September VGC Report Part 2

Hey guys tody I am back with another teampost of mine, this time I will be sharing, some more fun and teams I enjoyed with in te month of September, hopefully you guys will like going through it, without further ado lets get into it:

Raikoko Team:

This team was exciting to build around especially since the idea was to get kos on opponents as fast as possible, but then overall didn’t came out to be that successful in the real play, to build the team I started off with the old fashioned vgc 17 core of raichu tapu koko and tapu lele, there very offensive pokemons, I wanted to mainly try out the raichu + tapu koko especially as t got some success at worlds, from where I put on garchomp as a must to have aspect against muk, then the ddition of several options like ninetales, nihilego etc came down, but then I finally settled onto the duo of drifblim and buzzwole to patch this team of mine up, it is the following:

Drifblim @ Psychic Seed  Ability: Unburden  Level: 50  EVs: 52 HP / 236 SpA / 220 Spe  Modest Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Shadow Ball  - Destiny Bond  - Tailwind  - Will-O-Wisp	Tapu Koko @ Choice Specs  Ability: Electric Surge  Level: 50  EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe  Timid Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Thunderbolt  - Dazzling Gleam  - Hidden Power [Ground]  - Volt Switch	Tapu Lele @ Life Orb  Ability: Psychic Surge  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 Spe  Modest Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Psychic  - Moonblast  - Protect  - Taunt
Garchomp @ Groundium Z  Ability: Rough Skin  Level: 50  EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe  Jolly Nature  - Earthquake  - Swords Dance  - Protect  - Fire Fang	Raichu-Alola @ Aloraichium Z  Ability: Surge Surfer  Level: 50  EVs: 100 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 148 Spe  Timid Nature  - Fake Out  - Psyshock  - Thunderbolt  - Electro Ball	Buzzwole @ Focus Sash  Ability: Beast Boost  Level: 50  EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe  Adamant Nature  - Superpower  - Protect  - Ice Punch  - Taunt

 Following are some of the defects of this team of mine, which I noticed made it lack, however some individual components of this team can be used in other teams especially the ones that stand out from the rest:

·         Switch In synergy: since the entire idea was to bam wham and win, I didn’t pay a lot of noticing on the switch in synergy and added on and on offensive components that’ll help me counter the metagame. Moonblast was such a big issue as switching in garchomp and buzzwole will get them ko’d and other four will be facing a real fear of the 30% chance spa drop

·         Trick Room: Since this team has the tapu koko and raichu option on it with the further addition of drifblim and garchomp also with the tailwind option as the speed control mode you can expect this team to be very very fast, even though I used the doule taunt tactic and buzzwole to counter trick room teams when my opponents were a bit too clever it didn’t end up being well for me though.

·         Defense and Coverage: the team does too much offense that attention to the defense gets overlooked, all the pokemons can withstand more like one or two attacks, some can completely wall the others like buzzwole against chomp but then isn’t in a very good switch in position, also coverage was some issue, I felt like needing poison jab on buzzwole but didn’t use it in time, as taunt was needed, lele and blimp can do big damage but get completely blocked out and passive by some pokemons. I also would have liked a very bulky garchomp spread.

Tips and tricks: as with my other teams I feel like completely explaining my all choices, however with this one it was well, different, since the overall team wasn’t a whole lot effective. But some components were.

·         Double taunt, trick room was big to stop for its success, also other dangerous setup needed to be blocked out before it could dominate me, this trick does work.

·         Hidden Power Tapu koko: togedemaru or marowak could render the big offensive mode of this team much rather useless, however having hp-ground makes it to counter the electric rodent.

·         Tailwind + Electro ball: his was a tactic I always wanted to try out, raichu combined with electric surge and tailwind is one of the fastest pokemons in the game, combine that with electro ball and it does wonders.

·         Focus sash Buzzwole: how I see all offense buzzwole is that one big and important attack, however it may be weakened by its opponents’ fairy, fire, psychic partners, combining it with a focus sash makes sure it takes atleast two hits to go down and more chances to attack doing big damage.

