July VGC Report

Hi guys today I am back with another monthly report to share with you guys, this time I’ll of course be first giving out my opinion on the NA Interntionals held in the beginning days of july as well as usually go through other experience of mine regarding VGC in this month, without further ado lets get started:

NA Internationals:

The final international championships or known or called out as the us national championships was held during june 30^th to july 2^nd this was a very hype type for the VGC fans as a lot of very memorab;e stream moments took place, my favorite and I a sure as many of yours’ too, Giovanni Costa’s Eevee team in round three on which dragonite got a win from a 1-4 situation which was marvelous, other players then again had really interesting tems, myfavorite part about a tournament in ofcourse the new pokemons or the metagame in it, so lets see some of them below:

·         The Set up based team of Tobias and Markus was very fun to watch I have seen bits and pieces of this team here and there but have never seen it lie in a tournament, similarly a variant of this team made it into the top cut of japan national championships, this was its first time in play and despite featuring pokemons like smeargle and porygon z in the team, it was even able to cut a bo3 tournament, also it had a bulk up tapu bulu which was quite a questionable variant for competitive play but this team showed how well it can perform.

·         Choice Scarf garchomp has always been labeled as a bo11 variant however players as big as Wolfe Glick and Paul Chua used it in the Internationals and it was even able to be on the runner up tea, defying the bad criticisms it gets from its haters.

·         Meta-call for nationals was probably The Rapu Bulu, Nihilego and Arcanine core, however some people made the Meta-Meta call and went with the Metagross a pokemon not seen for months in serious competitive action is able to combat this core very nicely, it was paired alongside with the bulldoze partner and given a weakness policy.

·         Surprising smeargles for me were quiet a big show even though they didn’t got a big spotlight, especially the somewhat never before seenchoice scarf smeargle was surprising and moves like mat block and instruct on it were quiet innovative to see as well.

·         This tournament also showed how well can some old teams work out even in this stage of the format, if gabriel’s success with acvery similrteam to wolfe’s in Sau Paulo wasn’t enough Ben brought his older team composition and cybertron’s San Jose team also made cut.

Teambuilding In July:

July was somehow unexpectedly a very slow a lazy month for me, the team I had I didn’t expect to use at all, despite this month bringing alt of new changes to my routine and other probs I didn’t had proper time to build out a team, this was strangely enough kind of a ‘a bit of this and a bit of that type of team, but worked out pretty well as well as had a lot of theory going into it, this team was modified after real testing so that’s something quite more progressive than hypothetical testing or changing for the teams and got pretty refined overall. The idea of this team started from me reading about the core of tapu bulu and koko which was really interesting to me at that time as well as me going through the pokedex to find mons with niche, lantern and umbreon were the ones I found out there, ad then well… the combination worked after a whole lot of moving to adjust things here and there.

The Team:

Umbreon @ Aguav Berry  Ability: Inner Focus  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD  Sassy Nature  - Moonlight  - Toxic  - Payback  - Curse	Tapu Koko @ Fairium Z  Ability: Electric Surge  Level: 50  EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe  Modest Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Volt Switch  - Dazzling Gleam  - Protect  - Discharge	Tapu Bulu @ Mago Berry  Ability: Grassy Surge  Level: 50  EVs: 244 HP / 84 Atk / 108 Def / 68 SpD / 4 Spe  Adamant Nature  IVs: 0 SpA / 29 Spe  - Protect  - Superpower  - Horn Leech  - Bulk Up
Celesteela @ Leftovers  Ability: Beast Boost  Level: 50  EVs: 196 HP / 172 Def / 4 SpA / 100 SpD / 36 Spe  Careful Nature  - Protect  - Leech Seed  - Heavy Slam  - Flamethrower	Arcanine @ Assault Vest  Ability: Intimidate  Level: 50  EVs: 244 HP / 4 Atk / 36 Def / 156 SpD / 68 Spe  Careful Nature  - Snarl  - Bulldoze  - Flare Blitz  - Extreme Speed	Lanturn @ Weakness Policy  Ability: Volt Absorb  Level: 50  EVs: 172 Def / 252 SpA / 84 SpD  Calm Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Ice Beam  - Thunderbolt  - Hydro Pump  - Protect

I have to start off with bragging about lanturn’s goodness here though the thing about lantern is its really good defensive typing in combination with really good defensive and tricky ability, I am quite surprised after using this team that no one was ever getting into giving lantern much of a spotlight at all. An with all that defensive aspect combined with a wide variet of useful coverage moves makes sure that it can beat pokemon like gyarados, tapu fini, tapu koko and more importantly arcanine and double ducks. Furthermore it can also take advantage of tapu koko’s electric surge to boost its offense and to get recovery back from it. Also fitting into form a fwg core alongside the obvious fantasy core on this team gives it a really solid ground to play on.

