SV OU Take It Easy - Iron Leaves BO ft. Banded Tusk

[Zsedqam]

Started with the core of choice band iron Leaves, toxapex kingambit.

Needed a hazard remover so I obviously went with great tusk since it's the most reliable rapid spinner at the moment.

Looking at the team I immediately noticed that I was going to struggle against opposing great tusks. Washtom provides the ground immunity that this team needs as well as puts pressure on tusk.

Originally volcarona was the last Mon on this team. I need a special attacker which was immune to burns and could weaken tusk. As I was testing the team I found that I was "greatly" relying on tusk to come in on attacks and remove hazards all the team without anyway to heal.

Insert hatterene It can come in on tons of hazards setters in the current meta and bounce back theirs hazards making it so I don't have to rely on great tusk nearly as much.

THE TEAM:

GRASS IS GREEN (Iron Leaves) @ Booster Energy
Ability: Quark Drive
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Sacred Sword
- Psyblade
- Trailblaze
This team is centered around Iron leaves, which I was originally planning to use choice band with it. As I was testing the team it became apparent that the choice lock was hurting me much more than helping. So I changed it to a booster energy SD set instead. Iron leaves is our cleaner for this team, so weakening pokemon like corviknight and hatterene will be the key to winning games.

SUBTLE MISTAKES (Toxapex) @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Regenerator
Shiny: Yes
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 252 HP / 144 Def / 112 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Surf
- Toxic
- Haze
- Recover
Typical toxapex set for coming in on volcarona and other threads to Iron leaves. Covert cloak greatly eases the pressure against garganacl that steamrolls through rotom-wash and kingambit with salt cure. Toxapex also is a great for switching in on the devious walking wake and its attacks and healing away the damage with regenerator and recover.

DON EMILO (Kingambit) @ Leftovers
Ability: Supreme Overlord
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 144 HP / 252 Atk / 112 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Kowtow Cleave
- Low Kick / Iron head
- Sucker Punch
Kingambit is our hazard setter for this team. Low kick is great for killing opposing kingambit's that threaten Iron leaves with sucker punch and kowtow while dealing adequate damage to great tusk. Keep in mind this also makes kingambit more vulnerable to iron valiant, scream tail and glimmora.

TUSK ACT 4 (Great Tusk) @ Choice Band
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Ice Spinner / Knock Off
- Close Combat
- Headlong Rush
- Rapid Spin
Great tusk is our primary breaker. Tusk was originally bulk up but the immediate choice band boost makes great tusk a huge threat against the now very popular sun teams. I'm still deciding whether to run ice spinner or knock off, but running ice spinner makes to much easier to deal with dragonite and tera flying kingambit.

UPGRADE (Rotom-Wash) @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
Shiny: Yes
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpA
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunder Wave / Will-O-Wisp
- Hydro Pump
- Volt Switch
- Protect
Rotom-wash is a great mon defensive pivot that threatens great tusk with its STAB hydro pump. Since baxcalibur is now rising in usage again thunder wave feels much better than will-o-wisp because of baxcaliburs thermal exchange immunity against burn. Thunder wave can also can be great for paralyzing volcaronas and kingambits then pivoting on them with volt switch and sending out great tusk.

NUANCE (Hatterene) @ Eject Button
Ability: Magic Bounce
Shiny: Yes
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 248 HP / 116 Def / 144 Spe
Bold Nature
- Nuzzle
- Healing Wish
- Psychic
- Draining Kiss / Dazzling Gleam
Hatterene allows us to put pressure on a lot of hazard setters in the metagame while bouncing back unwanted hazards. Eject button is great for pivoting on offensive threats and bring out breakers that can force them out. Healing wish is great for giving potential sweepers another chance to clean for us.

PokePaste:
https://pokepast.es/a1a8d3665ae25c77

Threat List:

Gholdengo is very popular at the moment and it's very unforunate that its a threat but, the fact that it can ohko hatterene with make it rain and walls Iron leaves makes it very bad to up against, especially if kingambit has been killed.

Great tusk is a threat to every team right now with an absurd 57% usage. Tusk threats toxapex and kingambit with earthquake or headlong rush as well as tanks tons of hits from iron leaves and hits hard back with ice spinner or knock off.

