhan but Latios doesn't have much more productive to do than set up a preemptive Tailwind and has an annoying matchup against both. Weavile prefers attacking Latios, which it has a possible KO on, or throwing out random Taunts and also is much more disruptive than Togekiss overall, so I make it the first target to free up things a lot for Latios.

- Latios uses Protect;
- Weavile uses Fake Out on Kangaskhan;
- Kangaskhan flinched;
- Togekiss uses Dazzling Gleam--Latios Protect, Kangaskhan non-negligible damage.

Turn 2

vs.

...or that, certainly a rare move but it puts me in an extremely awkward position, with Latios still as handcuffed as ever and Kangaskhan now in Aura Sphere range. I decide that especially against Naveen preserving Kangaskhan is very important and that resetting Fake Out never hurts either. What to do with Latios is trickier, but Tailwind would still be so convenient, and fact of the matter is that it remains handcuffed with Weavile on the field; plus. switching it for Bisharp right now, with two faster enemies on the field and a Togekiss that's still gonna hit it hard with Dazzling Gleam as well, might get extremely awkward, and between rolls and weird Weavile move choices I've taken crazier gambles. The other option was to go for Double-Edge on Togekiss, but with recoil and a faster Weavile remaining on the field that would functionally have been a Kangaskhan sack. Not fully sure if I did make the right call here, but I feel like I can justify it, and clearly the streak kept going.

- Switch out Kangaskhan for Sylveon;
- Weavile uses Taunt on Latios;
- Latios can't use Tailwind after the Taunt;
- Togekiss uses Aura Sphere on Sylveon--chip;

Turn 3

vs.

...okay, good enough, even if actual Tailwind would have been better. With Sylveon on the field now and ready to 2HKO both enemies while also being a low priority target for both and Latios even more handcuffed anyways, we can do the Bisharp switch for real now.

- Switch out Latios for Bisharp;
- Weavile uses Night Slash on Bisharp--chip;
- Togekiss uses Dazzling Gleam--Sylveon chip, Bisharp heavy damage;
- Sylveon uses Hyper Voice--Weavile 1HP, Togekiss heavy damage.

Turn 4

vs.

Nothing changed here much overall; the only consideration is that Bisharp is probably gonna have to go down here, because I'm not thrilled to risk losing Sylveon to stupid move choices like Dazzling Gleam + Ice Punch.

- Bisharp uses Sucker Punch on Weavile--fail;
- Weavile uses Taunt on Sylveon;
- Togekiss uses Aura Sphere on Bisharp--KO;
- Sylveon uses Hyper Voice--Togekiss KO, Weavile KO;
- Naveen sends out Houndoom and Slaking;
- Go! Kangaskhan!

Turn 5

vs.

Kangaskhan is the very obvious followup, since the slightly chipped Sylveon might need protecting. Slaking is thankfully the single best Fake Out target in existence, and Sylveon walls Houndoom hard enough that I'm not very worried anymore at this point.

- Kangaskhan uses Fake Out on Slaking;
- Slaking flinched;
- Houndoom uses Overheat on Kangaskhan--KO;
- Sylveon uses Hyper Voice--Slaking and Houndoom very heavy damage.

Turn 6

vs.

Cleanup time, but also let it be known I didn't even really need Latios anymore at this point, so I did not decisively luck out with Weavile on turn 2. Not even crit range would have been a major factor, with Houndoom very heavily preferring Sunny Day if it doesn't have any guaranteed KOs.

- Latios uses Dragon Pulse on Houndoom--KO;
- Slaking is loafing around;
- Sylveon uses Hyper Voice--Slaking KO;
- I win.

#609: vs. Veteran Eleanor
Registeel34 + Regirock34 lead is the issue here; this team's Registeel fears are pretty well documented, and in a vacuum using Dragon Pulse on Regirock and Low Kick on Registeel gives me a decent range of option of removing both next turn. My paranoia here is increased by the fact that not long before this battle I had a run-in with Registeel3 that got kind of sticky after it used Iron Defense on turn 1, so Dragon Pulse Regirock and Low Kick Registeel seem like the moves to click here. However, Regirock4 remains an Explosion set, and this battle is when I learn the hard way that, if a lead pairing has spread move + Protect, odds actually do increase of them using those; Low Kick goes into Protect, Dragon Pulse ends up pointless when Regirock happily finishes the job itself, and Kangaskhan takes major damage while Latios only survives with like 10 HP. I remember considering using Protect on Latios on this turn with how liberal Protect usage on at least one Pokemon versus Explosion users tends to be decent proactive damage control, but I think I got too worried about Regirock just going for Superpower on Kangaskhan instead.

Anyways, Thundurus comes in, which kinda sucks super hard because switch priority mechanics suggest Thundurus4's Focus Blast to cut off my Registeel answer for good, and Latios can't set up Tailwind first either. I do the only thing I can do, which is click a sacrificial Tailwind for a countersweep and switch in Sylveon on Thundurus4's... Discharge apparently, KOing Latios before it can do anything while paralysing Sylveon too, yay lol. Going to Bisharp at this point for Sucker Punch + Hyper Voice would be yet another sack to Focus Blast + possible Earthquake, so Kangaskhan for Fake Out + Hyper Voice, or Fake Out + Sucker Punch on parahax, will have to do. No bad luck, and a Suicune backup is... not the worst thing ever overall with two brutal wallbreakers on the field. No sense in a turn by turn recap, but I have enough non-bad luck and make the right choices playing around Protect, so I pull this win through, and believe me next time the Explosion user will be a very high prio Fake Out or 2HKO target. Not to mention after my history of losses (or game ejects) on 606, 606, and 607 it also was nice to keep the streak alive beyond 608 as well.

#335: vs. Battle Girl Rei
Aurorus4 + Rapidash4 lead, where the standard play against Aurorus is just an immediate Low Kick KO (or an ever so slightly risky Protect bait on Latios); Rapidash like mentioned in the threatlist is semi yucky, with Megahorn being a likely OHKO on Latios, but not actually a guaranteed one (until a roll of Life Orb recoil), also throwing risk of Protect into the mix. Kangaskhan obviously destroys it, but it also needs to outspeed first which obviously requires Tailwind first and by extension leaving Latios open to said Megahorn. Fake Out + Tailwind is an obvious option, but Flame Body exists and there is an Aurorus on the field, which in fairness is not Refrigerate but I don't actually know what it's gonna do. So conservative play, Low Kick Aurorus + Protect it is, Rapidash also clicks Protect and Aurorus goes down, Rei sends out Emboar which can't be left alive but also is fodder to both Psyshock and Double-Edge. This is where the logical play that's actually a misplay happens. The fully autopilot play would have been Psyshock Emboar + Double-Edge Rapidash, instead I target Emboar with Double-Edge while bringing Sylveon in on Megahorn because my brain goes like "keeping Latios alive versus a Battle Girl is great" which in fairness is definitely true on balance; instead, Volcarona comes in. Which normally if at all possible is an immediate Psyshock/Dragon Pulse + Double-Edge KO for obvious turbo bitch reasons, but now my Kangaskhan is in range of a faster Flare Blitz and Latios is in the back and will only be able to hit the field once Volcarona has already flipped the Speed tiers; bonus points for Aurorus's hail also compromising Bisharp's Knock Off + Sucker Punch trickery.

Now I still have enough turns and moves to overwhelm it so all is well and good on that front, and obviously Volcarona was like the single possible enemy where my logic could actually let me down, but it was still a good example of how anything less than perfect piloting can still get punished in a momentum-heavy format like this. The actual optimal play on the turn in question would have been Double-Edge Emboar + Tailwind; Latios probably does go down here, but Sylveon with Tailwind active is just as good in terms of just deleting any Fighting-type backup from existence, and this time Kangaskhan would actually have kept all the momentum in the universe with it.

#388: vs. Hex Maniac Mara
This mostly a just for fun replay of a battle on the first run where for the first time ever I saw a self-Swagger from the AI (Steelix4 on (Lum) Dusknoir4) and Latios actually survived through the entire battle despite Trick Room and +2 Shadow Sneak (which is also the reason for the Bisharp Sucker Punch on the Trick Room reset turn because I was absolutely playing to keep Latios alive for the meme's sake at that point). Yikes Dusknoir sucks. The battle is definitely misplayed, turn 1 should have just been a Low Kick + Dragon Pulse KO on Steelix because even with Scrappy Fake Out you're not stopping Dusknoir from setting up Trick Room in the long run except with outrageous matchup luck; the galaxybrain "get Latios into Sneak KO range for turn 2" I was going for here would never have worked anyways, and even with Trick Room up Dusknoir sucks enough that you can really just mostly ignore it and fight 2v1 especially with Latios still healthy. Nevertheless it made me chuckle so here it is!

That's it, and that's my latest contribution to the Doubles leaderboard here. One reason why I ended picking this team up is because the Doubles board here does have a reputation for being undercooked, like most pre-Tree facilities tbh, so a good contribution is its own good; and while surely I am hardly the best person to fix anything in this area, at least a good Latios streak is hopefully a worthy submission. From a numbers pov, feelings are... a bit mixed; obviously I would have signed up for it, but if you're getting close to 1k then you wanna go all the way as well, especially after making it out of the 600s which have killed so many runs of mine in the past. Silver lining I guess is that I get to keep my status as the only person with a 600+ streak who did not use Mega Kangaskhan on their PB, lol. The 1k potential is probably there; I think this is a good team, and (as much as it pains me to say) I think it's better than WeavGarde, which was also a reason why I really wanted to run this back up after falling short of where that one repeatedly fell. Versus Greninziken I'm not so sure, at least from a piloting ease (and by extension also error-proofing sort of way) lens, but my perspective there is a bit limited atp, with the dream run being almost a decade old (...) and me only having done one real run since, because if I do wanna play Maison Doubles with an old team then why would I use that one when WeavGarde is right there.

I've absolutely had fun and it's been a rewarding run one way or another, plus at least an end like this is easier to swallow than a throw, and while I can't deny that I would like to see the 1k, it won't be happening at least remotely soon. I feel like this run may have had my best Maison Doubles play from a piloting pov, which is (genuinely) cool and all, but it also required a special kind of keeping myself in the zone to pull off and a brand of "controlled obsession" that accomplishes the required tuning out of other things when I'm playing but also still let me balance it with my real life stuff and other things I have going on on here. Which don't get me wrong I can do but also is the kind of thing that's uh best kept in doses to say the least with how long a run like this can take and how stressful it gets towards the end; and with Doubles obviously being substantially more difficult than Singles and much more intense on in-game piloting, I might outright need to find myself in the zone like this to properly draw out my teams' full potential like I wanna show here. Oh well, one way or another it's been good and it's been especially rewarding that this was done with a comparatively gimmick-free team, as in that at the very least it really does not have a stock turn 1 gambit. One thing in particular that's stood out to me is the number of Tree teams that similarly aren't built around stock gambits like that but are much more pure goodstuffs, and as someone who has relied on said stock gambits a lot in building and by extension has no idea how to even begin cooking up teams like those it's honestly been a bit daunting lol. Which is another reason why it's nice to do something with a team like this even if it came about mostly by accident like usual.

 

[TailGlowVM]

Posting a completed streak of 525 wins in Super Doubles using Hitmonlee/Raikou/Latios/Mega Scizor (PKHex'd as always).

You can see this team is extremely similar to one in the Tree by turskain. I started by trying a Weavile/Raikou team with Landorus/Mega Scizor as backups, which was bad because I had two Fire weaknesses and no resist. turskain suggested trying some other backups, one of which was Latios as a Ground-immune switch option that actually resists Fire. I wasn't totally convinced that Weavile/Raikou/Latios/Scizor would work because nothing is great at killing Steels. Not too much of a problem to need a few turns to kill Registeel or Ferrothorn, but when your team struggles to hit Heatran, Magnezone, Excadrill and Cobalion before they punch massive holes in your team things don't look good. Fortunately, there's an obvious solution to that by replacing Weavile for Hitmonlee, a Fake Out user that's extremely potent at smashing the majority of Steels. The speed drop is a disadvantage, but when the team has a base 115, a base 110, a Pokemon that mostly attacks with priority and Hitmonlee itself can use Sucker Punch it's manageable. The other key advantage is Hitmonlee's paralysis immunity, which was welcomed after playing a few Doubles teams that lost to Roller Skaters.

I did a couple of modest runs with this before Lumari posted the 796 with KangaLati, and I think I was incentivised to come back to it because the structure is quite similar to that one and convinced me there was more viability to it than I thought.


