October VGC Report Part 1

                Hi guys today I am back to share the exiting experiences regarding VGC of mine in the month of October. This  time something good happened, or atleast as I think that something did, when I desired to make my very own triple ultra beast + smeargle team and then the idea fused with more or less of a hard trick room team, this was somewhat very interesting. Without further ado lets get into the report:

Teambuilding Process:

I started off with choosing an ultra beast paired with smeargle, nihilego was something I wanted to centralize this team especially as nihilego is a pokemon a started to build a team around and couldn’t succeed very well that is why I was trying it out this time as it seemed like a solid start towards a new team. Htr was one of those to other teams to build a I had on my mind, as I tried to complete my triple ultra beast trio, I put around it a celesteela as I know that nihilego and celesteela go well together and then a buzzwole as well, I am familiar with smeargle + pheromosa being a thing however I like to use buzzwole for some flexibility on this team knowing how well it complements a team with nihilego on it as they can both cover up on a big chunk of this metagame. At this point I had the idea of turnin g this team into a hard trick room team. Since celesteela and buzzwole were relatively slow and nihilego could carry trick room, I rounded off this team by the classic and now somewhat considered less viable duo of araquanid and porygon 2. The team felt like after the triple ultra beast combination that it was more or less very weak to a lot of elements in this metagame. However constant pressureand dynamismthat araquanid and prygon 2’s reliability could provide stabilized this team very well.

Importance of nihilego and buzzwole under trick room:

This importance had a key role in whenever I played the games ith this team, that usually this duo cannot handle the on-field combination of arcanine and garchomp despite having the ohko options available on both of them, hoever under trick room this is much more accessible.

The Team:

Nihilego @ Life Orb  Ability: Beast Boost  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA  Modest Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Sludge Bomb  - Power Gem  - Trick Room  - Protect	Smeargle @ Choice Scarf  Ability: Own Tempo  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 Spe  Timid Nature  - Fake Out  - Spore  - Mat Block  - After You	Celesteela @ Assault Vest  Ability: Beast Boost  Level: 50  EVs: 188 HP / 4 Atk / 60 Def / 68 SpA / 188 SpD  Quiet Nature  - Flamethrower  - Heavy Slam  - Air Slash  - Giga Drain
Araquanid @ Waterium Z  Ability: Water Bubble  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def  Adamant Nature  IVs: 0 Spe  - Liquidation  - Protect  - Bug Bite  - Wide Guard	Buzzwole @ Fightinium Z  Ability: Beast Boost  EVs: 20 HP / 84 Atk / 4 Def / 252 SpD / 148 Spe  Adamant Nature  - Superpower  - Protect  - Ice Punch  - Poison Jab	Porygon2 @ Eviolite  Ability: Download  Level: 50  EVs: 244 HP / 12 SpA / 252 SpD  Sassy Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Ice Beam  - Thunderbolt  - Trick Room  - Recover

Nihilego was absolutely my favorite part of this team, without any doubts. The bulk and slight bit of offense means a whole lot for it, nihilego with this amount of bulk was able to carry out that little bit of damage on its opponents that I always felt was somewhat missing, moreover the extra bulk allows it to fair off surprisingly well against the tapu pokemons. Its still a bit speedy and the weird speed tier it falls into is hard to catch up to however once the relative speeds are found of the nihilego and the opponents’ pokemons, playing it with under trick room or without trick room is always effective and fun.

Smeargle is something that I finally used in VGC after hating it oh so much, with this pokemon having any moves it wants to have I felt as if this could prove very much effective for its success. Fake out spore (oh dark void I miss you) accompanied with scarf and moves like mat block and after you give it a whole load o importance I felt it was good to sometimes have something speedy in a relatively slow team like this one was good, mat lock could allow for the easy setting of trick room against almost any pokemon as well as after you can provide a good form of speed control and fun access to trick room before time which wasn’t used much in practice however whenever I clicked it for that one time to give its partners a speed boost I was much satisfied with it. To be honest I was surprised how it handled a few attacks here and there.

Buzzwole is somewhat the weirder version of pheromosa I like it for its longevity over it, especially against pokemons like garchomp, with a team having a pokemon like smeargle I felt as if I needed a more coverage mon on this team, that Is why I first gave it the tman spread as well as the assault vest however then noticing quite a lot that I would be needing protect in a few cases as well as curse snorlax was giving me quite some issues the fightinium z was coming out to be quite effective.

Assault vest celesteela gives me a bit of a flashback to when the first time I was using it, I really liked it, whereas normal celesteela being as good as it is on this htr team where every turn should have a high damage outcome and the nature of its playing a defensive, slow and stall-y celesteela was understood as not being that much viable especially in this yard, that is why iopted for assault vest a more offensive moveset, whereas heavy sama d flamethrower are more or less self explanatory, air slash was good for specially offensive stab and also for those flinches which could prove very valuable against a few mons in the late game. Giga drain was chosen here especially for gastrodon and for a few amount of recovery whenever it was felt needed, gastrodon could be an issue as araquanid mostly relies on its water coverage for offense.

Araquanid is probably the simplest pokemon on this team, bug bite helps out a lot especially against pokemons like muk, which are a big threat, the main idea of araquanid was to be something strong in trick room as well as take switches to arcanine a very very big threat. For the first four on this team. Wid eguard is a move of choice often given up for toxic or substitute however I felt as if it was somewhat more important of a move than the others as it could protect the team against torkoal, rock slide annoyances, muddy waters, etc against a number of opponents, and it did ended up as the correct call for utility.

Honestly I feel like that I could have chosen like a very weird choice for this slot of the team however porygon 2 still felt as the most fitting, as it does provide a very reliable source of setting up that trick room. Also provides as an offensive option a recovery and bulky mon on this team and another counter to pokemons like garchomp and gyarados which I could have needed.

Conclusion and thoughts moving on:

This was it for this team of mine hopefully you guys liked going through it and got some ideas if ever, for yourself, moving on I still feel like that I have a few options on my desired to build list left, mainly triple tapu team and more importantly something I had an idea for is that the anti meta team and my weirder version of a rain team, what if as I think I combine politoed and relicanth with dragonite to build around this weird and anti meta rain team of mine, moreover on some thoughts I felt like that some partnerslike scarfed krokodile, vikavotl and trevenant may as well prove very beneficial there. Bye for now!