The typical kingambit set of SD, kowtow, sucker and iron head threatens Iron leaves and hatterene




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[LOOR]

hi, iron leaves is pretty cool and i feel it has a lot of potential in the meta moving forward. im going do this rate in three ish parts, first is minor changes, second is major changes, and third is misc which are changes so small they arent worth explaining too much. as you mentioned gholdengo is pretty hard to deal with in the teams current state which is not good for a team featuring iron leaves and I feel theres some aspects of the build that can be improved on to make it generally more cohesive into the current meta that doesnt change a lot. another general thing is that this team is pretty painfully slow right now, your only form of speed control is iron leaves but leaves is very slow compared to the typical speed control. to reiterate, this team is fundamentally not bad but there's a few things that can change within the team to make it match up better into the meta

minor changes

current set ->

i actually like this leaves set and its possible to leave it as is, however, i find these items have a little more utility on leaves when comes to the long term of the game. boots is pretty self-explanatory as you are playing a pretty hazard weak team and it allows you to ignore hazards to keep longevity. life orb does eventually kill you, however, leaves is relatively squishy compared to other booster abusers and will likely be forced out at some point so keeping some form of damage buff over the whole game is helpful. theres also a shit ton of status in the tier currently so lum berry is another option to keep the wincon alive. If you want to use leaves as more of a breaker than a late game wincon id also suggest Leaf Blade > Trailblaze but thats completely preference and i've done the remainder of the rate with the wincon set in mind. Iron leaves also does get CC which is a superior option to sword, however, i understand not wanting to get dropped by cc in some cases.

OR you can also choose to ignore all i said above and run a speed boost energy set like the one HERE which is an option id still considerably better than the current set. theres other potential teras you can run but these just come to mind

(breaker) -> (defensive)

this could be considered a major change, however, role compression-wise this makes more sense in the current build. taking rocks off of gambit is huge for some matchups as you'll see in a minute and not being choice locked gives you some more options to spin. defensively tusk checks a lot but notably it helps vs non tera fairy tera blast kingambits which you mentioned you struggled with.



really easy change here, now that we have made tusk defensive we no longer have a need for low kick on gambit nor do we need rocks as we have that on tusk as well. we need another soft check for valiant & ghold so i made the gambit tera fire w/ max hp.

set

Kingambit @ Leftovers
Ability: Supreme Overlord
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Kowtow Cleave
- Iron Head
- Sucker Punch

major changes

->

in the teams current state after my adjustments, the team lacks a notable breaker and speed control. the mon that excels the best in both of these roles is dragapult. specs tera dragon pult cooks a lot of defensive cores that are potent at the moment. I'd run modest if you're running speed boosting booster energy, though if you're running anything else id just run timid. dragapult also forms a voltturn core with rotom which can help get leaves and gambit in. Pult also is a ghost type which is incredibly valuable in this meta and most teams are running at least one, while its not necessarily needed on a team that is only using rocks, it feels pretty beneficial to have here. pult puts a lot of pressure on threats you were having issues with as well such as ghold, tusk and chipping gambit over time. you might have to do some positioning to get around these but thats just how pult plays.

misc

psychic -> fairy + possible spread changes

fairy helps pivot around bax, wake and valiant better while just generally being more annoying to deal with as it is a superior defensive typing, i'd highly recommend doing this and im including it in my final pastes. an option you can run on pex is invested more into spdef, i typically run 160 spdef 96 def rest hp with a bold nature when i went to be more spdef invested

consider trying np 2 atks protect or wisp

you're right when you say thunder wave feels more useful atm then wisp but it has some merit still, however, this is not necessary at all imo. np 2atks will help you with the corv fat mu if you start struggling with that but the current set is more than fine. both of these are completely optional

heres the pastes of finished products you can play around with and see what you like. if theres any concern or questions feel free to reach out to me


https://pokepast.es/29a8772947cf6045
https://pokepast.es/1b5bfa9dc4cdca0b

its pretty late so sorry if i forgot anything in the pastes that i mentioned lol