https://pokepast.es/3cee6fa7e74339d1
The inspiration for this team came after getting bodied by Kingambit when I was using another rain team in the 1700s. What was particularly infuriating to me about this match is my opponent wasn’t particularly prepared for rain and had zero water resists, yet every time I got a kill with Floatzel or Basculegion he would send in gambit and tear my team apart.
This was shortly after the volc and watershifu bans and it was becoming clear to me just how good gambit was becoming. I knew I needed a reliable plan to beat it late game if I wanted to consistently win.
I decided to test out Tauros-Aqua because I remembered people effectively used it to deal with Chien-Pao pre-home:
Haters will say Tauros is horseshit but don’t listen to them. There is certainly a place in the meta for something that can take advantage of the presence of tusk and gambit while also being a solid check to bax.
Bulk Up is necessary to best check gambit (always bulk up while it teras) and I chose to maximize speed and attack to outspeed jolly bax/tusk and take advantage of rain boosted Raging Bulls. I usually keep Tauros healthy for late game to deal with Gambit (use Zap for Gambit early on), which has good synergy for cleaning since Basculegion and Samurott-H wear down water resists throughout the match, making a late game sweep even more likely.
The final move is a toss-up between Trailblaze, Aqua Jet, and Zen Headbutt. Trailblaze makes a sweep more likely, Aqua Jet fucks with Gambit sucker punches (yes it will still sometimes big dick this team no matter how prepared I am for it) and gives me an option for revenge killing outside of choice users and Zen Headbutt helps with pex/amoongus/water absorb clod. If using zen headbutt, I would also consider wave crash > raging bull; together they make Tauros notably harder to switch into (functioning more as a breaker than cleaner) as wave crash gives it more oomph and zen headbutt covers what would like to switch into wave crash. Earthquake also gets a special mention for hitting pex and clod harder than zen Headbutt with 100% accuracy, but missing out on Amoonguss.
I don’t tera Tauros often, but I initially chose Fairy since it’s generally a good defensive typing, doesn’t share weaknesses with water/fighting, and still resists sucker punch. However, I recently switched to Tera electric (with trailblaze) to setup on Zapdos, who this team struggles with.
There is a case to be made for Quaquavel > Tauros, especially since this team lacks hazard removal. However, the duck needs roost to effectively run a bulk up set, so rapid spin is hard to fit imo. Plus Taurus’s base 100 speed notably gives it the jump on bax, tusk, sam-h, and lando-t (opposed to quaquavel’s base 85). Regardless, given my success with Tauros here I think the duck in general would be effective in this meta.
Also don’t forget you can use Raging Bull to fuck with screen HO.
From experience, I’ve found Hurricane better than Surf. I run minimum speed on Pelipper for slow U-turns and the special def is to always survive specs Valiant Moonblast.
I often lead Pelipper unless I see a Glimmora lead, in which case I go with Gholdengo. I almost always U-turn turn 1 (if they lead Garg/Pex go for Knock Off).
This team has a bad matchup against strong special attackers, particularly specs valiant/pult. These can be pretty scary until you know their sets, and sometimes when they lead vs. Pelipper I tera turn 1. I know this sounds like an awful strategy, but sometimes it’s the best course of action. Momentum is really important for this team and if the overall team matchup is favorable to me, sometimes tera-ing turn 1 to have Rain and momentum (or surprise kill Valiant) is actually worth it believe it or not.
I run Jolly on Basc since nothing else on my team can outspeed booster energy valiant, which actually makes Basc both weaker and slower than Floatzel. However, I prefer Basc > Float for two reasons:
1) Ghost typing gives immunity to Dragonite’s espeed (also emergency spin block) and 2) Head Smash usually gets the OHKO on Water Absorb Volcanion, while Floatzel’s Ice Spinner doesn’t OHKO Water Absorb Clod. In other words, Floatzel needs to correctly predict twice to beat it’s respective Water Absorber, while Basc only needs to predict correctly once.
Anyway, Basc is the primary breaker on this team. I use it early game to make progress, but admittedly it’s a bit matchup reliant. It’s usually very good at making progress unless the opponent has a water absorber, wwake, or a combination of physically defensive amoongus and pex. In these matchups getting spikes down with Samurott-H early is especially important.
Finally, psychic fangs could be used for amoongus/pex/clodsire.
I’ve really been liking scarf samurott. This team appreciates it almost always being able to switch into gholdengo/pult (watch out for specs draco) and threaten the OHKO with ceaseless edge while simultaneously putting down spikes.
Aqua cutter with sharpness and rain hits surprisingly hard, and can punish opponents who don’t use their water resist to check Samurott-H. This is good for wearing them down for Basc/Tauros and vice versa also applies - thus, samurott can be a solid cleaner late game with scarf if need be.
