Pokemon VGC 18 April Report

Hey guys this is my report for the team that I developed in April for VGC 18 format, it went through quite a big struggle but I felt as if in the end I got a good team together, I got to use 4 mons that I hadn’t tried out in the vgc 18 season before and loved to use them, without further ado lets get into this post:

Teambuilding Process:

I was quite confused with what to build next, before this team took any shape or actual form I had used 4 teams built from scratch by me before this, 1^st one was the idea of mega venusaur in which I ended up loving the combination of gardevoir and zapdos, then was the gardevoir + whimsicott + heatran team in which the core worked kinda well for me and in the end I had this blastoise team with the additional landorus I + hippowdon combination which worked as an individual combination however wasn’t much in sync with the team. Then after taking a big breath I look down at mega swampert and the following team came up to me:

The Team:

Swampert-Mega @ Swampertite  Ability: Damp  Level: 50  EVs: 164 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 4 SpD / 84 Spe  Adamant Nature  - Waterfall  - Earthquake  - Rock Slide  - Protect

Swampert happens to be a unexpectedly strong attacker especially in its mega form, swampert happened to be the base for this team of mine, with having access to stab towards types like water and earthquake with potentially being able to get a speed and attack power boost through its partner bringing the rain swampert was sure to make a strong mega option for this team of mine. It even has the power to ohko a landorus with waterfall through intimidate until it is heavily invested in bulk. Swampert needed a somewhat simple ev spread I invested in enough speed to make it able to outspeed tapu koko after the rain boost which really did came in handy at points.

Pelipper @ Focus Sash  Ability: Drizzle  Level: 50  EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe  Modest Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Scald  - Hurricane  - Protect  - Tailwind

Not any big description for a pelliper, it has drizzle, it has coverage against grass types like amoonguss and tapu bulu that make it a good partner also to have a ground side immunity to a pokemon that uses earthquake is amazing, those are all the factors that make this pelliper a better partner for this swampert than any other pokemons. Pelliper is simple and proves to be a good pokemon, its rain also helps out other partners than just swampert.

Aegislash @ Aguav Berry  Ability: Stance Change  Level: 50  EVs: 228 HP / 4 Def / 188 SpA / 76 SpD / 12 Spe  Modest Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Shadow Ball  - Flash Cannon  - Substitute  - King's Shield

When I said so in pelliper’s description, yes aegislash does get helped out a whole lot by the rain in this team, I was confused on what set to decide then I thought since I already do happen to have a tailwind setter on my team. Make it fast I recently read a report with a incineroar faster than this one carrying a darkinium z I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to have mine given a creeping speed to that one which would eventually make it faster than any other aegislash and then make it proceed to defense with a substitute a great opportunity to waste up other aegislash and incineroar’s z moves. It did ended up working really really well, this is the first time I am using aegislash in vgc 18 maybe even in the past formats and for a fact I loved it, since I had no direct cunters to a celesteela, aegislash was happening to be my primary go to option there.

Tapu Lele @ Psychium Z  Ability: Psychic Surge  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA  Modest Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Psychic  - Moonblast  - Protect  - Taunt

I was now wanting to complete a fantasy core with a dragon and a fairy type to add in some more offensive pressure and coverage to my team, tapu lele came in as the thought of disrupting and offensive terrains also with intimidate and fake out running wild psychic terrain was much needed to stop them also tapu lele with psychic terrain had got the best option to stop trick room than the other tapus having taunt especially due to its ability to stop other mons from using fake out as a disruptor, tapu lele was great with the surprise z move and did caught off guard my opponents a lot of the time.

Naganadel @ Life Orb  Ability: Beast Boost  Level: 50  EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe  Timid Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Sludge Bomb  - Hidden Power [Ice]  - Protect  - Flamethrower

Naganadel happened to be a dragon type that can really fit in well to this team of mine. It definitely does check the tapus whereas he has resistances to grass attacks as well as steel and poison moves for tapu lele despite being extremely frail on the correct timings it can really absorb attacks the dynamism its coverage on offense provides is great as well, it may not last long on the field but when attacks does leave its marks on the field.

Snorlax @ Iapapa Berry  Ability: Gluttony  Level: 50  EVs: 244 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def / 4 SpD / 4 Spe  Adamant Nature  - Return  - Recycle  - High Horsepower  - Belly Drum

Uplast I knew my team was extremely fast and then ofcourse really weak to trick room. My team also had two ghost weakness, snorlax seemed to be the best option, I honestly didn’t thought that snorlax would ever be able to fit in on my team as it was becoming a purely archetype trick room thing however snorlax happened to work outside of opposing trick room teams as well, the teams that are defensive snorlax was able to handle them as well as if set up took them out with ease whereas providing the trick room answer as well.

Update:

At first I did happen to update with something really bad for this team, a politoed in place of pelliper, a crobat for naganadel and tapu koko the politoed and crobat were working individually very well however the team didn’t pull itself together though the idea of psychic seed supportive crobat as a trick room counter and tailwind utility as well as eject button polotoed as a pivot for intimidate and setting up perish songs in the late game was good for a strategy with itself and I would rather be considering these ideas maybe later in the format.

The thing was that I ended up working on an update for this team the team lacked any intimidate users or many moves which can be used for defense, snorax didn’t seem very special after whole lot of tries in teams and didn’t seem like fitting in the team, naganadel had an amazing typing however it couldn’t stand much longer on the field, so I decided to change things up a bit

(Naganadel was removed for Dragalge)

Dragalge @ Poisonium Z  Ability: Adaptability  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA  Modest Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Sludge Bomb  - Thunderbolt  - Haze  - Protect

The final version of the team that I found happened to have the dragalge on it instead of naganadel, it happens to be the only pokemon that can have the dragon poison typing in the entire game, and being slow meant that now it could also work really well under a trick room user, since one sludge bomb wasn;t able to kill all the tapus in a hit, I added in the poisonium z also for it to be able to deal massive damage and utilize the trick room turns very sufficiently. Thunderbolt was also an amazing coverage move for it against many water types that it can wall in the game. Haze turned out to be such an amazing move that I just had put on it for the move to be tested out. It formed the absolute best counter to snorlax or any other set-up based strategies. Dragalge obviously not being one of the best pokemons in terms of overall looking at the format could also counter a rising threat, araquanid, with both its dragon typing and thunderbolt.

(Snorlax was replaced with Porygon 2)

Porygon2 @ Eviolite  Ability: Download  Level: 50  EVs: 244 HP / 12 SpA / 252 SpD  Sassy Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Ice Beam  - Shadow Ball  - Trick Room  - Recover

Porygon 2 is love from the 2017 format I just happened to like this pokemon very very much back then but now when I used it, I wouldn’t be able to use a better pokemon in place of it, since the typings were so important for this team and normal type was the best for it, porygo 2 provides a whole lot of defensive utility for my team, the ev spread is simple but does work against big tapu + zapdos or rain leads in terms of taking those hits well, I chose to go for shadow ball as the coverage move instead of thunderbolt as I already had found my celesteela counters in aegislash and dragalge had that move having shadow ball opens up the opportunity for it to hit pokemons like gardevoir, metagross, lele and cresselia for super effective damage and ice beam, is needless to say good on this team as it is.

Conclusion:

So guys this was it for my April team report which did went through a whole lot f bumps but in the end I ended up bringing together a fun, somewhat different and successful team, hopefully you guys liked this post, I’d be back with more bye for now!