I started by checking if any of the letters would restrict me in choice of Pokémon regarding diversity. "G" only has 4 eligible abilities, Grass pelt and Gooey being completely useless even on Gogoat and Goodra, and i refuse to use an ability on a 'mon that always is the inferior choice. I was left with Gale Wings and Guts, and while Linda is cool Guts gave me the most options to choose from.
Conkeldurr was my first pick out of all possible
Guts users, simply because it is amazing right now. The BU set is incredibly difficult for standard-ish balance builds to deal with and it has the potential to single-handedly dismantle stall. However, Conkeldurr is slow and is susceptible to a number of threats including but not limited to Choice Specs Sylveon, Nasty Plot Celebi, LO Tornadus and offensive Crobat. In other words: I needed a Steel type.
I checked the list of Steel Pokémon that have an eligible ability and found Metagross and Registeel with
Clear Body. I needed a solid check to all of the aforementioned threats, and considering that they are commonly paired with CB Krookodile, I decided to go with the bulkier route and picked Registeel, which isn't easily trapped by Krook, especially if it runs Protect. Still, Registeel has no recovery outside of Leftovers so I decided to pair it with Wish support.
Obviously my first thought was to add support Sylveon to the team, but since Cute Charm is just a gimmick compared to Pixilate, I decided to stand by my principle of not using inferior abilities. Additionally I already had a Pokémon with an ability that starts with the letter "C". I found Aromatisse, which can act as a Wish passer, has a cleric option in Aromatherapy and possesses the ability
Aroma Veil, which happened to fulfill another criteria of the challenge, so I went with it. At this point the team was rather slow and still needed hazard control. I did what I always find myself doing in this scenario and ...
... added Crobat. Not only does Crobat add another letter to the mix with its ability
Infiltrator; it also helps to relieve pressure from Aromatisse as the sole Fighting check, adds a Ground immunity and most importantly gives me an option to outspeed and pressure NP Celebi. When I checked the team for weaknesses, I discovered a noticeable weakness to Fire; Entei would be a real pain to face. Additionally, Gyarados just plowed through the team.
Milotic gives this team a solid answer to Entei, Mega Swampert, Mamoswine and Gyarados, as well as stopping any set up attempts with Haze. Milotic's ability,
Marvel Scale, also completed the challenge to spell MAGIC with the first letters of 5 out of the 6 abilities on the team. At last I was able to pick a wildcard for the team, that would help to fix its last few issues.
It was no easy choice but I ultimately decided on Choice Scarf Hydreigon. It gave me another Ground immunity and good type resistances all around (especially for Electric and Ghost), speed control to revenge kill faster threats like Mega Aerodactyl and a reasonably hard hitter from the special side.
And there you have it:
... or so you might think.
At this point you might have already noticed that this is not the exact team from the sprites at the very beginning of my post, and it's true: This isn't the final version of the team. I intented to test with this version but The Immortal had already put up the suspect test ladder where Hydreigon was no longer allowed. Since I hadn't tested the team yet and I was planning to get reqs anyway, I decided to modify the team to be eligible on the suspect ladder.
(
) →
(
)
The easiest way to fix the team would have been to chose a different wildcard since I already had a potent "MAGIC" core. And that is indeed what I started with: As a replacement for Hydreigon I decided on Choice Scarf
Moxie Krookodile. It doesn't provide as many resistances and isn't as bulky as Hydreigon, but it does give the team an immunity to Electric type attacks, most importantly blocking Volt Switch, and it opens up the possibility of trapping Ghost/Psychic types with Pursuit, which is very much appreciated by Conkeldurr. While Choice Band is the most common item choice on Krookodile, I feel like this team needs the speed that Choice Scarf provides, especially when facing offensive builds, and Moxie can also be a win condition.
→
I could have stopped after I replaced Hydreigon with Krookodile but I decided to also replace Registeel with Bronzong. The teams sole Ground immunity was now Crobat which I don't like to rely on, particularly because it is weak to Ground when recovering with Roost and because it is the teams hazard control. Bronzong also improves this teams match up versus Mamoswine. I decided to run Protect over an additional coverage move to ease prediction versus Choice locked 'mons, especially CB Krookodile.
(Marvel Scale
) →
(Competitive
)
Unfortunately, with the replacement of Registeel and its ability Clear Body, the team now lacked the letter "C". Thankfully Milotic sports a second ability that is just as viable as Marvel Scale (imo), being
Competitive. Since I replaced the teams only "hard" special hitter Hydreigon, this ability is actually appreciated because it can boost Milotics solid SpA by two stages when switching in to a predicted Defog or when coming in on a double switch on an Intimidate user (Gyara, Krook and Arcanine for example!). It doesn't happen too often but since a burned or poisoned Milotic doesn't check the 'mons it is supposed to check too well anymore, I found myself using Aromatherapy most of the time anyway.
Finally, here we are with the complete team: