https://pokepast.es/46a1abf0ce88ba65
I wanted to try out ninetales because I think it's cool and I haven't used it much and wanted to see what it could do, and in my usual gsc nu building process I threw on xatu, pineco, and octillery, because those 3 form a great basis for a large amount of teams and I thought it would be the same. Little did I know what was in store for me. I probably should've waited until ALTPL ended to make this but uhhhhhhh I'm impulsive and I let the urges win this time so uhhhhhhh
As I said, I started with these four, pineco leading because persian is a pain in the ass and having spikes up early is nice. Xatu and octillery are generally great but are also important in handling dugtrio. Went with beam oct to help improve vs duggy and elec xatu as the natural partner to better pressure opposing octillery who want to come in on xatu. Used roar on ninetales to keep maximum pressure on octillery, even if i knew having roar on a sleep talk set of a mon this fast was suboptimal.
Next, I went with chinchou because it patched up the weakness to opposing octillery and other waters really well while sudowoodo would do great to beat normals. However, at this point I was really concerned about the dugtrio matchup mainly as well as fighters, because while beam oct can handle dugtrio decently well the rest of the team was not so good on it and overrelying on octillery to handle one mon that came close to demolishing the rest of the team was a recipe for disaster.
After this realization, I wasn’t really sold on my last two mons. I pondered weezing, chinchou, sudowoodo, pupitar, gloom, fearow, and even hitmonlee and magnemite. Weezing covered fighters and sorta normals while being able to threaten a lot of damage, but didn’t really help with dugtrio, fearow helped with dugtrio and fighters as well as general pressure which was really appealing to me, but I couldn’t really fit fearow and something that handled octillery because it would leave me shattered by normals. Pupitar was really just because it was much faster than sudoowodo, gloom helped with elec oct but still struggled with dugtrio, beam oct, and normals as well as making other areas worse, and hitmonlee and magnemite were desperation straws trying to find some way to answer dugtrio fighters waters and normals all at once.
Then came the turning point in the process of the team. I had asked a couple of people for help on figuring out a good last two including Dawn and Innovamania, though unfortunately Dawn was busy and Inno couldn’t come up with anything better. Then came along freezingpop who I also decided to ask for help from since he was pretty knowledgeable about gsc nu and I was grasping for straws lol. He suggested I don’t use hp elec on xatu and instead used hp ice, which was made even more justifiable since I had decided I was likely going to use chinchou, and this drastically improved my opinion of the team’s dugtrio matchup, since I had made other teams work with less (albeit only 1 or 2 ground weaks). After this, I just needed to figure out a last, and it basically came down to either sudowoodo or weezing. Sudo handles normals much more comfortably while weezing is overall more threatening and is vastly superior into fighters, and I ended up choosing weezing since it can still hold its own decently vs normals and I valued not crumpling to fighters. Lastly, while weezing isn’t the worst into normals, I still had a strong feeling something was off with the team, and I realized it was the matchup vs normals. Then a lightbulb turned on in my head and I remembered that ninetales learned reflect, and so I slotted it on and finally felt satisfied.
The Mons
Pineco @ Miracle Berry
Ability: No Ability
- Spikes
- Explosion
- Rapid Spin
- Reflect
Pineco is a decently common lead, and for good reason. Miracle berry, good phys def, enough sp def to not be ohko’d unless by a fire move, and spikes and boom all combine to make pineco excellent at the top of the lineup. Miracle berry allows pineco to guaranteed set up spikes in front of hypnosis persian, another very common lead. The rest of the moves do about what you would expect them to.
Xatu @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
IVs: 26 Def
- Psychic
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
The king of gsc nu, xatu does pretty normal xatu things of both being an extremely important defensive presence and a powerful wallbreaker. Here, it namely helps to check fighters, stantler, weezing, and with hp ice, dugtrio. Honestly not really much productive I can say here, xatu is xatu.
Octillery @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
Just like xatu, another one of the most splashable and dominant pokemon in the tier but also the biggest source of headaches I had when trying to build this team around ninetales while keeping octillery lmao. Octillery functions as a solid answer to dugtrio, xatu, fire types, rock types, dewgong, and gloom. It also severely theatens pokemon like fearow and weezing, though you should also be wary of them. Getting worn down by spikes and maybe even catching a crit or boom can ruin octillery unfortunately, but usually it will do its job very well.
Ninetales @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Flamethrower
- Reflect
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
With a surprisingly great speed tier of base 100 coupled with great natural bulk and a decently strong flamethrower, ninetales makes for a great answer to pokemon like xatu, magnemite, flareon, gloom, and magmar. With the power of reflect and said aforementioned great speed tier ninetales can also act as a buffer for pokemon like primeape, fearow, and kingler, keeping their damage output lower and even threatening them directly with its flamethrowers. Main things ninetales has issues with are giving up the absolute freest entry to octillery and chinchou and also being quite bad into dugtrio and the rocks.
Chinchou @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Surf
- Thunder
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
Primarily here to be a wall to octillery who otherwise really bullies this team, chinchou synergizes excellently with xatu and ninetales. Chinchou is also a pain for a lot of offensive teams to switch into due to stab thunder hitting pretty much everything hard and a stab surf to go along with it for safety and to make sure dugtrio will pay if it tries to come in on chinchou every time. Chinchou is extremely frail outside of its resistances though, and in conjunction with the accuracy of thunder, prediction, and sleep talk rolls this thing can be really hit or miss.
Weezing @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Sludge Bomb
- Thunder
- Explosion
- Fire Blast
Absolute truck of an offensive force with those stats and its movepool, killing pretty much everything besides the rocks which can be worn down by spikes and aren’t great into octillery or chinchou. Massive physical defense stat and poison typing also allow it to be a premier answer to primeape and hitmonlee, the fighters I may or may not have been rambling indirectly about throughout the duration of this post (lol). The whopping physical bulk lets it not crumple to persian, fearow, or stantler and even threaten them back hard with its strong stab sludge bomb, thunder for fearow, and explosion. Thunder also allows weezing to be really potentially dangerous to opposing xatu trying to come in and scare weezing out, as well as massively damaging octillery and dewgong. In the last slot, I have fire blast here to make sure magnemite or pineco can’t do anything funny and make gloom cry more than it already does, though realistically it can definitely be hp grass or haze if you want.
ThreatlistPineco @ Miracle Berry
Ability: No Ability
- Spikes
- Explosion
- Rapid Spin
- Reflect
Pineco is a decently common lead, and for good reason. Miracle berry, good phys def, enough sp def to not be ohko’d unless by a fire move, and spikes and boom all combine to make pineco excellent at the top of the lineup. Miracle berry allows pineco to guaranteed set up spikes in front of hypnosis persian, another very common lead. The rest of the moves do about what you would expect them to.
Xatu @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
IVs: 26 Def
- Psychic
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
The king of gsc nu, xatu does pretty normal xatu things of both being an extremely important defensive presence and a powerful wallbreaker. Here, it namely helps to check fighters, stantler, weezing, and with hp ice, dugtrio. Honestly not really much productive I can say here, xatu is xatu.
Octillery @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
Just like xatu, another one of the most splashable and dominant pokemon in the tier but also the biggest source of headaches I had when trying to build this team around ninetales while keeping octillery lmao. Octillery functions as a solid answer to dugtrio, xatu, fire types, rock types, dewgong, and gloom. It also severely theatens pokemon like fearow and weezing, though you should also be wary of them. Getting worn down by spikes and maybe even catching a crit or boom can ruin octillery unfortunately, but usually it will do its job very well.
Ninetales @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Flamethrower
- Reflect
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
With a surprisingly great speed tier of base 100 coupled with great natural bulk and a decently strong flamethrower, ninetales makes for a great answer to pokemon like xatu, magnemite, flareon, gloom, and magmar. With the power of reflect and said aforementioned great speed tier ninetales can also act as a buffer for pokemon like primeape, fearow, and kingler, keeping their damage output lower and even threatening them directly with its flamethrowers. Main things ninetales has issues with are giving up the absolute freest entry to octillery and chinchou and also being quite bad into dugtrio and the rocks.
Chinchou @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Surf
- Thunder
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
Primarily here to be a wall to octillery who otherwise really bullies this team, chinchou synergizes excellently with xatu and ninetales. Chinchou is also a pain for a lot of offensive teams to switch into due to stab thunder hitting pretty much everything hard and a stab surf to go along with it for safety and to make sure dugtrio will pay if it tries to come in on chinchou every time. Chinchou is extremely frail outside of its resistances though, and in conjunction with the accuracy of thunder, prediction, and sleep talk rolls this thing can be really hit or miss.
Weezing @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Sludge Bomb
- Thunder
- Explosion
- Fire Blast
Absolute truck of an offensive force with those stats and its movepool, killing pretty much everything besides the rocks which can be worn down by spikes and aren’t great into octillery or chinchou. Massive physical defense stat and poison typing also allow it to be a premier answer to primeape and hitmonlee, the fighters I may or may not have been rambling indirectly about throughout the duration of this post (lol). The whopping physical bulk lets it not crumple to persian, fearow, or stantler and even threaten them back hard with its strong stab sludge bomb, thunder for fearow, and explosion. Thunder also allows weezing to be really potentially dangerous to opposing xatu trying to come in and scare weezing out, as well as massively damaging octillery and dewgong. In the last slot, I have fire blast here to make sure magnemite or pineco can’t do anything funny and make gloom cry more than it already does, though realistically it can definitely be hp grass or haze if you want.
As I'm sure is very apparent by how much I've mentioned dugtrio's antics and the presence of 3 ground weak pokemon on the team + xatu and pineco who are weak to rock slide, dugtrio can wipe this team if positioned really well later in the game and you don't or can't play well enough to stop it.
Same reasons as dugtrio pretty much, rock + ground is bad news for this team, but pupitar now has stab on its rock moves. At least chinchou outspeeds it unlike dugtrio.
This thing is absurdly scary for teams that lack normal resists such as this one, even if weezing can pull a few punches. The rest of the team is 2 or 3hkod by fearow, potentially leaving the game up to if fearow will die fast enough. Probably the main reason for not using this team and instead just using a balance team with an actual normal resist kek.
This mon is busted anyways but fwiw I think fearow is scarier than this since deer doesn't usually pack recovery moves and it lacks double edge.
If it hits both hypnoses vs pineco then you're gonna be in a pretty sketch position trying to switch into a fully healthy double edge spamming persian, but thankfully the odds to hit two 60% moves in a row isn't that high 
Often in games weezing ends up taking a lot of chip trying to switch into hits with its enormous bulk when there are spikes up on your side and late in the game primeape can just bust past weezing, and while xatu can take on primeape there's a lot of variance involved with speed ties and rock slide hits/flinches or thunder hits/paras, and if there's a houndour then primeape can really only be stopped by ninetales who isn't a particularly good stop to the monke.That's about it really, again shoutouts to Freezingpop for reigniting the flame under this team, Innovamania for giving some ideas and support even if they didn't end up working, and Dawn for always being a great gsc nu support and checking my teams to make sure they're good.
