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Dem Dragon Duo : VGC16 Teambuild

Hi guys today I am back featuring another great tea I put together some time ago, apologies for this team’s report being delayed as I also had some other teams’ write-up to catch up to, but finally I’m here to share the team with you. The title promises a dragon duo to be expected in the team, these two would be palkia and rayquaza. Without spoiling anything else I’ll head right into analyses of this team for you guys.

Teambuilding process, Base ideas and theme:
So lets first discuss how I got to build such a crazy team. Having to see palkia all around and how well it counters primal was amazing, it’s typing is literally the best typing to counter those where it can 4x resist the STAB attacks coming from the primal with boosted weather effect and take them as almost no damage; this was good enough to let me consider bringing palkia. The original restricted duo I choose was rayquaza and palkia, with landorus to go with palkia; team preview tricks were something I had in mind that I could take advantage of it in Bo1 greatly.
As I say team preview tricks I talk none other than faking a trick room mode on my team, which forces my opponents to bring out their slower pokemons on the field and then get nuked my actually what is a fast team. Palkia being popularized as a trick room user could do the job, with some mons in the back to trick my opponents.

The Team:



Palkia @ Assault Vest  
Ability: Telepathy  
Level: 50  
EVs: 4 HP / 20 Def / 228 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe  
Timid Nature  
- Spacial Rend  
- Hydro Pump  
- Flamethrower  
- Earth Power

First up to discuss is the amazing palkia i had, and if you think I don’t make sense running such a variant, here’s my reasoning: palkia has an amazing speed stat, which totals 100 speed, that could make it outspeed the primal 100% of the time as well as xereas and potentially a 50-50 counter on kangaskhan as well, which felt great, also it could outspeed rayquaza on turn one of it’s mega evolution. The idea of pairing up pakia with rayquaza was because of it’s really helpful ability air lock, and also palkia’s wide variety of moves in it’s movepool on the special spectrum; had to do it! Water and fire coverage palkia seems 100% unreliable but it works 100% with a partner side rayquaza switch in, where palkia can one shot a primal groudon and also KO a ferrothorn, scizor or even a mawile partnered alongside kyogre on the field. So I’d say that palkia’s moveset goes really well with air lock. Spacial rend is obvious for strong dragon stab to get off general damage on mons, earth power is for those emergency situations to hit mega mawile, as well as for dialgia which could threaten my dragon duo easily. A fun experience with a fast palkia was when some people didn’t bother to protect their rayquaza’s turn one of m-evolution whereas I was able to get off a KO on them with ease. The item choice of assault vest? Here’s why: I could run life orb to get more damage with such moves, however palkia couldn’t beat things like mega salamence or faster m-rayquaza’s in life orb, assault vest was the perfect item that allowed me to survive those attacks as well as be bulky than a usual fast palkia, 2x intimidators on my team also help out palkia’s somewhat weaker in comparison, physical defenses.



Mawile-Mega @ Mawilite  
Ability: Intimidate  
Level: 50  
EVs: 252 HP / 68 Atk / 140 Def / 12 SpD / 36 Spe  
Careful Nature  
- Iron Head  
- Play Rough  
- Sucker Punch  
- Protect

Mawile was my favorite mega as the season started as it had the potential to stop soo much. In here the choice of mawile insures a slot to create the illusion for the team being a trick room one, but it isn’t one at all. As you will observe that my mawile is a non negating speed nature. It’s spread looks somewhat bulky with the careful nature, this makes a really specific calculation. This bulk allows me to live a water spout coming from a full hp kyogre with the sucker punch damage applied, this calculation isn’t much bulky but can help a lot against a very weakened kyogre, I also liked having some bulk against opposing xerneases as mawile seemed to be my only option under the head of actual offense done to xerneas. Mawile was also very effective when allowed to take dragon attacks for my dragon duo to nothing. I didn’t added any significant speed to my mawile as I had other ways to deal with opposing mawiles in my palkia as a first.