Hitmonlee @ Focus Sash
Ability: Limber
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Fake Out
- Close Combat
- Sucker Punch
- Protect

My tribute to PeterKO

All credits to PeterKO and turskain for the idea of using Hitmonlee in facility Doubles. Amongst non-mega Fake Out users, it has the highest damage output with Close Combat, and its Sucker Punch is also the hardest-hitting priority move available to them.

Close Combat is extremely important for its ability to kill Steels, and it also just happens there are a huge number of other annoying, bulky opponents that are weak to Fighting, such as Regigigas, Blissey, Snorlax, Walrein, Regice, Glaceon, Porygon2 and Regigigas.

Sniping fast Psychics and Ghosts with Sucker Punch isn't critical for this team, but being able to immediately eliminate Espeon, Jynx, Gengar and Alakazam (be careful with the latter as it sometimes Tricks) as well as a couple of slightly bulkier Psychics like Starmie and Delphox if they're hit with Fake Out first is handy. It's also one piece of the team's toolkit to handle Trick Room going up, and more generally gets clicked if Fake Out/Sash have been expended and switching out isn't an option against faster foes, which happens a lot with Hitmonlee's frailty and mediocre speed tier.

Limber is also an extremely cool ability, as the presence of Raikou alongside forces (directly) all Thunder Waves into this slot and (indirectly) nearly all STAB Thunderbolt and Thunder users, for which I don't have a switch-in that wouldn't either take more damage than I can afford or hate paralysis.

Raikou @ Choice Specs
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
IVs: 0 Atk / 30 Def
Timid Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power Ice
- Shadow Ball
- Volt Switch

Elecatman!

Raikou has already proven itself on turskain's 1467 streak with Greninja, as well as Coeur's Land Umber team in Subway. Its excellent Speed tier allows it to neutralise several otherwise poor matchups especially from Veterans (Tornadus, Thundurus, Archeops, Froslass and opposing Lati@s), and with Choice Specs, it hits just hard enough to score the KOs it needs.

Hidden Power Ground seems a solid choice if you're using Raikou alongside Electric-vulnerable teammates like Greninja and need it to kill Electrics more quickly, but Hitmonlee and Latios do well enough against them that I consider them a lower threat to this team. I instead opted for Hidden Power Ice for its superior coverage. Since Raikou is often coming back in during the endgame the ability to finish off Grasses, Grounds and Dragons is valuable. I almost never lock into it turn 1 because doing so could be exploited by a lot of things, but the option is there if I don't have space to bring Latios or Scizor in. Finally, it 2HKOes Rhyperior even with Solid Rock, providing another option to hit it in a pinch.

For the final slot, Shadow Ball is locked into more often than you'd expect. It hits just about everything on the Psychic/Hex Maniac roster hard, and is almost always locked into against them barring Slowthing or Spiritomb leads, and does decent damage to Latios and Latias. Additionlly, in situations where bringing in a backup is unsafe and I need to bruteforce a Lightning Rod user, it 2HKOes Raichu, Zebstrika and Manectric.

Raikou also has pretty decent bulk, which has yielded some blessed calcs across the run:
252 Atk Choice Band Aerodactyl Earthquake (spread) vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Raikou: 138-164 (83.1 - 98.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ SpA Heatran Earth Power vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Raikou: 114-136 (68.7 - 81.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Latios @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
IVs: 0 Atk
Timid Nature
- Dragon Pulse
- Psyshock
- Surf
- Protect

Back from the dead

After spending the active generation almost in complete hibernation, Latios comes out for two streaks close together! This time, it's not the lead, but as half the old 'default backline for testing' Latios/Scizor defensive core. This is less potent than it used to be because of Steel losing the Dark and Ghost resists in XY, alongside powercreep, Fairies and assorted minor changes, but with the right teammates it is still effective. Any Electric lead not called Rotom-W mandates a Ground-immune backup, which Latios covers nicely (barring Mold Breaker, but those are generally handled by Hitmonlee or Scizor). It also resists Grass, a type Raikou struggles to hit hard, and offensively covers Dragon-types that aren't opposing Latis.

Psyshock is chosen over Psychic because Dragon Pulse is already the default STAB option, so covering special walls seems better than having 5 extra power on your main attack, and Psyshock kills Muk, Nidoqueen, Nidoking, Vileplume and any other Poisons I need it to already. I didn't think Tailwind was worthwhile on a backup Latios that is surrounded by priority attackers and a base 115 Speed Pokemon, so I instead picked a coverage move. Surf was initially just lifted off the Lee/Koko team from the Tree, but I think it's the superior option for this team for covering Ground-types like Rhyperior (OHKO through Solid Rock), Excadrill, Claydol, Steelix and Hippowdon. Grass Knot could provide similar coverage, but Surf also hits most Fires for reasonable damage two at a time, potentially creating more breathing space against them when playing Latios/Scizor, and gives another way to hit Heatran.

The choice of which backup to Mega and which backup to give the Life Orb came down to a) Scizor getting more mileage out of the bulk increase because of its many resistances and lack of weaknesses, b) Scizor getting a Speed boost unlike Latios and c) this being the option used by turskain when he ran Latios/Scizor backline. If I were going for LO Scizor Mega Latias would probably be a superior choice for the even greater bulk and it could run a support set of some kind, but that would make a team that already lacks power at times even weaker. Still maybe worth trying in the future.

Scizor-Mega @ Scizorite
Ability: Technician -> Technician
EVs: 156 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 4 SpD / 92 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Bullet Punch
- Bug Bite
- Superpower
- Protect

Mega Ant

These four moves are standard for a Scizor that can switch moves in battle facility Doubles and Triples. Although on paper Hitmonlee already covers all the Superpower targets, I can't always guarantee it will stick around long enough to hit them if they come out later on, so having an alternative option to do big damage to Magnezone and Heatran if Hitmonlee is down feels important, and allows for more aggressive play with Hitmonlee in general. It very easily wins out over something like Swords Dance on this team.

The EVs were designed for the Tree in order to creep Rotoms, which aren't in the Maison. However, I haven't felt the need to change it as the bulk is enough and outspeeding Marowak (Lightning Rod, Earthquake, possible Outrage use makes Latios unsafe switch), Suicune (bop the Chesto Berry before it Rests), Heatran and Claydol has been useful. I could also move 16 more EVs from HP to Speed to creep Excadrill, but that wouldn't help if it's Sand Rush in sand, which is the most threatening.

One last note is that for Doubles I prefer Technician over Light Metal as the pre-Mega ability. This is to cover for 1) being able to utilise non-Mega Scizor's lower Speed in case you want to hit something like Goodra or Gourgeist with Bug Bite first in Trick Room and 2) an earlier team which had a battle where I wanted Scizor to finish off a weakened Cofagrigus, and extra damage pre-Mega would have allowed for KOing it, losing Technician to Mummy and then Mega Evolving again to get it back. Both are niche but I value them more than the even more niche applications of Light Metal.

While clicking Fake Out + Volt Switch turn 1 is the obvious, straightfoward play that is profitable in the majority of situations, it's important to recognise the flexibility of the team. Sometimes it's beneficial to switch out without using Volt Switch if there is a risk of Lightning Rod, Quick Claw, Protect or similar. Staying in and using Thunderbolt is good if the opponent is a Water-specialist or a Veteran. Shadow Ball is the default move against Hex Maniacs and Psychics.

Hitmonlee/Latios is my favourite mode to deploy against non-Veterans for its excellent power, type synergy and being great at utilising the Scizor switch option, but care must be taken against Fairies and fast threats like Weavile. Veterans' access to numerous fast things Raikou matches up better against than Latios means that staying in and using Thunderbolt is generally a better option unless they lead with Landorus or two bulky things Raikou struggles to hit, with Latios reserved for cleanup once the backline is revealed.

Be careful of having Hitmonlee/Scizor out. It's good against Trick Room and a few select threats to the other two, but it is wide open to dangerous threats like Chandelure and especially Volcarona coming in to set up.

Skipping Fake Out is possible if it's more beneficial to immediately take out a threat with Close Combat, and recognising opportunities to switch out to Scizor to bank Fake Out is key. I probably missed quite a few of these in the streak and will try to identify them better in the future.

This team gets a huge amount of mileage out of Protect to bait attacks, especially on 1HP Hitmonlee, and from having multiple priority moves to finish things off, which is useful because Raikou and Latios can often fall just short of a KO.

When Trick Room goes up, Scizor is the MVP, fearing only Chandelure plus burns from Cofagrigus and Spiritomb out of the Hex Maniac roster. Mara likewise barely scratches it.

Threatlist

Sand Stream and Snow Warning: Hitmonlee is slow and has low base Defense, making it much more Sash dependent than something like Greninja or Weavile. Against Abomasnow, Aurorus and Tyranitar leads, normally you want to get a Close Combat off turn 1, but that can be prevented by the partner. Hippowdon is sometimes nastier as nothing hits it that hard and it 2HKOes both leads with Earthquake, while also carrying Crunch to smack Latios.

Volcarona: Looking at my sets above, it should be pretty easy to see why this is a major threat. To take it down without it tearing large holes in the team requires knowledge of AI tendencies: it likes to Quiver Dance first because unboosted Hurricane does not KO Hitmonlee, and then usually goes for the +1 Cane KO, though it may also go for another boost because it's slower than Raikou at +1. If you can hit it with Fake Out turn 1 and two Thunderbolts, you're golden, though Flame Body is not ideal. Otherwise, 2 Thunderbolts and a Close Combat take it out, or three Thunderbolts if you can be confident you can direct its move into the other slot. Note also for backline Volcaronas that +0 Bug Buzz does not KO Latios, so I'd be fairly certain it will go for Heat Wave to hit Scizor instead. Besides Heatran and Volcarona, Fires not cleanly handled by Latios or Raikou like Chandelure can be troublesome situationally, but I generally have more tools to play around them.

Heatran: Still nasty even with all the tools I have for it. It can be Sash to survive Close Combat, or have Protect to deter focus fire, or be Scarf and outspeed the whole team. And it can have Flame Body to ruin Hitmonlee and Scizor if they hit it. The exact play is dependent on the set possibilities and partner.

Rhyperior: OHKOes Raikou, and either it has Lightning Rod to shut down Raikou, or Solid Rock to shrug off Bullet Punch and Close Combat. Latios is the best answer thanks to its typing and Surf, but Protect makes focus fire unsafe. Fake Out + two HP Ices, CC + HP Ice or CC + Bullet Punch are also options. Would be especially dangerous in Trick Room.

Golurk: You can't Fake Out Ghosts, and this is pretty much the one Ghost where Raikou has a very poor matchup. Sucker Punch + Shadow Ball will kill, but there's not always space to do that. There is also a chance to OHKO Latios even without Iron Fist. Scizor does decently into it but not brilliant. This thing needs to be taken out quickly before it punches holes into the team. Coincidentally, just like my Triples team the quirk of Psychics/Hex Maniacs not using it is somewhat important and makes them much less scary to face.

Worker Rasmus's Sand threats: Choice Band Dugtrio that outspeeds the whole team and can have Arena Trap, sand disabling Sash, Garchomp3, Sand Rush Excadrill... if he drew the right lineup it would be checkmate for this team. Fortunately he is neutered by packing a lot of bad sets that spread the dangerous ones out more sporadically, and being a 1% encounter in every battle to begin with. I lost to him.

Powerful physical attackers in general: Raikou and Latios's physical bulk is only just good enough. While a lot of physical threats are neutered by way of Hitmonlee's Alakazam-level physical bulk forcing attacks into that slot, physical attackers that are very powerful and might go into either slot like Armaldo, Darmanitan, Tyrantrum, Escavalier and Quick Claw Leafeon/Ursaring/Muk can be dangerous if there isn't space to hit them with Fake Out or focus fire on them. Outrage is annoying for this team to face because it targets randomly, often comes from things that I would like to get Latios in against, and does more damage than you'd like to Scizor, especially prior to Mega Evolution. Marowak carries possible Lightning Rod to shut down Raikou, and might use either Outrage or Earthquake. Dragonite3 can't be safely hit with Fake Out, does over 50% to non-mega Scizor and even if it's not Multiscale HP Ice is not a secure KO thanks to the Special Defense EVs. Druddigon is usually less threatening because everything on the team outspeeds, but I had to face it in Trick Room once which was scary. Finally, Lickilicky deserves a note for OHKOing everything but Scizor and Sash-intact Hitmonlee, Fake Out/Close Combat not being safe with Lax Incense, and having Earthquake to do big damage to both leads simultaneously when it's not blowing up.

The loss

I lost to Worker Rasmus with Sand Stream Hippowdon3/Garchomp1 leads. This is an awful lead for my team, with Garchomp having possible Sand Veil, Sash or Scarf. I decided to switch Raikou for Scizor and Fake Out Garchomp, scared of missing Fake Out and getting both leads smashed by Scarf EQ, or it pressing Outrage and losing my lone Ground immunity. I muscled through Garchomp, not yet knowing Garchomp wasn't the dangerous Scarf one, but Hippowdon killed the leads with Earthquake, and he brought out Tyranitar in the back, which Dragon Danced and targeted Raikou with +1 Crunch instead of Latios, who I Protected hoping it would go for the more tempting target. From there it was game over. (The last mon was a harmless Gigalith, but it could have been something dangerous like Excadrill).

From mock battling, if I'm bold enough to sacrifice Raikou to get off a HP Ice turn 1 and it hits, I can win, but that fails if it's Garchomp3, or Garchomp4 and Fake Out misses, or HP Ice misses. I've as yet been unable to find a certain win without knowing Garchomp's set.

Coincidentally, much like the Triples loss, about 15 battles earlier I had a haxfest near loss from a Furisode Girl, where Jolteon Swaggered everything and paralyzed Scizor, and Vaporeon froze Raikou with Blizzard. This battle was probably saved by the last mon being Umbreon and not something more dangerous, and I still could have lost with a few more coinflips.

Every time I've faced Rasmus it has basically been a case of 'cross my fingers he doesn't bring the right lineup', and this time he did. It's possible this team could go further if you were lucky enough not to face his worst threats, but I didn't.

Despite the much shorter streak length, I've found this much more fun than the Triples team, because almost every battle needed genuine thought to identify a path to victory, rather than 'press Mat Block, Eruption and Tailwind and watch things die'.

 

[Brucolac]

Cool streak, congrats!
If physical mons are that threatening, have you thought about Salamence-M in the spot of Latios? Maybe it can fulfill otherwise a similar role for the defensive synergy. Offensively probably not so much admittedly, as it can't hit these stones and steels that well, but maybe Intimidate makes up for that? Also Volcarona should be way better then.
But cool to see a standalone Surf on Latios, meaning that it is not there in conjunction with something like Rain/Stormdrain/.... I occasionally in the subway thought Latios with Surf and LO may be good on the right team.

 

[TailGlowVM]

Cool streak, congrats!
If physical mons are that threatening, have you thought about Salamence-M in the spot of Latios? Maybe it can fulfill otherwise a similar role for the defensive synergy. Offensively probably not so much admittedly, as it can't hit these stones and steels that well, but maybe Intimidate makes up for that? Also Volcarona should be way better then.
But cool to see a standalone Surf on Latios, meaning that it is not there in conjunction with something like Rain/Stormdrain/.... I occasionally in the subway thought Latios with Surf and LO may be good on the right team.

It's a nice idea and could help in some circumstances, but obviously I can't use Mega Scizor with Mega Salamence, forcing me into Aegislash (extra Ground weakness) or non-mega Scizor (less bulk). Missing the Electric-resistance would also negatively affect some matchups. Raikou lead with Salamence/Steel backups seems extremely similar to turskain's 1467 with Raikou/Greninja/Mega Salamence/Aegislash, and I didn't want to copy that too closely.

Surf Latios was the result of turskain using it, and I believe it was suggested to him by GG Unit. Unless your team is really vulnerable to Steels or bulky Waters I think it's the optimal coverage move.

 

[Brucolac]

I see. I meant to pass LO to Scizor.

I think Surf on Latios is really underrated. I also like the idea of Dry-Skin Toxicroak + Surf-Latios used by Peterko

 

[Lumari]

Because I'm totally going about this in the wrong order, this run (author's note: in BDSP) started because, well, I wanted to use Cloyster! Obvious Fun(tm) with that Pokemon is obvious, and I'd only ever used it before in a very barely failed attempt to get the Maison Singles trophy alongside Mega Venusaur and Choice Scarf Chandelure during my noob days; making good on that run has been pretty high on my (extensive) battle facility bucket list forever, but obviously I've had more things to make good on, and the fact that it's a pretty restrictive Pokemon to build around does not help a whole lot either.

...and another one! In more ways than one, unfortunately, since I think I've got a third treacherous range where too many of my post-500 streaks go to die. Posting a streak of 787 wins in ORAS Super Singles.

In any case, while "Cloyster" had been knocked off my todo in the most literal sense, that's no reason not to take a stab at it elsewhere as well if I have an idea right? The lack of "conventional" Cloyster teams on the leaderboard here gave me a lot of motivation too, since obviously it does have the reputation of being a beginner-friendly goodstuff sweeper almost on the level of Dragonite, but every Cloyster on this board ever was paired with Durant, and the only team that puts it in the lead is a 400-something run turskain did with Cloyster/Gliscor/Greninja that he didn't want listed on the board. If I was gonna use Cloyster here, I was always gonna do it alongside Gliscor as well, since with its ability to answer almost every Electric-type ever as well as most Fighting-types plus ability to PP stall several enemies down to non-attacking moves to allow for easier Cloyster setup, these two really fit together like a glove; I totally would have used it in BDSP if only it had, you know, been a Pokemon there at all, but thankfully here it does get Toxic and does not have to face PP Maxed enemies. The real reason why I ended up running this team though was a Pokemon that has been used to great success by other people before but I didn't have hands-on experience with yet: Chansey.

My thought process for Cloyster/Garchomp/Suicune was basically "Cloyster, Ground-type, bulky Water counter", and while I considered using Suicune again to round out this team as well (or more specifically Cloyster/Gliscor/Suicune was a lineup that floated through my mind when I was putting together the BDSP team), I didn't like how much it could get forced on the back foot versus special attackers that Gliscor can't answer in unpredictable board states (think Latios) without the momentum ScarfChomp brings to the table. Aegislash was another option in this slot that brings fantastic defensive synergy to the table with both Cloyster and Gliscor, Cloyster/Aegislash/Gliscor is in fact a Tree team by atsync with a great 400+ record to its name, and obviously Aegislash + Gliscor has already left its mark on this board as well. However, Mega Gyarados was a pretty perfect storm-level complement to Aegiscor whose characteristics Cloyster would not be able to replicate much at all, and while atsync was all but forced to run Aegislash in the Tree because Mega Metagross existed, a team like that has a horrendous time versus Greninja and Froslass--i.e. once again, all-out special attackers with uncomfortable coverage. So, if those clearly are proving themselves to be a nasty hole to plug here, enter Chansey. Yes I am aware of the irony of ending up with Chansey after "Gliscor + Suicune does not have enough offensive presence", but if any core is capable of taking a different spin on this issue and actually hard defensive checking 95% of the Maison then it's gonna be Gliscor + Chansey. Plus Chansey has obviously also seen plenty of debate on sets around here, and I was happy to have an excuse to get some actual experience here so I would no longer have to comment entirely off theory. Let's go.


Imprisoned (Cloyster) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Skill Link
Nature: Naughty
EVs: 252 Atk / 12 SpA / 244 Spe
- Icicle Spear
- Surf
- Shell Smash
- Rock Blast

cloyster

The legend himself, preferably operating as a Shell Smash Icicle Spear sweeper with a heinously powerful Ice-type STAB attack that ignores Sash/Sturdy and even has decreased odds at low rolls. Ever since it got Shell Smash, it's wanted to run another STAB attack and another Skill Link attack alongside this; for the latter Rock Blast is the only, and highly flawed, choice (more on that in a sec!), for the former there's been a debate between Razor Shell and Surf where Surf has won out quite convincingly for perfect accuracy and mixed damage potential, and its lack of offensive investment is pretty whatever when Icicle Spear relegates pretty much any other attack to "coverage" in practice, STAB or not. With a mixed set, a Naughty nature is a given, and Speed-wise, I opted to only drop by a single point; I was always going to at least stick with the BDSP spread so I could Shell Smash on any Garchomp lead from Rasmus, but the extra couple points let me get the jump on Terrakion2 as well, which is probably not impossible to play around but you really do want the peace of mind versus Saba/Isabella's potential Terrakion3 in particular, and the extra couple Special Attack EVs don't do anything specific.

So, then we get to the final move, where Rock Blast is "standard" but has pretty nasty accuracy to deal with and even in terms of super effective coverage gets pretty overrated pretty quick alongside Water/Ice. When I used Cloyster in BDSP, I realised it had literally zero real targets and so ran Explosion instead; however, while in BDSP its main downside of, you know, deleting your own sweeper in the face of remaining backups was not really a factor on account of preset teams making it clear whether or not it would be safe to do so, the same obviously does not apply here, so that one was never a real consideration. The main alternative was actually Substitute; between Walrein being a free +6 after a Chansey sack and a Gliscor stall and the backups also handling dudes like Clawitzer fine enough, a lot of the utility of the fourth slot was going to be "mess with Lapras". Substitute is actually a way to accomplish that without risking misses or parahax by just wasting turns while avoiding the trap until Lapras forces itself out, but obviously it also does not Actually defeat it while still quasi-sacking Cloyster in the process, and most of the usual benefits don't exactly apply on Cloyster between the horrendous anti-synergy with Shell Smash, additionally difficult matchup against OHKO users, and Gliscor/Chansey's ability to stall down enemies like Weezing anyway. These are not the only options, since you can actually go pretty crazy with a moveslot that inherently is gonna have such a narrow list of targets; e.g. Hidden Power Grass only has a single target in Barbaracle but that's not actually a bad one ofc (bonus points for reminding me of how I would have wanted Seed Bomb on Gyarados in Battle Tree Marathon lol, and I would actually have considered Bullet Seed if Cloyster got it), Torment is a suggestion I would not have thought of myself but has some niche applications like letting Gliscor Sub much more easily against enemies that have a single move that threatens it too much, and Protect has a number of uses between blocking Fake Out, messing with High Jump Kick users, ruling out Sky Attack flinches from Hawlucha, and surely more things, but I think Substitute was the only non-Rock Blast option that saw serious consideration. I had serious plans on giving Substitute a whirl, but obviously I also had Rock Blast bred onto my Shellder so that I would not regret not having it later. I also was self-aware that my Substitute theorymon was specifically from a handling opposing leads lens and was ignorant to handling followup enemies or unpredictable board states, and Substitute was always gonna be less useful than Rock Blast here. Because of this, and to not force myself to spend a Heart Scale on trying Rock Blast out later, Rock Blast got the first shot, and it made way more sense in practice than it did in theory. Let's get into it.

First, to get the obvious out of the way: yes 90% accuracy is not good enough for Maison Singles, but the reason for this is that it's unacceptable odds to gamble a loss on, and if in practice gambling a loss is not actually what you're doing, then most of this argument goes out of the window. This is why any alternative lines around Rock Blast targets should always be prioritised (e.g. Volcarona is Chansey food and is just outright not a reason to consider running Rock Blast) and why it only becomes an option if the list of targets is very short--but we'd already established that much of course. It's also where Rock Blast's role in handling followup targets (like Ice-types after +2 Cloyster KOes the lead, that sort of thing) comes in; when by default you should be able to defeat "almost any" lead without using Rock Blast as is, the cost of being forced to use Rock Blast on a followup enemy and missing is... Gliscor + Chansey handling said enemy instead, which they normally should be capable of anyway. Missing Rock Blast on second mon Froslass just means Chansey needs to win here which boo frickety hoo it was always gonna do of course without nasty freeze hax, and there's also enemies like Weavile, where technically Rock Blast is still luxury since Chansey still wins but it does open yet another hole that maybe a third mon could take advantage of. The point is, all that dropping Rock Blast for e.g. Substitute accomplishes here is the odds of having to handle said backup with Gliscor + Chansey, and by extension the odds of said backup getting a chance to bs them, increasing from 10% to 100%, so Rock Blast still adds more upside here than any other options.

For the real meat of the argument, the list of leads where I do click Rock Blast is not a long one but I firmly believe Rock Blast is both the superior choice here and much harder to punish than "90% accuracy" would suggest. In practice, it works out so that it's similar to "99% accurate" Toxic that I've posted about earlier since that /is/ how probability works if you can afford a miss; let's take a look.

- Articuno12: more just Articuno2 really since set 1 is one-shot by +2 Spear (like how the Articunos in BDSP were fine Spear targets as well), but there's no way to tell them apart so this is how it'll have to be; thankfully set 1 is outsped by +0 Cloyster too and seems to have opened with Hail when I saw it, and if it doesn't I figure it'll click Fly instead, so it doesn't materially complicate any lines of play at all. If Articuno2 did go down to +2 Spear then that would be "good enough", but it usually doesn't, so it can take out Cloyster via Mind Reader + Sheer Cold + Ice Shard if it so chooses with no real way to avoid. There is not really a cute way around that either; we can in fact get a +6 Cloyster on this by stalling Sheer Cold and Ice Beam and setting up on Ice Shard, but that's realistically a Chansey sack, and Cloyster is not Mega Gyarados so actually cares a lot about taking any damage at all during setup. This line means e.g. followup Latios/Latias1 needs only a single Lax Incense miss to turn the match into a PP-drained Gliscor against the world, similar situation with Zapdos2 except slightly less bad, and Heatran1 will outright take down Cloyster without fail. Cloyster's Sash broken + Chansey taken out is just not good enough overall even if Cloyster is at +6, so we need something else here, which is where Rock Blast comes in; barring some truly out there move choices Cloyster is always gonna get multiple shots at Rock Blast against Articuno2 ("99% accurate" Rock Blast!), and if set 1 reveals itself after a miss you can just stall it with Chansey for a free +6 Cloyster, except with intact Sash and alive Chansey this time. This is the main enemy that I think makes Rock Blast truly mandatory here.
- Talonflame4: ordinarily would be a simple +2 Icicle Spear target, but its turn 1 move choices are not the most predictable out there and Gale Wings means it can actually 2HKO with priority through a Shell Smash drop, not to mention Gliscor + Chansey also hates it. This one is a "get it off the field asap" enemy, which means click Rock Blast turn 1, and the great thing is that two +0 attacks (or one +2 attack) land enough recoil to get it in Surf range, meaning you can just click that turn 2 and a double Rock Blast miss is not a risk that exists.
- Weavile4: Chansey beats this one-on-one, but it can't actually recover on it because of Taunt, it's strong enough (and hax exists) that switching in on it directly is not ideal either. However, Cloyster is naturally physically bulky enough that it gets multiple chances at landing a Rock Blast, and in fact the "expected" outcome is to just beat it at full health with Sash intact since it loves to use Taunt.
- Lapras4: Smash, Rock Blast, and the expected outcome is to win this with a +2 Cloyster with Sash broken (or even intact if it uses a PerishTrap move turn 1), which is obviously just fine. Here too Lapras is way too weak to actually defeat Cloyster without giving it several chances at hitting Rock Blast, and the main way for Lapras to actually throw things off script is Body Slam paralysis, which... still requires it to get some outrageous hax to actually take down Cloyster so the risk is mostly found in nasty backups taking advantage of this board state. Which could certainly happen but so far I haven't had any bad Lapras times at all really, in part because Gliscor + Chansey handles "most things" anyways, especially if you can give them a free switch by well. sacking the compromised Cloyster; the main enemy that came to mind to be afraid of here is a followup Contrary Serperior, which in fact I planned a dedicated line around if it came out second while using Substitute Cloyster but is not winning even on this board state (go to Gliscor -> Protect -> sack Cloyster -> Gliscor Protect again -> go to Chansey -> use the Struggle turns to win with a healed-up Chansey and Subbed Gliscor). At this point, I'm pretty sure Rock Blast is actively better than Substitute even for handling Lapras, if only for the sheer odds of an advantageous followup board state while Substitute outright embraces Cloyster being out of commission for the rest of the battle always plus well. leaves the opponent with a fresh Lapras in the back lol.
- Vanilluxe4: Not too unlike the Weavile example, where Taunt complicates handling things with the backups instead but it also can't threaten Cloyster enough to stop it from getting multiple shots at landing a Rock Blast realistically. This one is by far the least threatening one of the bunch here (in fact it's easy Chansey fodder even with Taunt in the picture, just a Taunted Chansey is not really the kind of thing you want a fresh enemy sent in on if you can help it), but it's on the list of targets so it's there.

...and I'm pretty sure that's actually the lot of them at least as far as non specialty Trainers go. Idk, don't get me wrong, I think extreme skepticism of Rock Blast is just good sense, and it's totally fair to dig pretty deep into the well of niche options over it instead. But I also think people who treat it as an actual full-on non-starter haven't actually used it in practice (or at least not properly), because there is a pretty wide range of circumstances going on here that makes this more nuanced than "90% acc goodbye lol". If you do want to run a utility move then pick Protect (or yes even Torment), it has more uses in practice than Substitute.

Deadwing (Gliscor) @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
Nature: Impish
EVs: 212 HP / 4 Atk / 36 Def / 164 SpD / 92 Spe
- Earthquake
- Toxic
- Protect
- Substitute

gliscor

Same trusty set of moves that carried Marathon to 3,6k+ and Greninja/Mega Scizor/Gliscor to almost 1,5k, but unlike those teams we are not using the exact same specimen of Gliscor here, because it makes sense to question the megacareful investment when we have literally the ultimate special wall rounding out this team and are not as strong on the physically bulky side as otherwise. Now, the good thing is that theoretically we don't exactly need to either, with Chansey's physically defensive profile still being overall solid and, more importantly, its typing greatly augmenting this as well with its lack of weaknesses other than the one that Gliscor is still covering organically anyways, but that line of logic still risks oversimplifying things and of course crumbles if there is a physical Fighting-type move user that pressures Gliscor too much in other ways and can't be wiped off the screen by Cloyster. The big one that jumped out to me quickly was Barbaracle, which as a crit machine is one that you really would want to default to Gliscor to handle but actually has very high odds to knock Gliscor out of Substitute range via a Sniper Stone Edge crit on the switch, all but putting it out of commission entirely unless you wanna go ahead and sack Cloyster or Chansey on the spot, and with the way that set works that is the kind of scenario you should pretty much outright assume will happen when facing it on lead.

So, because EVing is hard, take the old spread and flip the nature to Impish because with mathematical efficiency and all that stuff that one at least is gonna be a guarantee if we want any sort of physdef lean away from megacareful, and... suddenly the Sniper Stone Edge risk is mitigated, outside of an absolute max roll. On top of that non-crit Shadow Claw also never breaks the Sub anymore even with Tough Claws, which is pretty essential when you also need to secure openings to actually beat it yourself. And without any other notable targets that are coming to mind that's actually where we're leaving it at; I wanted to preserve the general mixed bulk inclination, both because it was what I was used to playing but also because it just makes more sense in general for a Gliscor that takes out enemies by itself therefore also has followup enemies switch in on it and it would be nice to minimise the portion of those where it's fully helpless. Another reason why I opted to avoid covering for the max roll Sniper crit (as long as I would not identify any other physical bulk targets) was because sometimes it just be like that with negligible odds like that and the extra investment required was actually pretty substantial, and my gut feeling was that it would create more issues with followup special attackers than it would solve on the Barbaracle front.

The extra Speed EVs are for Tyrantrum and Mismagius, which would otherwise outspeed the entire team and steal back momentum way too hard if not outright win on the spot if they came in as poorly timed backups. It's also extremely handy for enemies like Tentacruel, which is one of the few special attackers that beat Chansey but now I can just take it out with Earthquakes as I Sub on its Protects. I'm skeptical on going any further; Dragonite is the main one that came to mind because Dragon Rush flinches on Cloyster setup sound horrible, but between general odds (e.g. it almost always actually needs two of those to win against Cloyster plus either nasty backups or a bunch more flinches on Gliscor or Chansey, with miss chance on top of that) plus not wanting to compromise bulk I haven't felt the need to go there so far. Beyond that it's... a single clean shot for Toxic on backup Feraligatr, getting to take out Toxicroak without being Taunted but you also need to magically avoid it on the switch for that, but those are niche and conditional as is, and I'm honestly blanking after as far as non one off sets go at least. And of course there's still the rule that slow Substitute on Gliscor is better in general for maintaining one more easily and keeping momentum against mystery backups, see e.g. the Speed bump actually making Mienshao4 more annoying to deal with since it leaves Gliscor naked before whatever is sent out next.

Full Circle (Chansey) @ Eviolite
Ability: Natural Cure
Nature: Bold
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 Spe
- Seismic Toss
- Toxic
- Soft-Boiled
- Growl

growl chansey

This one is gonna be a doozy because obviously Chansey sets here have seen a lot of debate before over time evolving in a potentially counterintuitive-looking way where the "standard" set has ended up being a fast Minimize + Substitute set that aims to either dodge all uses of a dangerous enemy move to let a teammate set up or just Seismic Toss its way through the opposition itself. This is not what I'm using; I have the same Growl set that VaporeonIce used on the original Aegimensey and in fact made into its namesake, and my personal feelings on the Minimize set are, uh, something I should probably preface with a massive "have not actually used it therefore don't take it as me preaching a truth" disclaimer, since in general I feel pretty much the same way about it as certain other players do about using Mega Kangaskhan on a FEAR Trick Room backline, which is that I find it a baffling choice that I can't wrap my head around but obviously can't argue with the results that it has put up. For the most part it's just an aversion to having to rely on uncertain odds rather than being confident enough on how a turn will play out before clicking the buttons (e.g. against any faster followup physical attacker that breaks Chansey's Sub in one hit if it does get through Minimize, let alone repeatedly), which I'm sure is also more of a play comfort thing than a set quality thing where for some situations at least my brain gets caught in theoryland too much; however, it's also a reason why I understand better how Bulldoze + Double Team Gliscor works in practice, since the Speed drops giving initiative (and the set being intentionally designed towards PP stalling rather than sweeping) helps with one of my bigger qualms with the Chansey set. Regardless I will avoid pitting the two Chansey sets against each other too much because I think any debate angle that attempts to dismiss a set as inferior that one way or another has broken 1k or more misses the point entirely (from where I'm standing you wanna avoid "don't use" for multiple obviously good sets, also team-specific fits and leaderboard diversification and all that stuff), but naturally sometimes a comparison is unavoidable when it comes to specific targets.

So, personal feelings aside, I was always gonna use Toxic here with Cloyster + Gliscor's massive vulnerability to lead Chandelure and Volcarona, which otherwise you have to either Seismic Toss down manually or just dodge everything and potentially just lose to outright if they choose to get like 4 or more boosts and the statistical likelihood of Minimize not actually dodging everything catches up to you (remember that Chandelure also has Wisp with pre-nerf burn for a substantial artificial boost to its Heat Wave damage and that Volcarona does the same thing with Flame Body), without an actual plan A to not have to steer into that RNG skid. In general Toxic is also actively superior to Seismic Toss for taking down enemies from a momentum pov, since you just get to spam recovery as the enemy slowly dies and against faster enemies in particular, which ofc is most of them, usually win with full health, and it even doubles as pseudo-crit protection when you just end up safely recovering through them anyways. This last point in particular may be a hot take, but I wanted to say it out loud, since one of my main takeaways from Cloyster/Suicune/Garchomp in BDSP was that slow Substitute is actually kinda overrated as a hax avoidance tool on anything not named Gliscor when everything else has to multitask maintaining the Sub with, well, actually winning.

Then for the real interesting stuff we get to Growl, and its purpose is threefold:

- allow Chansey to stonewall physical attackers as well, on top its natural resiliency to special attacks;
- provide a "skip turn" button against special attackers as well to give Chansey de facto infinite PP to massively aid in its PP stalling duties;
- fully neuter Curse or Dragon Dance boosters by constantly debuffing them, with massive bonus points for going through Substitute as well. In fairness this is slightly weaker here than on team Growl since without the initial Intimidate I can e.g. only stall down Feraligatr4 if it switches in on Chansey directly, but there's still many important targets like Gyarados4 from any position in the battle and the army of Water/Ground Curse boosters if dipping too deep into Gliscor's Sub/Protect PP for the first enemy has made the matchup awkward.

VaporeonIce's initial team Growl report is probably top 5 best posts I've ever read on this forum outright so of course I was well aware of what Growl Chansey could bring to the table, and as usual I mostly based the choice on maximising the number of arrows in my quiver in in-battle situations. Specifically, Chansey loses momentum if physical attackers come in (shocker), which was the issue that I wanted the fourth move to solve, and Growl does exactly that. I wanted it both to let Chansey handle enemies more easily and also to soften blows to pass the baton to Gliscor through what's basically a poor man's Intimidate, where the latter did not happen a whole lot in practice because with Chansey's single weakness either it simply handles things itself after Growl or doesn't have room to Growl them in the first place, but it still helped with speeding up some endgames and makes for an extra safeguard in case anything happens with Chansey so whatever. Substitute is absolutely an option that I considered but I didn't see how it would actually help Chansey handle them; if they can't break the Sub in one hit then they're too weak to really threaten Chansey anyways with or without it, and for status (esp since in practice this is only really Toxic) or OHKO moves (almost all of which are faster anyways) I literally have a Gliscor in the back. Take something like Carracosta, which Chansey is definitely tasked to handle and almost always breaks a Chansey Sub, and the main way this matchup can get dicey is via flinches and/or crits; Substitute does literally nothing to help here when facing it as a lead or when you miss a Toxic on the single free turn it can buy on backup, while even a single Growl astronomically ramps up the hax odds it needs to create even minor issues. There are some other things that could be run in this slot, where Thunder Wave probably makes most sense to help Gliscor stall down some things Chansey can't handle, but even without thinking through any actual targets here I'll definitely take Growl's ability to handle backup Feraligatr.

