VGC 20 Pre Expansion Pass Team, The Format Changes.

Well this report is late but definitely one I want to write to express a attempt to get back into the format after everything changed given the update of isle of armor update.

The Weird Ones:

James Pond (Inteleon) @ Life Orb  Ability: Torrent  Level: 50  EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe  Timid Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Protect  - Hydro Cannon  - Air Slash  - Blizzard	Fox goes BRRRR!1!1 (Ninetales-Alola) @ Choice Scarf  Ability: Snow Warning  Level: 50  EVs: 124 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 124 Spe  Modest Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Aurora Veil  - Fake Tears  - Blizzard  - Freeze-Dry	Boo! (Trevenant) @ Sitrus Berry  Ability: Harvest  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def  Impish Nature  - Horn Leech  - Phantom Force  - Trick Room  - Destiny Bond
Beard tutorial (Perrserker) @ Assault Vest  Ability: Tough Claws  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD  Adamant Nature  - Fake Out  - Iron Head  - U-turn  - Night Slash	Beard tutorial (Perrserker) @ Assault Vest  Ability: Tough Claws  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD  Adamant Nature  - Fake Out  - Iron Head  - U-turn  - Night Slash	Grimmsnarl-Gmax (M) @ Babiri Berry  Ability: Frisk  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD  Adamant Nature  - Fake Out  - Foul Play  - Play Rough  - Power Whip

(The nicknames are my favorite part tbh)

The thing with this team was a bit before I was after making a weird ut of the box anti meta team, by this I achieved a combo of inteleon, my favorite gen 8 pokemon to start with using its 150 BP max move thanks to keeping hydro cannon on its moveset, I was off to a hyper offensive sar, then to mix things up I added in alolan ninetales with a choice scarf so that paired on leads it can set up aurora veil before other mons, use fake tears in inteleon’s favor and then also use blizzard before one of the biggest mons in this format, dragapult,

Up next is trevenant. Given the sitrus berry + harvest + phantom force it definitely has a significant presence on field in longer games and can also help answer a lot of the bulky water types like primarina and milotic in the games.

The two mons duo to follow along with the trick room setup is perrserker, an interesting mon given its tough claws ability and strong steel coverage and grimmsnarl, but here being used for its massive attack stat with a nod to its coverage helped in trick room sweeping. Last up was arcanine to rid this team of any ferrothorn, the safeguard helped it counter sleep powder spams and then that’s that for this one.

Needless to say the team ended up being very sub-par; though I did love the elements of this team individually no way I was gonna get far with the overall shaky composition. The techs of ninetales having fake tears and scarf, trevenant as an individual mon, offensive gmax grimmsnarl’s gmax snooze helping out a lot against bulkier of super offense based teams was good in its place but definitely not a great team.

The New Team:

Duraludon @ Life Orb  Ability: Stalwart  Level: 50  EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe  Timid Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Draco Meteor  - Thunderbolt  - Flash Cannon  - Snarl	Whimsicott @ Focus Sash  Ability: Prankster  Level: 50  EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe  Timid Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Tailwind  - Memento  - Fake Tears  - Moonblast	Conkeldurr @ Assault Vest  Ability: Guts  Level: 50  EVs: 212 HP / 148 Atk / 4 Def / 76 SpD / 68 Spe  Adamant Nature  - Hammer Arm  - Mach Punch  - Drain Punch  - Rock Slide
Chandelure @ Air Balloon  Ability: Flash Fire  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 196 SpA / 4 SpD / 52 Spe  Modest Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Flamethrower  - Shadow Ball  - Protect - Trick Room	Rillaboom @ Sitrus Berry  Ability: Grassy Surge  Level: 50  EVs: 180 HP / 140 Atk / 44 Def / 100 SpD / 44 Spe  Adamant Nature  - Fake Out  - Wood Hammer  - Knock Off  - Protect	Milotic @ Wiki Berry  Ability: Competitive  Level: 50  EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA  Bold Nature  IVs: 0 Atk  - Muddy Water  - Coil  - Hypnosis  - Recover

Then I took a step back with a detailed look at this format, after all the online classes business that has been keeping me quite busy over itself. I found that tyranitar, togekiss and dragapult are the leading trio on the charts and knowing how dangerous and potent of a lead dragapult and togekiss is, my instant thoughts went to duraludon paired up with whimsicott’s prankster tailwind and I was off to build a worthy team to get back into the format. This lead duo was also a solution to trick room which I at first felt threatened by as mimikyu can be doubled into and dusclops falls to max darkness + fake tears combo, with that I also have to mention no protect on a life orb duraludon as I also needed max lightning to get in the way of any venusaur planning to spam sleep powder.

With this duo the main problem came with tyranitar + excadrill cores as well as that of trick room’s total backfiring of my starting strat, so to counter that I put on a conkeldurr with a trick of hammer arm that will potentially allow me to 1 up trick room, even though conkeldurr has some speed invested to counter mirrors and have somewhat respectable speed in tailwind for bulkier lapras and so on. I choose to keep guts on it to catch off guard unsuspecting dusclops.

To counter furthermore steels like excadrills and others that duraludon would be a waste to use on, I kept up a chandelure with trick room as a secondary strategy to help support my own conkeldurr as well as give the team more direction, I copied a standard spread with more bulk on chandelure and enough speed to outspeed dragapult in tailwind. The little bit of bulk on this mon really helped it survive some stuff and ultimately be critical, for example a hyper voice of primarina, sometimes a phantom force from mimikyus and so on, overall I was quite impressed by the decision of keeping this bit of bulk and air balloon as well as many unsuspecting or unaware opponents overlook the balloon.

The last two slots were the most debatable in terms of what to keep on them. I thought the team was a fail until I tried on rillaboom wth the milotic that was basically an idea on the back burner to counter arcanine and incineroar. The grassy surge from rillaboom helped milotic recover further from its coil and hypnosis setup as well as what I had enjoyed from trevenant on the previous team, I loved in wood hammers of rillaboom further boosted by grassy surge, the knock off was also quite useful in some matches especially against bulkier teams and the fake out once dynamax was over, given most of my leads were dynamax + fake tears sweep leads more or less forcing opponents to dynamax early to take care of a mon, ultimately made fake out a great late to mid game disruptor once those critical three turns were over on my opponent’s end also encouraging more defensive switching as I did achieve a f/w/g core on this team.  The protect on this rillaboom may seem like a waste of a slot, but in reality I never felt like needing another move for coverage and given no one expects rillaboo to carry a protect, it works really well against often double ups suspecting a bulky assault vest, wood hammer and protect also pairs well with sitrus berry, giving more longevity to this mon. overall ended up loving this team and ready to move forward with this format once my exams are over in about a few weeks.

Given this team I was able to grind out to a level that I could really like getting to, definitely better than I’ve done the entire format on ps ladder, for the concept which seemed firstly very appealing from the duraludon + whimsicott standpoint, then became tedious to build around to find the best composition, but given that you play smart and use your tricks well, this team can definitely win some games.