Amoonguss @ Sitrus Berry  
Ability: Regenerator  
Level: 50  
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD  
Bold Nature  
- Grass Knot  
- Clear Smog  
- Spore  
- Rage Powder

Next up is the mushroom mon, amoonguss. Amoonguss is another mon that makes the team screams a trick room mode, but nope :P my amoonguss isn’t the most standard one either, the choice of the move clear smog over the move protect makes it such a mon. so why exactly clear smog? Didn’t I had mawile to take care of any xerneases around in the format; the truth for me is that xerneases should never be left unchecked, clearly an opponent is smart enough to take out mawile and get back into xerneas to set-up and sweep, should I intentionally leave out an option to control xerneas? Never ever, atleast for an anxious person like me; clear smog does the job finely; the best part is that it works over my thundurus’ paralyses. I choose a specially defensive spread as I had 2x intimidaters and amoonguss really needs to survive those kyogre ice beams in serious situations. Sitrus berry’s choice insures good survival against kangaskhan’s attacks in absence of some physical defense.



Rayquaza-Mega @ Focus Sash  
Ability: Delta Stream  
Level: 50  
Shiny: Yes  
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe  
Jolly Nature  
- Dragon Ascent  
- Extreme Speed  
- Swords Dance  
- Protect

Oh rayquaza, who knew you’d become my favorite after using this team, I’ll say it again, rayquaza is my favorite restricted slot option in this format. And especially the sash variant, which I always thought was stupid, so let’s just explain that as a first. Focus sash looks like a bad item however it can do much better than a life orb one, especially for me, it is more of a defensive item for a rayquaza to hold. Focus sash rayquaza can 1v1 a lot of things that straight up threaten it’s orbed variant, let’s start with switch ins, it’s pretty obvious that you will pull in your rayquaza in a situation when it helps you out the most, your opponent launches the ice move in that slot, and it’s gone, but not the sash variant which survives the move and then still can do a lot in the upcoming turn. Next up is the phenomenal advantage it takes against xer and kyogre, I’d guarantee that it can 1v1 a geomancy set-up xerneas with it’s focus sash intact, firstly it uses a dragon ascent to bring xern down to it’s sash, then goes the extreme speed to get the ko, similarly with kyogre, it can get up a swords dance and then come back with a ko on p-ogre. I just loved this set and it’s usage, and as discussed before it’s main importance is the use of it’s air lock to ko some pretty big mons in the metagame.



Thundurus @ Leftovers  
Ability: Prankster  
Level: 50  
EVs: 164 HP / 20 Def / 4 SpA / 252 SpD / 68 Spe  
Calm Nature  
- Thunderbolt  
- Substitute  
- Taunt  
- Thunder Wave

Last two slots are picked up by the dynamic duo, you’ve guessed them when we say dynamic, we say the geni duo, I’ve played this duo before and it’s contributions fit right into this team I have been building with the first two mons, thundurus can do a lot of my supportive work as well as gets really good support from it. I feel like in this format thundurus is the best flying type all around and with this team with the given support of rayquaza, both it’s air lock for opposing flying types in strong winds, as well as defensive support for itself in my own rayquaza’s strong winds, most of all thundurus can handle talonflame really well which is a threat to my amoonguss, against, I do have a specially defensive one and you have heard of the reason why. My thundurus looks also crazy for running a substitute, this is for the sake of more counters to amoonguss, smeargle and for the sake of moves like eruption and water spout also to scout out my opponent’s movesets and create more room for my thundurus in tough situations.


Landorus-Therian @ Life Orb  
Ability: Intimidate  
Level: 50  
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe  
Jolly Nature  
- Explosion  
- Rock Slide  
- Protect  
- Earthquake

Here comes the flying kappa monster, levitating to be real, but who cares. The funny thing about the choice of landorus in the last slot that it was actually planned to be the first pokemon to be chose on the team as I decided palkia with telepathy to make it up with landorus’ explosion and earthquake. It finally came into the team and effectively. Now something I need to talk about landorus in this format, this is the only format in which landorus’ original speed stat of base 91 actually comes into play. The fact that it is able to move before both primal by outspeeding them with one stat point is great, also some other restricted legends common somewhat like ho-oh and dialga are base 90 speed stat mons, so it can get tons of good damage off on them with landorus. The fact that I choose a life orb variant was that because I didn’t had a life orb mon on my team and with landorus, a mon with tons of spread moves, a life orb fits in nicely and is a proven staple item for this mon.

Conclusion:

So guys this would be it for my team, hope you guys liked this team and will give it a try. Bye for now!

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