Again, trying to one-up other obviously good sets is cringe, but I will say that I do dislike how the Growl set (or even Toxic sets in general) has been pushed out of the spotlight, not in the least because when all is said and done it's still the set that was used on the team with the longest Chansey streak to date in any facility to its name lol (again not to use this as a "this is the better one" data point, rather a "come on this is obviously good as well" but yea). I definitely had some secondary motivation in re-establishing this as another set worth taking seriously that at least has its share of tangible benefits over fast Sub/Minimize, and I hope that this performance is enough for that.

This team is... actually surprisingly slow for a Cloyster team, even arguably slower than Marathon if played optimally, but it's also incredibly intuitive to play, at least for someone with up to 5k battles worth of Marathon experience. It plays similarly in the sense that you use the insane defensive backbone of Gliscor + Chansey to debuff enemies to either protect or facilitate setup for Cloyster while also having the option of immediate offense; it's different in the sense that immediate offense is both more powerful (+2 Skill Link Icicle Spear go brrrr etc, did you know it's literally stronger than +2 Surf against Flareon which is not terribly relevant overall but pretty funny to mention) but also more costly (as soon as you click Shell Smash on Cloyster it's not really switching out anymore except as "might as well maybe" death fodder).

In an ideal world, the opposing lead has 3 (or fewer) attacks that Gliscor/Chansey can switch in on safely without trouble, plus a "do-nothing" move like Substitute, Rest, or Light Screen that either goes stale after a single use or simply has way more PP than the average attacking move. Gliscor/Chansey's prowess here is obviously substantial with their general defensive profile plus Sub/Protect and Chansey's infinite PP, and +6 setups are way more common than you would expect for something with no immunities nor a direct way of protecting itself from status moves; while raw numbers are a very misleading metric here because of human counting error and because they don't take into any non-Cloyster lines or opaque lines of play, to put it in a bit of perspective, a comparison between +6 Cloyster versus turn 1 Shell Smash lines of play gives that the former is almost as common as the latter (it's like a 1:1,25 ratio). Certainly not enough to make +6 Cloyster a consistent plan A, but I mean this team is no Marathon come on what did you expect, and way more of a thing than just the occasional luxury option.

Failing that, there are always the more straightforward options of clicking Shell Smash turn 1 and trying to sweep from there or having Gliscor or Chansey counter the enemies directly, which obviously they're also all great at in their own right. Another line of play that was a bit counterintuitive for me at first but is also more common and useful than you'd expect is to just one-shot the enemy with +0 Cloyster; think Golem4, where you certainly can give up Cloyster's Sash for +2 or risk an early Explosion versus Gliscor, but overall it's more reliable to just insta-wipe it from the map and reset the battle to an effective turn 0 except as a 3v2 matchup this time. Once again, this team is no Marathon, so without the initial Intimidate to give up (or round of Life Orb recoil to take for Greninja ig) there is literally no downside to doing this.

One important thing to note is that breaking Cloyster's Sash should be avoided if possible even if it would make for a +6, i.e. no setups on Struggle or turbo weak moves like Articuno2 Ice Shard here; I did try to do that at first and did set up on Starmie4's Struggle, but when you realise that you had been one way or another risking freeze hax here then also only even managed to get to +4 anyway since the first Struggle got a King's Rock proc you do wonder wtf you are doing. Specific scenarios aside, the best way to put it into perspective is, +2 Cloyster OHKOes "most things" as is, and +2 Cloyster with Sash intact is functionally the same setup as +6 Cloyster with Sash broken, since the second hit it can get in by virtue of its extra "life" means it's effectively just as strong as +6. Overall a set-up Cloyster is the kind of thing where Lax Incense/BrightPowder is a more relevant threat than most things that AI can throw at you, and +6 Cloyster without a Sash is literally more vulnerable to this than +2 Cloyster with Sash intact (or in fact a fully fresh team without setup). In a sense I think it's not too unlike Greninja/Mega Scizor/Gliscor preferring a Gliscor with Sub active over +6 Scizor against Veterans in particular, because the momentum loss from one of their more naturally bulky Fire-types (or Zapdos) coming in is just not worth it.

No full lead notes this time, but have a couple examples for a rough impression:

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- Venusaur4: use Gliscor and Chansey to stall all non-Substitute PP, fully set up Cloyster.
- Raichu4/Accelgor4: go to Gliscor, Toxic while intentionally getting Encored, switch to Chansey after the second round of Toxic damage, Soft-Boiled, switch back on usually another Encore, Sub on death turn while avoiding Encore for good.
- Arcanine4: go to Gliscor on Close Combat, Protect, stall Flare Blitz, Earthquake KO.
- Tentacruel4: hard switch to Gliscor, 2HKO/3HKO with Earthquake by clicking Sub on its Protects.
- Gengar4: go to Gliscor, use Growl and Natural Cure to get rid of Sludge Bomb, switch-stall Shadow Ball and Thunderbolt, set up a Gliscor Sub once it's out of PP.
- Electrode4: go to Gliscor, switch-stall Thunder and Taunt (and realistically Rain Dance), fully set up Cloyster.
- Exeggutor4: immediate Icicle Spear OHKO.
- Rapidash4: Smash once, Surf KO which will most (but not all) of the time will be with an intact Sash because of Protect
- Weezing4: go to Chansey, go to Gliscor once Chansey is statused, switch-stall all status move PP, fully set up Cloyster once only Stockpile and Rest are left.
- Starmie4: go to Chansey, Toxic stall.
- Gyarados4: go to Chansey, Growl until Aqua Tail and Earthquake are gone, fully set up Cloyster.
- Feraligatr4: +2 Icicle Spear 2HKO.
- Politoed4: go to Gliscor on Focus Blast, stall all attacking PP, fully set up Cloyster on Hypnosis.
- Forretress4: just click Smash three times and OHKO with Rock Blast, if it booms early so be it (but it probably won't).
- Wailord4: hard switch to Gliscor on Hyper Beam or Fissure, Sub/Protect stall and attack with Earthquake while given room.
- Walrein4: go to Chansey, Seismic Toss until one of its moves hits, stall remaining Sheer Cold PP with Gliscor, switch-stall remaining Fissure PP and >=6 Sleep Talk PP, fully set up Cloyster.
- Infernape4: go to Gliscor on Fake Out, immediate Earthquake KO as it breaks its own Sash with Flare Blitz.
- Empoleon4: go to Chansey, Growl away all attacking PP, fully set up Cloyster; Gliscor can finish the job if Chansey gets haxed.
- Luxray4: go to Gliscor, switch-stall all non-Light Screen PP while using Growl or Soft-Boiled on predictable Light Screen turns, fully set up Cloyster.
- Carracosta4: go to Chansey, Soft-Boiled, Growl, Soft-Boiled, Toxic.
- Beartic4: go to Chansey, Growl + Toxic.
- Golurk4: go to Gliscor, go to Chansey, switch-stall Hammer Arm, Shadow Punch, Earthquake neatly in order, fully set up Cloyster on stale Fling PP.

If I had to summarise it, the rough overall priority of plans is as follows:
- Cloyster at +6 with a Sash intact;
- Gliscor KOes the opposing lead with a Sub intact and without using too much PP;
- Cloyster outspeeds and OHKOes the opposing lead turn 1;
- Cloyster setup with its Sash broken, either +2 or +6;
- Chansey KOes the opposing lead;
- Gliscor KOes the opposing lead without a Sub intact or while wasting most of its PP;
- Cloyster KOes the opposing lead turn 1 while getting its Sash broken.

It's not fully clear-cut like this, since especially the Chansey and compromised Cloyster setup options can be interchangeable depending on AI rosters (like you'll want the Chansey option versus Water/Ice specialists since odds are p big there that you'll lose a +2 Cloyster turn 2, but you certainly don't want it against opponents that can bring Medicham), and obviously there is also an outcome of +2 Cloyster with Sash intact there somewhere that should theoretically take second place, which actually does happen a lot versus Protect users that can't OHKO Cloyster (think Rapidash), but those a) are never fully guaranteed, b) aren't usually enemies where you want to take a Gliscor or Chansey route in the first place.


I was expecting the loss to be to a heartbreaking combination of early hax tipping the scales just the wrong way on an unpredictable board state, which almost happened in one battle after a random burn from lead Ninetales (lol) allowed followup Gyarados4 to break through Chansey, though thankfully it had wasted just enough Aqua Tail PP at that point that Gliscor could get rid of the last couple ones and pull through an entire PP stall (lesson learned: just go back to Cloyster if this happens again, for now we'll just use the excuse that this was actually a really hard board state to map out in my head when Gyarados switching in on Chansey is usually one of the freest +6 Cloysters of all time). What actually happened was that Anastasia in one of the statistically way too common run-ins I had with her on this run brought in this extremely uncommon sleeper threat:

575 | Medicham3 | Jolly | Expert Belt | Hi Jump Kick | Zen Headbutt | Ice Punch | Bullet Punch | Atk/Spd

where yes it really is just a matter of HJK + BP KO on Cloyster, both Gliscor and Chansey are outsped and OHKOed (and attempts to switch-stall for an HJK miss don't go anywhere), and it's simple as that sometimes. And running into the actual hard counter may have been an even more painful way to go out than the convoluted hax scenario, especially knowing that the raw odds of running into it (let alone in a position where I actually don't have the prior setup to win) should have been enough to at least carry me past 1000.

Time for the traditional set of battle video recordings:

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#788: vs. Hex Maniac Anastasia

The loss. I will admit upfront that this was not fully played to my outs by not going for the 50% roll to just OHKO Medicham with Icicle Spear (truthfully I did just forget that set 3 has Bullet Punch), but ngl the existence of a literal coinflip out doesn't really make me feel less bad about the existence of an otherwise hard counter. I do think there was a way to get out of the Trevenant matchup with a Gliscor with Sub active, which would have let me stall Medicham out of Ice Punches; set 4's attacks hit a little too hard to switch into directly especially since you have to gamble around it not setting up TR on your Protect, but with a Chansey detour you can get Gliscor in on a Trick Room turn to get through it safely, and barring back-to-back crits Chansey can also switch into set 3 and slowly Growl it down for Gliscor to Sub on easily (in fact Gliscor can also switch into this directly but you really don't wanna waste a lot of PP for subbed Gliscor to be your setup of choice after a Hex Maniac's first Pokemon with how many PP certain followup enemies have such as, indeed, Medicham3 lol). Something to keep in mind next time I suppose. The turn 1 choice of just OHKOing with +0 Spear was a case of the aforementioned convenience option of just going for a 3v2 over compromised setup, since when I can count on one hand the number of leads that immediately force this trio on the back foot a 3v2 with a fully fresh team is indeed a hugely comfy position to be in. Unless you forget Medi3 exists.

#590: vs. Psychic Magus
Alakazam is a pretty straightforward Smash + Spear target, but this battle gets unfunny when it goes for Trick instead, despite 252 SpA Choice Specs Alakazam Focus Blast vs. 0 HP / 0- SpD Cloyster: 434-512 (347.2 - 409.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO. Overall this doesn't complicate the game a whole lot more than just making Gliscor + Chansey fight a Psychic 2v3 which is hardly the end of the world (one could argue that Cloyster was still worth preserving as fodder, but I was still hesitant to switch Chansey directly into Focus Blast, and who knows maybe it'll Trick again right), and the backups were hardly anything to worry about, but Alakazam made the battle even more silly by sucking me into a hot potato war with Chansey's Eviolite that I thankfully managed to win. Another potential misplay other than the obvious spacing out on Safeguard being active is hitting Alakazam with Toxic after Seismic Toss is disabled, which is a pretty bad idea overall for obvious Synchronize reasons; I literally do not remember what was going through my head here (at least I did get it right after Chansey got in initially) and could see some weird "it's not gonna take down Chansey alongside it either way atp" logic, but it's more likely I just got tripped up.