For the move choices, I choose to go with thunderbolt as general stab and ice beam for the pesky garchomps if I ever came to the situation of beating it with a lantern, protect is staple where hydro pump is quite questionable, I mainly chose this move to get rid of arcanines faster, since it didn’t have much to lose on accuracy against an arcanine, so a stronger move was a seemingly better choice.

The item choice fluctuated and more or less struggled much on this poor mon, I had sitrus berry but was thinking of replacing it with a pinch berry, the real problem arose in 1v1 scenarios where for some sitrus was giving the better end and for others pinch ones were more desirable. The entire point was of surviving and ko’ing back, where I also had bulldoze on my arcanine and a passive answer to trick room in umbreon the self bulldoze combination with the late game 1v1 situations could really benefit much to lanturn with tapu koko taking up the job of recovery.

Then comes umbreon I generally do feel like synergistically umbreon is a bit off of this team but works really well as a single unit itself taking side advantage from pokemons like celesteela, tapu bulu and arcanine. Umbreon seems to me as a 2in 1 pokemon with my desires or wishes of a late game staller to have curse like snorlax and recovery like recover furthermore toxic and an attacking move to give umbreon the upper hand is just amazing, whenever I am usually thinking of using such a pokemon that is dedicated for a part to take to late game stalling, I think of to be able to beat other’s like p2, lax and celesteela 90% of the time, with toxic and offense it takes out p2 and snorlax whereas curse + recovery helps against celesteela sets. Umbreon can also set up easily against the drifblim + tapu lele combination.

Umbreon wasn’t for that only being able to act as a pokemon that can take the time to sit on te field or take into switches especially for tapu lele offense is quite impressive of it as well. I really did want to test out other items as well but since celesteela was holding lefties it was hard to consider much but a pinch berry which works just fine

Yes taking in back a fairium z tapu koko because really it works here. And thanks to lightcore’s report for shining the light on how good is volt switch actually, tapu koko really had to hold a fairum z onto itself because the threat of garchomp was much more than real on this team, also thanks to nobody using fairium z koko in this metagame that it is a good surprise factor as well and also allows it to ohko opposing tapu koko. The modest nature allows me to ohko the av garchomp sets that tendn to survive timid fairium z

Hello guys mr. I can’t play celesteela here! Yes I still claim I am a very dumb celesteela layer but there is quite something about it that gives me the charm, mainly its impressive offense even when being really simple and predictable as well as pivotal switching ability is just the best in this metagame, also being the big answer to nihilego on this very nihilego weak team is an important role of it.

Arcanine is interesting or I think so for carrying the move bulldoze with my this team having standardish metamons, I had to go for a speed control move and that came in the form of arcanine’s bulldoze.this bulky spread allows arcanine to live a pheromosa’s z-focus blast which immensely helps against the triple ub matchup.

Tapu Bulu on this team was quite a strange pokemon I was thinking about replacing t but its consistency in the form of grassy terrain and support couldn’t be overlooked after trying out various different sets tapu bulu didn’t seem to carry its own weight then I finally gave a consideration to a bulk up variant and that exactly does the job, usually tapu bulu is this pokemon that just sits around on the field and stalls about until it faces threats like celesteela and arcanine, but bulk up gives significant offensive and defensive presence against them.

(Note: since I didn’t got much time to build this team up the spreads are standardish and not complex, sorry I’ll try to improve this team heading into august maybe.

A Look Into BSD:

So as the discussion whirls in the community a lot of people tend to think that bsd will be the new pokemon vgc format, like them I also feel so, and am heading into trying out bsd myself so far from me its been tons of fun you’ll have to keep up with some sort of team report coming out of that.

Conclusion:

His has been a very slow month for me regarding vgc as u may notice I have completely missed on the Liverpool regionals, hopefully heading into the format I can improve myself and my teams, hopefully you guys enjoyed this post and liked going through it, I’ll be back with more, bye for now!