Sacred Sword is mainly for other samurott and gambit, while Knock Off is a 100% accurate dark stab that can come in handy as well.
Not much more to say about samurott, but I sometimes sack it early game to get extra spikes down and do extra damage to water resists and that’s worked well enough so far.
Razor Shell could be used over Aqua Cutter to give samurott more wallbreaking potential (notably with the def drop) at the cost of 5% accuracy
Gholdengo found it’s way onto this team since I’ve been using physically defensive dengo on a lot of teams since home dropped. This checks a ton of dangerous breakers - Sneasler, zama, dnite, bax, sometimes valiant, Enamorus, and probably some others I’m probably forgetting.
I used covert cloak at a time, but air balloon really comes in handy for dnite/bax/enamorus (s/o to Ursaluna too) so it’s the preferable option. It also gives me a slightly better matchup vs tusk so I can keep samurott’s spikes up for longer.
Amoongus and pex can also be annoying for this team, and dengo can repeatedly switch into them all game thanks to recover. Dengo also helps me a lot vs fatter teams (don’t underestimate shadow ball sp def drops to force stuff like Dozo out) and usefully most teams rely on gambit for their shadow ball switch-in, which Zap, Tauros, and even Pelipper can deal with early game.
Speed evs are for jolly gambit and a few extra points for anything else trying to also creep it. Tera flying in case I really need to beat tusk to keep spikes up.
I’m not sure why I initially chose to max Zapdos’s defenses and not invest in speed at all, but I assume it’s cuz of all the dangerous physical attackers in the meta rn that Zapdos can check. Off the top of my head this includes Sneasler, Zama (if Tera electric intimidate —> dengo), dnite, valiant, gambit, and tusk.
This list certainly overlaps with what dengo checks, but all these mons are just that dangerous rn and teams often have multiple of them, so dengo and zap take the pressure off each other and allow me to stall my opponents progress long enough so I can "win first".
Besides being bulkier, not investing in speed also make Zapdos a good slow pivot with Volt Switch. This is especially true because many teams use tusk for their ground, which will not be switching into Zap, so you can take advantage of Zap consistently getting Volt Switch off in those matchups.
Despite no sp atk investment, Thunder and Hurricane are high powered stabs that deal decent damage and can spread para and confusion, so like dengo, Zapdos can situationally make progress in matches too.
Finally, tera ghost is specifically for zama. Crunch does hit Zap super effective, but you can stall for static (if it doesn't tera electric) or use tauros's intimidate to reduce Crunch damage in a real pinch.
Edit: It's come to my attention that a set of 248 hp, 244+ def, 16 spe is a better spread to outspeed neutral natures volcanion and breloom
Conclusion:
Thanks for reading this far if you made it here. I’ll admit this team has a lot of glaring weaknesses (particularly strong special attackers), and that a lot of games come down to “winning first”.
However, I think it’s fair to say Rain as a playstyle generally struggles to check all of the top threats in a meta compared to other playstyles. In my opinion, this is why many successful rain teams are more hyper offense oriented, but as you can see my team is not (Zap, dengo, and Pelipper all being heavily defensively invested).
What makes my team successful in spite of this is I have plenty of answers to Dragonite and Kingambit. These are two common and effective pokemon that would be good in the meta even if rain never existed, and thus are often included on teams as a rain check without even explicitly being there for that purpsose. Therefore, this team can take full advantage of Basculegion drowning even some of the bulkiest water resists (eg pex), without falling victim some of rain’s most frequent checks.
Furthermore, wave crash + tera + Basculegion buffed rain to the point it can muscle through non-immunes dracovish style, my team not being as dependent on rain being active as traditional rain teams, and being well-prepared for the super centralizing Kingambit end games also contributed to this team’s success.
Replays:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1889341071-wharo6kqvcxzqjxdfa535zx7p69rdixpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1889618479-d3tdzqmkeec7gh8ozdhng5nxsqsqw26pw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1888181405-c5csuitm2idezix9mt9iou4md43h1eupw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1888569481-tluvb5njyck8tb7xsr97mic4yoresj9pw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1889627325-lotvhs4gzizz9uaq7qj8yx1f72u2ja6pw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1887336022-p3nujafup400eifl4o0ixdvhwx8pvofpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1886749803-pcjpv4ktn9bqoxywf6p49n4uqlivdajpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1886165157-hwnyve57dstu75zwiivxuvd4d8uncjspw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1885790663-l2mkdfr5yymi457em4l1lkivfppt5lwpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1884823722-ar32x52bitemwjpwvk3rpn5auvm34ucpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-1884800250-28xnnmzfrxn7cb18kb6ccpoi0tekxmdpw
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