#400: vs. Veteran Isabella
Okay, full disclosure, I kinda sorta don't have a whole lot of good battle videos saved in the first place; there were very few battles that actually went off script and the ones that did for the most part weren't any more interesting than "switch out the Taunted Gliscor when backup Talonflame comes in" or were pinned back to very clear misplays and would have been trivial without those, which I don't exactly see the value in sharing for the hassle it is these days, and the vast majority of battles I saved were milestone battles or mock battle fodder for tricky leads. For the sake of at least providing a proof of concept of what the team can do, have this one instead, where Registeel1 gets some bonus points for also being the one Curse user that I also need to PP stall out of Rest; "need" is a strong word I suppose and at least it has enough boosting move PP left that it won't actually get to Struggle regardless, and my Cloyster isn't PP Maxed so it actually has the potential to get closer to PP stalling it back than I'd like, so ya. Also yes Light Metal allowing me to Growl it was "lucky", though it's mostly the viewer's luck lol since I could have just used Gliscor instead but it certainly speeds up the video a bit!

...and the other traditional section, namely the threatlist:

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Unpredictable board states is probably the biggest risk here, with almost every lead having a reliable path around it but full setup on lead not being a very common scenario and Gliscor or Chansey often having mystery enemies switch in on them. It helps that Gliscor with a Sub active and Chansey with instantaneous ability to click Growl can hold off a massive range of foes, but certain boosters can still spell trouble; think Swords Dance users that need to be hit with Toxic right away, Feraligatr that is still the worst enemy on the planet to come out second versus Gliscor, and as far as all-out attackers go there is Medicham in particular that will almost assuredly take a life if it comes out against Chansey unless it manages to throw the matchup versus Gliscor via dumb Detect usage (which it usually does... but you get it), and so on. The team's insane defensive profile is enough to keep the list of these scenarios pretty contained, and another notable out worth mentioning is that a Cloyster with an intact Sash is a hard check to all threatening Swords Dance users.

Freak accidents for lack of a better word lol can actually matter here, with Shell Smash Cloyster's all-in nature making sudden wrenches actually annoying. The Trick Alakazam crapshoot is by far the biggest one that happened, but I've also been worried about stuff like Jynx4 throwing out a random Fake Out despite Psychic being a confident OHKO, to the point that rolling the dice with Chansey here instead might actually be better. The good thing is that if I believe Chansey can switch in on this t1 it can also do so t2 and the "bad outcome" is actually a +6 Cloyster with broken Sash, so it's not quite in the same ballpark as Mismagius4's miniscule odds of passing up on the guaranteed Power Gem KO actually making for a potential outright loss.

Certain cases of set ambiguity versus starter breeders and weather trainers also are worth mentioning; for the most part they're not too hard to find middle grounds around, but two notable ones in particular are Infernape1234 (where set 4 forces the Gliscor switch on Fake Out for the immediate KO but the Wisp risk makes that unwise here) and Beartic1234 (where set 4 is Growl fodder but the possibility of an SD set means you kinda do have to gamble with +2 Rock Blast here).

855 | Lickilicky4 | Adamant | Lax Incense | Body Slam | Power Whip | Earthquake | Explosion | HP/Atk
...and Explosion users in general, who would've thought they get a tiny bit nastier without a Steel-type on the team, but the other ones other than maybe the Regirock pair are handled alright by lead Cloyster for the most part. Lickilicky dodges the OHKO from +2 Spear and has Lax Incense to make that a sketchy idea even if it did not, and on top of that the randomness of its moves means I risk switching Gliscor into Body Slam para as well. I don't really have anything better here than go to Chansey and keep health high while using Growl as a cushion so that it won't hit too hard when it does blow up (or ofc win before it does but unlikely). Has worked out fine for the most part, obvious potential for nasty backups is obvious.

813 | Mismagius4 | Bold | BrightPowder | Power Gem | Protect | Perish Song | Mean Look | HP/Def
Probably more threatening than Lapras in general; thanks to the item they both need Cloyster to hit a 90% accurate move, but unlike Lapras Mismagius only gives Cloyster a single shot to hit, and while thankfully I was wise enough to let Gliscor outspeed it for the safe plan B of just clicking Sub right away and waiting until it forces itself out, with Perish Song being what it is if you do end up in the 2v3 here you're getting dangerously close to the 1v2 that means an insta-loss. Especially Psychics/Hex Maniacs are scary with the ability to follow up with Medicham, but it can be mitigated a bit by switching out Gliscor on the second to last turn and bringing it back in. At least the good news is that it's only a threat on lead; Power Gem's pathetic Base Power means that second mon Mismagius is incredibly rare, and as a lastmon it might as well click Explosion the second it comes in unless something has gone dangerously wrong on your end earlier.

759 | Absol4 | Jolly | BrightPowder | Substitute | Swagger | Punishment | Will-O-Wisp | Atk/Spd
Similar situation as with Marathon, where you can't really stop it from statusing something and also can't switch Gliscor in directly as long as nothing is burned yet, though not quite as bad. Going to Chansey turn 1 is probably safest; in an ideal world Absol clicks Will-O-Wisp then and there for the safe Gliscor switch, but in the much more common case it clicks Swagger Chansey still has an honest shot of recovering/Growling through the worst of it, and in a pinch you can still make use of the very-much-not-guaranteed-but-certainly-observable pattern that Absol will probably use Punishment versus an enemy that has its stats boosted to get Gliscor in even without a prior burn. And once Punishment is gone and Gliscor and Chansey are both alive, the rest of the non-Substitute PP can be rid of as well and there we have a +6 Cloyster. Hitting Shell Smash turn 1 is not a significantly worse option either; any non-Swagger move lets you get rid of Absol then and there, and even Swagger (though not hitting yourself would be convenient) lets you get a better Chansey switch-in I suppose. One way or another it's a bitch, but it's probably usually not winning.

761 | Hariyama4 | Careful | Sitrus Berry | Belly Drum | Brick Break | Ice Punch | Bullet Punch | Def/SpD
890 | Snorlax4 | Careful | Assault Vest | Body Slam | Power-Up Punch | Earthquake | Crunch | HP/SpD

Thick Fat makes for an awkward defensive profile when your main sweeping move is Icicle Spear, and Belly Drum / Body Slam mean I can't easily respond to them defensively either. Without Thick Fat +2 Spear is a clean KO on both though (after Belly Drum in Hariyama's case, but that's how it tends to go anyways), and even if they do have it Hariyama may skip Bullet Punch as a finisher move and Snorlax actually cannot 2HKO Cloyster back without hax (not that that means a lot with that set though). Overall still pretty up there for leads that can both take out Cloyster and pressure backups though.

Trick is funnily worth mentioning, since it does suddenly reenter the picture when you're running a Mega-less team. In practice it's not the worst thing ever; several users (think Alakazam and Manectric) should just attack Cloyster, and "obnoxious offensive presence but defensively inclined enough to still actually use the move" Metagross and Reuniclus are thankfully holding Toxic Orb so Gliscor doesn't care about switching into them. Gliscor also makes for a situational counter to them in general since it doesn't care about non-Choice Trick anymore once its Orb is active, which can negate them in practice if they don't show up as a lead. The only one that comes to mind where I cannot avoid biting the bullet is lead Lopunny4, where you just kind of have to let it steal Chansey's Eviolite; however, obviously defeating it period is a joke and it's very easy to win with Gliscor with Sub active, so the main thing it gets to accomplish is soften up Chansey for any backups where you might need it, a lot of which are also negated by simply showing up into Subbed Gliscor. Freak accidents obviously do exist though, see the unfunny Alakazam replay and although this was not with this team I also remember Manectric having a tiny chance of using Switcheroo into the Greninja slot on the switch to Gliscor, at which point you'll just have to wing it.

In any case, that is 787 which is certainly a good score for establishing conventional Cloyster as a strong option on this board, but the question whether I'm happy with it is a more complicated one; 1k remains the holy grail, which simultaneously would have cleared the nice secondary goal of getting the longest Cloyster streak here outright, and for better or worse this team was definitely playing like a 1k-level team until its rude awakening.

a rant on 1k streaks

Obviously I "know how it feels" to hit 1k, and all the four teams I've done it with are special, but one of my main motivators has always been to actually get to report my streaks in here, 1k or not as long as they're good; talking about the things I've done to people that actually want to hear me talk is much more important for making them feel real than some numbers I can see on my carts, and as much I wish I could quote a character here that's actually good and important to me rather than frickin Barney Stinson, "nothing in life is legendary unless you have people to share it with." Without that, this is obviously all still fun to do, but maybe not quite 50-100 hours of my life with the same team kind of fun. With that in mind, the most telling one here is actually the fifth 1k I hit, namely a more recent run with Greninja/Mega Scizor/Gliscor that had hit 1476 in 2016, which I chose for my nostalgia fun trip team when I'd finally managed to get my old Battle Maison teams out of my Omega Ruby cart a little over two years ago. I'd fully intended to just grab the Starf Berry and keep playing until I lost and move on to the other trophies after, which well I technically did do but also got a little bit consumed and ran the entire thing back up to 1k in less than two weeks on literally my first streak in six years.

While I couldn't not be proud of it ofc (especially since well no one could accuse me of being prone to rust at this point), another feeling associated with that 1k was honestly straight up bewilderment LOL, because for a fun nostalgia trip this had definitely gotten way out of control; the streak kept going when I returned to it after getting the other trophies, until Volcarona switched in on Taunted Gliscor and I forgot about Quiver Dance's Special Defense boost for "okay Greninja still outspeeds this after one QD and the one Surf always at least puts it in BP range" and I lost at 1430-ish... literally less than 50 battles short of the team's PB. Okay, it's like that I suppose lol, that was an insane amount of time for an achievement I don't even get to share with others without pointlessly coming off super recognition thirsty. Thankfully I'd at least picked my most fun team for the run. And something like that will always be on my mind when trying to go for a high number or even deciding whether it's a wise use of my free time at all, and when it involves a team that I've already shared those conflicted feelings are amped up a hundredfold. I was always gonna report the number with this team of course because trying to frame it as anything less than at least noteworthy would be silly, but when one way or another I have already gotten my "prize" of getting to ramble about this team in general the self-imposed pressure for another attempt at 1k could easily reach unhealthy levels.

As for whether I'll take another shot at it, it's possible but don't hold your breath for now at least. I do think this was an underperformance and actually do care about setting the record straight on those, but everything I've said about the timesink and ultimately lopsided investment:"reward" ratio stands, and at the very least I still have a bunch of teams and streaks on my list that I probably should get to first (e.g. trying on the Subway is another good diversification option, and yes it certainly has not escape my notice that this team is directly backportable into there...), especially when you realise you've spent a lot of your gaming time this year clearing out backlog yet your Battle Facility team backlog might just be even bigger still. More than anything else though, I fundamentally do not think that "keep dodging the counter a bit longer next time" is any sort of worthwhile challenge, so at least some change of perspective to process that a bit better would be wise.

This is also gonna sound kind of jaded, but when we look past the "actually using Cloyster" point there is also a part of me that wonders if I've actually contributed anything here at all. Of course Cloyster/Gliscor/Chansey is one of those super obvious teams that always were just waiting for someone to actually pick them up, but it goes deeper than that; one reason why I'm a fan of Maison singles and still loathe the Tree's decision of suffocating the power level by adding Megas to the roster is the raw amount of creativity that has been viable for high numbers that I've mentioned before (Intimidate spam, Mega Kangaskhan lead, conventional Lum setup, multiple takes on Durant, even lead Greninja all proven to viable for 1k+... is this a dream????), but then when you look at it more closely you see that the backbones are still disturbingly centralised. Think about it: every single team that's made it past even 500 has used at least one of Gliscor, Aegislash, Suicune, or Chansey (or Durant ofc), and if we move said cutoff to 1k we can also drop Suicune from this list to narrow it down even further. While at least I've defeated my own "can't win without Gliscor" allegations in BDSP, with this in mind it would be an entirely reasonable take that this is not actually an interesting contribution but just the nth take on "how to build a good Maison singles team: sweeper of choice + two of suichanaegiscor, the end", which of course is not quite as bad as the "either use TrickScarf or just don't bother beyond the in-game achievements" message that the gen 4 leaderboard sends loud and clear but also not really better to the extent I believed it was. At the very least it does mean that, short of any potential final attempts at 1k with these three, it's more likely that any future returns here will be trying to make stuff like Braviary work for a couple hundreds just for fun than another serious team that would inevitably once again end up with one of these big four.