September Team;

Do you guys remember my weirdest team becoming the most successful one, when I was trying to build this team I had another hard trick room team mode on my mind starting out with oranguru + redirection with torkoal being the main sweeper whereas comfey would also be coming in at some point of this build. However then I added the more classic lilligant to complete the core, that lead me to the memories of the success I had with politoed + lilligant + torkoal core and with the gact core being big this time, I knew how to use this type of sun and rain fwg against it, this time instead of a politod I added in a choice scarf pelliper, seeing I had sufficient special attackers I added in buzzwole remembering I had troubles with snorlax and p2 last time and then patches things up with nihilego for more overage, it also marked out the team idea I had around a buzzwole and nihilego duo. This was the first time I was going back to update a team and so far it seemed kinda effective.

The Team:

At first I felt like as if making such a drastic change to just an old team would end up terrible however it polished up quite qwell in the final product, only from theory to practice changes made were giving nihilego the focus sash from life orb and the move thunderbolt as well.

Lilligant is such a good pivotal pokemon on this team either it an use the speed boost from torkoal to do offense or hide behind rain from fire types and then land big hits, its seemingly quite underwhelming for lilligant to be the only z-move user of this team of mine however it ended up doing quite its job idk if it’s the correct way to use a z-move but often on I’d use it as a non spa dropping leaf storm so that lilligant can get more attacks off, the ev spread is simple, the nature is something I would talk about, even thought extremely bulky fini live bloom doom from a timid lilligant, I felt as if timid was important this time to counter any mirror speed issues I’d have, turn one of after you + eruption wins you the mirror by breaking the combination. Hp fire is a nice chip damage tech but other times I’d like to have protect as well, mostly I’d switch out lilligant but when I didn’t I’d like to go for using protect other than any other moves, after you can also be used to set up trick room. Fun trick I’d use with sleep powder is to use z-sleep powder in a raikoko combination and then after + eruption for the win!

Torkoal is the true partner in crime, last time I used a bulkier more defensive sitrus berry version but this time I felt as if offense was really needed, especially as conservation of torkoal wasn’t required quite as much for some matchups as before. Torkoal is simply, just very simple and lovable too for the reason, that is why I mainly like this pokemon soo much, even thought it might not have the most impressive stats combined with charcoal, sun boost and instruct from its partner oranguru. Sometimes I’d bring the double beast + double weather where torkoal mainly comes in as a weather defense tactic or for the bulky steel type or grass types in the late game, I too doubted myself bringing in torkoal on some matchups without oranguru or lilligant however, it still proved helpful.

Even thought the rest of the four members of this team are different from before, I’d discuss pelliper first. Scarf pelliper, especially this one is not that impressive however seeing the huge amount of garchomp + arcanine teams + pelliper being able to outspeed them with its scarf was marvelous it still falls short against others like ninetales, koko and Persian, however proves to be quite a utility against the ones mentioned above. Scald and hydro pump are good stab as well as hurricane, whereas ice beam is quite a special and effective tech that most garchomps will fall for, atleast once. Main reason for choosing pelliper over politoed was that it had the ground immunity as well as flying stab coverage which helped more with the evolved, more offensive version of this team of mine, there was something good about pelliper +nihilego or pelliper + buzzwole on field combinations during matches.

Oranguru is yet quite another simple pokemon the ev spread was designed to for sure ohko a nihilego with its psyshock, the extra offense ended up helping too in quite some cases. Oranguru s designed to take hits before it can set up trick room and then support with instruct, nothing much more to say about this pokemon, simple yet effective and somehow surprisingly the least used member of my team.

Buzzwole is always nice, being for an ultra east and providing a very vast range of attacks that have a huge cover on this metagame makes it soo lovable especially its coverage against the most common archetypes seems very amazing, the best snorlax and p2 counter is something I’d consider buzzwole to be as well. This spread is the same as the all famous tman’s av buzzwole I swapped out the usual move, leech life for earthquake as it’s unexpected offense against tapu koko as well a nihilego which comes in handy in quite some situations. The bulk was just right to land those big offensive hits that help to win the game.

Nihilego is a pokemon that I’vehad my eyes on for a very long time however I haven’t been able to say how good it actually is as I feel like I couldn’t find the correct team for it. However in this one it just does the trick with pelliper and lilligatnt to handle the fire, ground and water types and torkoal to handle the steel types, nihilego can get its right time to shine, at first it was a focus sash nihilego but then I felt I was falling prey often on to stupid scarf mons like lele and the battles with nihilego became more of a k.o trade thingie, focus sash helped out a whole lot more. The addition of the unexpected thunderbolt can allow nihilego to ohko those gyarados even when coupled in the back with lightningrod users as it is unexpected, this was needed as dragon d