If nothing else, this run at least made for an attempt at providing a lead sweeper with a GlisChan backline, like how Marathon was an exercise at finding the perfect complement for AegiScor and Kangliscune answered this question for... GlisCune even if it went at it the other way around. I do think Cloyster is a sensible pick for rounding this out, but it's always worth wondering if there is anything better; it's especially interesting since one of my early thoughts was "if there's a good number of cases where I prefer going to Chansey over a +2 Cloyster sweep attempt then is that enough to just throw Cloyster in the trash lol", of course that's not quite how it works but certainly makes for more motivation to think about this some more. There is technically another data point here in the 1560 streak by Kangliscune with Chansey replacing Suicune, but the way I always understood it that one was more intended as a Chansey experiment specifically rather than a go at the Gliscor + Chansey backline; it's undoubtedly a very impressive number and Kangaskhan is of course a better Pokemon than Cloyster, but without any disrespect for the accomplishment put up as far as a closer comparison goes that lineup is even more helpless to Medicham3 showing up in a "fresh" board state (as in like entire team is outsped and OHKOed level helpless where Cloyster at least can take the unboosted Icicle Spear dice roll or participate in some convoluted Ice Punch switch stall attempt), so at the very least it hasn't solved the biggest practical issue this version ended up running into. I have some more thoughts on Kangaskhan here, but without getting into those too much since I'm not interested in pitting these two lineups against each other, one base that can't be overlooked is to avoid falling into the trap of "something with Chansey's base stats does not need a real typing", since that is something that actually does show with stuff with awkward coverage and the pressure that Fighting-types place on Gliscor. Cloyster does at least keep this in mind, though with its inability to hard react to anything defensively it's fair to question how good it truly is at this job.

I do think Gliscor + Chansey is the weakest of the three possible "big 4" Gliscor cores, due to its lack of offensive potential (especially Aegislash's priority is an underrated perk even if just as an emergency option rather than a sweeping tool) and Chansey's lack of a real defensive typing, but when the competition is literally Kangliscune and Marathon that is probably one of the most expected things I could have said in this post anyways. If we take a similar approach here that I did with Marathon, then their forte is answering any enemy (especially special attackers) that they have a defensive advantage against and is not capable of reaching an unreasonable power level. The issue to address becomes Fighting-types that Gliscor struggles to answer (think Medicham and maybe disruptive stuff like Sawk), Water- and Ice-types that Chansey struggles to answer which is realistically physical attackers that can boost or hax, and boosters in general, most notably of other dangerous types like Fire where even unboosted Flare Blitz is a move that Gliscor can struggle to answer, think Talonflame. For the most part Cloyster does an okay job here by being capable of clamping down on them from lead before they get a chance to cause any trouble, and I do think that the optimal third teammate needs to be Water-type at least. Mega Gyarados is actually not an insane fit at all, but with the Medicham issues its Dark typing is actually not helping at all, and that brings me to the point that the answer may have already been played around with: Mega Slowbro, which provides the best defensive typing possible to hold off major threats to the team plus is the closest thing to an impenetrable physical wall to complement Chansey, and this lineup was brought past 1k in the Tree by NoCheese and to 500+ in here more recently. It's also an entirely different team archetype though, with an increased vulnerability to disruptive moves (though a lot of those can be played around without major trouble) and Gliscor being forced into the lead position instead. It plays differently enough that I would consider it as much of an "upgrade" over Cloyster/Gliscor/Chansey as say Marathon over Greninja/Mega Scizor/Gliscor; and, looping back to the whole leaderboard diversity point, it's nice that both answers to this question are just fundamentally different teams and you can't really argue that one directly outclasses the other.

One extremely funny idea is to replace Mega Slowbro in this lineup with Suicune, where the overall niche filled is pretty similar and we actually get the best possible attempt at a team consisting entirely of "big 4" Pokemon; unfortunately Feraligatr remains a bitch and Suicune's ability to respond to it defensively probably isn't good enough, and Slowbro does have the better shot there. Oh well. At least it means I can reserve the name "Team Bermuda Triangle" for my own crew.

 

[tobiuo]

I’ve been in a “I should really write a progress report soon” state for weeks now, but have characteristically been procrastinating it. There is … quite the dearth of cute numbers in the 5k+ range, but I did have Things Happen to report. It still took longer than it should’ve to get writing but well, seeing where this particular batch of battle videos ended, I kind of had to, you know?

So, things that happened. First off, I arbitrarily changed my Gliscor’s spread mid-streak again after battle 6464:

full team paste

ちゃーはん (Gyarados) (M) @ Gyaradosite
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 100 HP / 197 Atk / 36 Def / 5 SpD / 172 Spe
Adamant Nature
IVs: 8 SpA
- Waterfall
- Dragon Dance
- Crunch
- Substitute

ちゅーかなべ (Aegislash) (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Stance Change
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 6 SpD
Adamant Nature
IVs: 30 Def / 19 SpA / 28 Spe
- Shadow Sneak
- King’s Shield
- Iron Head
- Swords Dance

なゆた (Gliscor) (F) @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 222 HP / 196 SpD / 92 Spe
Careful Nature
- Bulldoze
- Protect
- Double Team
- Substitute

(These are the actual inputs, dumped from a battle video, since I figured out how to do that a while ago instead of subtly misremembering some of the unimportant details. Yes, I apparently EVed Gyara by doing the spdef before contracting pokerus, that’s pretty funny.)

The change is pretty subtle; I moved 7 stat points from spdef to hp more or less after seeing TGVM’s spread and thinking about it a bunch, giving 178/132 instead of 171/139. This represents a tiny +4%/-1%ish overall bulk adjustment in the abstract, but concretely the impact rounds to eating a ~1/256 worse tios1 t1 CM matchup (t1 dpulse + t2 crit dpulse is Always bad and goes into the aegi backup plan regardless though, even into 179/139… at least there is a backup plan) in exchange for surprisingly noticeably better chances of having a sub survive a weirdly wide range of ~25%ish sballs and reduced hp leakage in a bunch of switch-stalls, because it turns out that rounding effects matter a lot when the theoretical bulk difference is only about twice the size of a single-point stat difference. 8k+2 hp looks funny but mass-calcs says this confluence of bumping spdef past a nature jump and a multiple of 10 and a odd hp-to-sub threshold (this is just a PH thing) really does extract the best matchup spread out of the EVs we have left after meeting our 127 speed benchmark.

How much does it matter? uhhhhh really almost not at all lol, lmao it’s pretty much exactly the same thing as it was before—I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again that I’ve really never been disappointed by Gliscor’s uninvested physdef (still think the 4/4 is a trap) and the special bulk impact is really six seven of one, half dozen of the other. I’m happy with the new spread and recommend and expect to keep running it going forward, but it’s a “might save a couple of PP but probably won’t actually swinging a single whole game ever” kind of thing. It’s actually really dumb to EV this spread btw lol I think the best approach would be something like 2 Spe + 9 Carbos + 2 HP Up + 10 Zinc + 5x Power Weight SpD hordes + 1x Power Bracer SpD horde for a 220/198/92 spread. Having a 252 in the other one makes it a fair bit more straightforward, I think … either way it’s gen 6 so nbd tho.

(It’s really, really tempting to cut more bulk for speed. I still think don’t think it’s a good idea, because as little as minor spread differences actually push calcs, Gliscor’s special bulk is actually pretty tenuous.)

an actual Thing that Happened

Anyway, even though the spread really doesn’t matter, it feels like I almost jinxed it because not too long after the swap we get this train wreck of a battle:

#6471 vs Starter Breeder Infernape2/Blaziken4/Contrary Serperior3

After turn 1, which is a misplay, this was plausibly a genuinely losable battle. even without further misplays. There were definitely further misplays. I wish I could blame this on not recognizing the multi-set trainer again but (a) it was a breeder, all breeders that lead starters are starter breeders because the generic breeders run the generic roster that doesn’t include starters and (b) no, my playbook was actually just wrong and said to go Aegi specifically because this particular set could burn. Well, it turns out that burn is not the worst thing it can do, because it clicks CM.

Turn 2 is also a misplay. There’s no upside to clicking KS; fortunately it’s baited into the HW ohko it reads, but CM would’ve been catastrophically bad. The correct move on both this turn and the next is SS, though it makes ultimately no difference. Gyara does manage to DD and take both this kill and the incoming Blaziken4 (which, in retrospect, comes now because I didn’t mega; the other order … would not have immediately lost the game, since this was Blaze Blaziken), but what comes in is unknown-set Serperior which reveals only that we were not facing Blaziken2.

Set 2 loses to Gliscor outright. Set 1 runs Attract and Gastro, which is problematic for Gliscor (it’s male) with Aegi dead, but doesn’t break a non-mega sub (also, is likely to try to Gastro) and dies to two +1 Mega Crunches (even with a Contrary Def boost, which … is not actually something I actually considered, but it never really came into consideration either). Without Contrary, set 3 loses to Gliscor every time, while set 4 … loses the ~96% of the time it lands 4 90s and doesn’t crit. But with Contrary, Gliscor can’t switch into either and dies to even one +2 LS from set 4; it lives one +2 non-crit from set 3 and then stalls it out, but the only obvious way to face that is to immediately mega and sac Gyara, which is a bad deal against … every other possible Serp.

Now, Serp12 are marginally more likely than Serp34 due to sendout order, so overall it’s >3x as likely to be any Serp1 (>5x including non-Contrary Serp4) than specifically Contrary Serp3. I don’t mega and Sub. It clicks … Toxic, which is fascinating, and importantly confirms set 3 but not the ability. Now the 2/3 of the time that it’s not Contrary, we win no matter what we do with Gyarados here. If it is, then the right move here is to +1 Crunch twice, which wins if we land both (or trade misses with LS misses or Toxic clicks, or if Gliscor dodges a Leaf Storm…). I … do the calc wrong? I think +2 is a kill with only one miss chance, DD, and proceed to leave it in red bar, because that was an 85-100% range that I unsurprisingly missed. Oops.

The streak really should’ve ended here too, because I … probably technically correctly click Bulldoze instead of Sub into what was in fact a guaranteed kill into its 4/48 hp bar (hp bars round up in this game except that 48/48 is always full), but uhhhhh I was really mostly just going off “uhhh that looks like <10%” vibes, and without being sure of that, Sub locks in the as soon as Serp either clicks Toxic (which it did) or misses LS and doesn’t have a chance to miss, whereas Bulldoze would’ve been a nearly-guaranteed loss if it were in fact not in range. I didn’t see the Sub line. I should’ve seen the Sub line. Now, the 99/160 time whatever its chance is to click LS in the first place (I still don’t know either but it’s probably closer to 50/50 than 1:6) surely outweighs the 10% chance for doze to miss into powder in the actual situation we were in, and I’m not sure how much confidence to credit my ability to read the hp bar, so it was definitely a >10% losing position either way (which ew), but uhhhhhhhh

Two major misplays, a major actually-fine-but-in-principle misplay, a … thing or two that probably worked out in my favor by accident but was not obviously not incorrect, and at least two minor misplays, out a grand total of 9(!) turns. All in all, quality play all around if I do say so myself.

I joke sometimes about how you usually see at least two misplays in a loss but I’ve maybe been underappreciating that misplays aren’t actually randomly spaced events, they’re correlated more strongly than one might expect, both because (a) it’s easier to misanalyze an unexpected situation, you almost never make consequential misplays in the >70% of routine battles against things you’ve seen dozens of times, it’s the “weird” sets where maybe even when you click accurately even the plan was wrong, and (b) ngl tilt is real. The first part might be peculiar to or at least an especially strong effect in the Maison just based due to the distributions, though, not sure.

Anyway, in review, the correct t1 play is probably actually Mega DD, which usually takes FO from nape134 at which point we can go to Gliscor on Encore/Fling/Acro from set 1 and stall it down to full Gyara setup (but slightly chipped and mega), guaranteed strongest move CC from set 3 (but it has 16 attacking PP so we can stall down to full Gyara setup (but chipped and mega), Encore/CC and not Flare Blitz from set 4 which guarantees Gliscor gets in safely without a burn and can stall it down to full Gyara setup (but slightly chipped and mega); but is also a safe middle ground against all of the other possible move choices for those sets. This is correct even against set 4 trainers, since it guards Aegi come in on Flare Blitz when it inexplicably decides to do that instead of FO (yeah, it risks the Gyara burn instead, but at least there it’s resisted and we get a safe guaranteed Aegi setup instead anyway), and against having Gliscor come in when it decides to use Flare Blitz anyway instead of Encoring KS. And set 2’s most common turn 1 move choice is GK anyway.

More battle videos

A couple of battle video collections. {A joke one: #4312, #4509, #4895, #5336, #5397, #5606, #5822](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2281460695), ft. every Walrein4 from 4k to 6k and a funny Articuno2 match with with a 31(?)-turn freeze (the context was some of the usual nonsense about the game cheating with the odds, which no, it doesn’t, Sheer Cold has a perfectly normal hit rate). And a real one: #6271, #6471, #6489-6500, #6842.:

#6271 vs 12 Veteran Latias1/Moltres1/Suicune1—This one amuses me because it might be first time I’ve actually had WAcune switch in on Crunch. I do it semi-habitually (… even in matchups where no backup can ability-switch), I’ve caught stuff like Toxicroak and Vapo with it before, but I’ve mentioned before that I’ve never actually seen it happen with (illegal smh smh) WAcune. Well, it happened.

#6471 vs Starter Breeder Infernape2/Blaziken4/Contrary Serperior3—Discussed above.

#6489 vs generic Battle Girl Arcanine/Magmortar/Aerodactyl—This is an interesting line I’ve be trying with Arcanine and Flareon where you totally sac Aegi to get Gliscor in safely to stall down to “safe” attacks only to get a nearly-guaranteed Gyara setup with no burn risk. I’m … still not sure if it’s good. I think I’d still endorse it vs Arca but less so against Flareon, which starts slower and is a straight Waterfall kill.

#6490 vs Skater Drifblim4/Electivire3/Skarmory3—Demonstrates an improved line for Drifblim4 where we exploit the fact that (a) Drifblim stalled out of sballs always prioritizes dbond > hypno > tbolt into Gliscor’s face to get a widen the PP lead on hypno over tbolt by baiting extra tbolts with Gyara, then (b) getting Aegi 2 turns into sleep before stalling down to KS the last tbolt, which won’t para because it’s either hitting into sleep or getting blocked and leaves Aegi either awake or ready to wake up because it’s done 3 turns of sleep. This spends significantly less Aegi PP and is far less dependent on Hypnosis luck (to wit, that the opponent lands it quickly on Aegi…) to get Gyara set up.

#6491 vs 12 Veteran Thundurus1/Latios2/Landorus2—Gyara setup.

#6492 vs generic Tourist Aerodactyl/Weavile/Lapras—Aegi setup.

#6493 vs 1234 Veteran Isabella Articuno2/Moltres3/Cresselia1—Sometimes cuno2 just lets Aegi set up on it. We take those.

#6494 vs Carlos Politoed/Kingdra/Aurorus—A little bit misplayed because I forget to get Aegi slept before going into Glis and then get greedy trying to heal it off, it’s fiiiiine

#6495 vs generic Punk Scrafty/Drapion/Umbreon—Notice the Payback AI thing I’ve mentioned before that makes this Scrafty really easy to stall down to BU. Strikingly tight on Scrafty’s PP (you really don’t actually want to eat the +6 Struggle), but because of the way the ordering tranposes it just … always works out? Just spamming Waterfall would also save a few turns anyway.

#6496 vs generic Garçon Musharna/Golem/Hawlucha—This is one of those matchups where DT Gliscor doesn’t technically change anything (you only need to stall 30 turns), but it feels a heck of a lot less bad when you’re spending half your Subtect PP to do it instead of nearly all of it and can confidently full stall it for a clean Gyara setup instead of a scuffed mega that’s Usually gamewinning but maybe it just sballs 5 times and you just have to sweep at +2 and 26%. Which is a winning position, to be clear, but still.

#6497 vs Bunny Sylveon2/Venusaur1/Tentacruel2—uhhhh all I can say is that some of my worst play is when I don’t notice a multi-set trainer, except that frankly I should probably just just go straight Aegi on Sylveon4 anyway because you can get away with a lot of switch-stalling and the main reason I don’t is the ergonomics of swapping into slot 2 vs slot 3. Which is important when RSI is an occupational hazard ok. Anyway, this goes unpunished, despite Tenta2.

#6498 vs generic Punk Flareon/Gengar/Toxicroak—I think I’m less of a fan of this line vs Flareon now but this game shows it at its best: Aegi is almost out of KS but alive (healthy even), Gyara gets a full setup and starts sweeping at 51%. The other >half the time Aegi gets burned or dies though…

#6499 vs generic M. Kirill Drapion/Carracosta/Steelix—Another place where DT doesn’t technically change the matchup (heck, it can roll Keen Eye, which negates evasion boosts in this game, guess where I learned that…), since you only actually need to Subtect stall 27 turns (4+15+9-1, you switch-stall another 11+10 with Aegi) into a clean Gyara setup, but having a 24 pp skip turn button that also sometimes saves you Subtect PP makes this much more palatable. And yes, this is definitely a Gyara setup even when it’s Keen Eye or you’re running Toxquake, 18 Subtect PP is already pretty steep, the only imo tenable reason not to upgrade to Gyara setup for 9 more is if it’s a backup and you were already low. Which … is really mostly an argument against Gliscor sweeping, I think.

#6500 vs generic Ace Gwen Mamoswine/Porygon2/Shuckle—This matchup is regularly deeply unsatisfying (it feels like the most common result is you end up at +2 … which objectively it is, about a third of the time, but it’s a pretty even split between +2-4 with a few rare +5 and once I only got +1—dedge + even 2 ifangs is only a roll to kill a sub at -6 but crit happens) but uhhh it is what it is.

#6842 vs 12 Veteran Raikou1/Entei2/Thundurus2—Honestly I’m not happy with my play here maybe a little out of it after *gestures at the number*, but technically did not throw. Raikou1 has too much PP (70!) to solo stall and does too much damage to Aegi randomly picking between sball and esen to switch-stall (and Volt Switch, well, switches it out…) so it must be killed by Gliscor. The right move into Entei is to stall it down to CM/Rest and set up Gyarados, and while the fact we didn’t get a Levitate switchin when dozing Raikou strongly suggests there isn’t one, it’s only actually correct to use it twice. Actually killing it on a crit is … dumb and shouldn’t have happened. It was basically totally safe, since that wouldn’t have been sent out before Entei2 could actually win from that position (Virizion2, Thundurus2, Registeel2, Landorus12, Heatran1, Cobalion2, Regirock1, Zapdos1, Regigigas12), it’s just … not a sane decision. (No, it wouldn’t technically be throwing to let Gliscor die after burning 8 DP PP either, that’s a guaranteed win after a critflinch streak 6hko on Gyara and one last DP into KS.)

This represents an update to my ongoing streak of 6842, which is … wild. I said when I passed 4k more or less that I think this actually correctly represents the attainable consistency in singles vs double, despite lower baseline player advantage, and I do believe the same comparison holds vs triples, but … I don’t know, I feel like I expected more, like, resistance? It’s fascinating, because this team doesn’t feel low-variance (it has a handful of generic lines but practically everything is a special case, it’s just that 70% of them merge into the same position), and it doesn’t feel high-advantange, but I guess it’s really all in the worst-case handling. Ultimately, I still expect the actual loss to be mainly attributable to monkey error, though…

†At time of post I’m sitting at 6955. In the interest of “not procrastinating it until after Thanksgiving and things are busy again” here’s an uncommentated batch of 6933-6942 from the end of last batch. The battles are overall pretty nothing, though I enjoy the Gliscor4 line in #6940 a lot.

What actually happened was that Anastasia in one of the statistically way too common run-ins I had with her on this run brought in this extremely uncommon sleeper threat:

This is kind of funny to hear because, to put this into context (even “statistically way too common” and “extremely uncommon” probably undersells how rare this darn thing is supposed to be), Medicham3 appears on one trainer’s 46-set roster. It’s basically the same frequency as Slowbro3, which is one of just a handful of leads that I don’t even have a battle video for (out of >15k now btw). It’s also extremely reliant on a 2/3 ability roll to be threatening: whereas Pure Power cham3 does enough damage to question the Gliscor/Chansey switch-stall by threatening too much damage just raw to bring in Chansey the 4 times needed to stall out HJK before it can stay in to heal, while HJK itself chunks Gliscor enough that a single crit at any point makes the plan untenable, Telepathy cham3 has only the remotest odds of 6hkoing Chansey if five are crits, and fails to even do positive damage to Gliscor coming in repeatedly, even if it crits every time into 228/0+, and its Ice Punch falls short of being able to one-shot the same Gliscor on a crit.

The upshot of which is that encountering Pure Power Medicham3 on a fresh board is straight up a 1/6900, comparable to Bunny/Jai-only sets, even before tallying up the hax (non-)events it needs to find its way through to actually cause a problem. Moreover, because its threat is mostly of the “slightly fast but pretty frail thing that does damage” variety, most leads will result in some kind of setup that pushes it out from borderline to decidedly not threatening, but even neglecting this, its appearance rate over all team slots is ~1/2332. (As one of the not every species that Anastasia carries both sets 3 and 4 of, as well as holding the third most common item in her pool, cham3 is sliiiightly less common as a backup; it comes out surprisingly close to 2/47 across slots 2-3, but yeah, this is pretty much 3/6900.) It’s hilariously realistic to just dodge it for a few thousand games.

(probably fortunately, since I think the only thing happy to face it in singles is Aegi azu enjoyers don’t @ me)

So of course it turns out Jump actually has a Kangliscune run-in with backup cham3 on record, and it’s somehow his first(????) Kangliscune loss, so… uhhh yeah idk where I was going with this, ig sometimes luck is bad and then you misplay oops

 

[TailGlowVM]

Following some discussion on Discord about Trick, we now think that the AI does not attempt to Trick Pokemon holding Choice items. This is from anecdotal testing in both Subway and Maison doubles using a Choiced Pokemon and one that isn't, in which the other slot has received Trick 100% of the time.

More generally, this would support my belief that the AI reads your item slot much as it does your stats but just doesn't do anything with it most of the time (we already know it never tries to Trick a Pokemon holding its X/Y Mega Stone). Possibly other things happen with Trick, I have no idea what they would be.

If anyone has any mock videos available to test this hypothesis further it would be much appreciated.

 

[magpie ai]

Following some discussion on Discord about Trick, we now think that the AI does not attempt to Trick Pokemon holding Choice items. This is from anecdotal testing in both Subway and Maison doubles using a Choiced Pokemon and one that isn't, in which the other slot has received Trick 100% of the time.

More generally, this would support my belief that the AI reads your item slot much as it does your stats but just doesn't do anything with it most of the time (we already know it never tries to Trick a Pokemon holding its X/Y Mega Stone). Possibly other things happen with Trick, I have no idea what they would be.

If anyone has any mock videos available to test this hypothesis further it would be much appreciated.

A sensible starting point may be the gen 4 smart AI since this has a reasonable amount of carry-over on other moves.

The gen4 AI states (for trick); if the user (CPU) has; choice item, iron ball, sticky barb, lagging tail, power items.

Then +5 score ("almost always use it even over a KO move") as long as the target (player in this case) does not have any of the following items: choice items, macho brace, iron ball, lagging tail, sticky barb, power items, toxic orb, flame orb, black sludge.

There is a special function that handles flame & toxic orbs. There is also a basic check for the ability stick hold, but in gen 4 this does not include the mold breaker check (mold breaker checks are somewhat sporatic).

My guess is that the basic logic here is probably kept like it is for so many other cases, but they simply added to the list of "items you do/dont want to trick"

 

[Lumari]

with Eisen's blessing I have abused my smod powers to update this (and also reformat the lists to make sure turskain's Doubles teams are actually legible).

also transparency post that I (also with other veterans' blessing) also made the exec decision to remove the JohnJohn streak. It's not trusted by any top player (nor was it ever really as anyone can tell from the discussion back then), and on top of several red flags not worth going into too much rn, it does not meet proper standards of proof either in the threat discussion area in particular, in the sense that no writeup to speak of was provided and answers to any questions about dealing with threats and difficult situations ended up making him look worse not better. The streak overall is probably not outright impossible but it would be an overperformance even in the hands of a good player, and discussion and replays back then made it clear that JohnJohn did not have the competency required. Even from the lens of the leaderboard as a resource / team compendium there's really no collateral damage here at all given the team was copied from NoCheese, who provided a good writeup with his run, and leaving the streak up is actually harmful not just from a competition angle with how it misrepresents the team's relative power level and throws off readers looking for a good team to grab the Starf Berry or whatever. I'm not gonna go back to go through decade-old streaks with a fine tooth comb or anything so don't worry about any sort of hunting streaks down, just this one has always been quite the outlier.

also also this is kind of common sense but since it's good to have it spelled out I've also edited the OP to change proof standards from an in-game uploaded battle video to a recording of the battle video in question, lot more awkward but functionally the same thing and unfort the only way we have of providing those these days.