hey heads up, the next Pokemon write up might not be for a bit. Appletun was so miserable I stopped wanting to use it after 3 horrendous losses, I followed a friends advice on challenges of "you can do what you want forever including saying this challenge is ass", rerolled what pokemon I got (rolled Volcarona, an actually good pokemon that I like) and was still so done with Pokemon that I still haven't figured out the team or even what Volcarona build I wanna use. So I think I'm gonna take a break from forcing myself to use non-meta pokemon for a bit and just use the teams I actually like. Volcarona writeup might still happen soon-ish but I also might wait to do another writeup until the next format starts since that's in less than 2 weeks. IDK point is don't expect the Appletun writeup anytime soon, can't guarantee the Volcarona writeup for a bit either.
When I rolled Tyrantrum as the next Pokémon I'd be using, I felt entirely neutral about it. Tyrantrum is one of the many fossil Pokémon the franchise has introduced, and honestly it would be shorter to list the ones that have had a lasting impact on me in one way or another than to name the fossil Pokémon that have completely sloughed off my mind, barely remembered. That said, Tyrantrum seemed familiar to me somehow, like I had heard it's name somewhere kind of recently…oh right, competitive Pokémon player Wolfe Glick talked about him in a video a few weeks ago!
Is that good?
Now, Tyrantrum may be considered the worst Dragon type Pokémon in history by one of the most famous competitive Pokémon players in history, but as he mentions in that clip it doesn't mean Tyrantrum is bad. It's got decent physical attack and bulk (121 Attack and 119 Defense), it's just let down by an EXTREMELY bad 59 Special Defense stat and a 71 speed stat that is both too slow for Tailwind and too fast for Trick Room, an extremely awkward middle ground that makes a Pokémon hard to use. That said, there are 2 different paths you can go down if you want to use Tyrantrum: there's The Smart Path, where you take advantage of it's Strong Jaw ability (giving a 50% damage bonus to all biting moves) to effectively give it STAB on bites, give it something like a rock move, a dragon move, whichever biting move you think is best, and protect, and use it normally. My plan initially was to make a set like this, as it seemed far more consistent and reliable than the alternative.
But the more I looked at the alternative, the set much more used by other players, the more it called to me. It relies on a move that doesn't hit nearly a quarter of the time, it's a gimmick at best…but the point of this challenge is to try new things, not get a 10 win streak and brag about it online. Tyrantrum isn't the worst Pokémon in the world, but between it's stats being at most Good Not Great and it's typing giving it a whopping 6 weaknesses without offering much in return, this thing wasn't going to be tearing up a Regional any time soon no matter what it did. And so, as I looked at the more common moveset, I decided to dare to dream. To dare to have fun. To dare to fly, to soar! I dared to be stupid.
Ladies and gentleman, everyone in between and outside of that spectrum, I present to you Goofus the Tyrantrum. He is fully invested in Attack and Speed, with the final 2 points shoring up it's terrible Special Defense, and equipped with a Choice Scarf because I need him to be faster and I'm usually only going to be pressing one button anyway. Make no mistake, by the way: Tyrantrum is surprisingly fast at max speed with Choice Scarf, even outspeeding Aerodactyl by 1 point if it's running an Adamant nature (+Atk/-SpAtk) instead of Jolly (+Spe/-SpAtk) and not under Tailwind.
Tyrantrum's Rock Head ability prevents him from taking any recoil damage from moves, and there's only one recoil move in Tyrantrum's arsenal: Head Smash, a beefy 150 base power move that normally carries the drawback of making the user take half the damage it deals, compared to the more typical 1/4th or 1/3rd damage of every other recoil move. To round out the moveset we have Rock Slide, for when spread damage is necessary, along with Earthquake and Close Combat for coverage.
How was this set? Well, I'll tell you: clicking Head Smash and seeing it do SO MUCH more damage than you expect, either getting an unexpected KO or just doing something nutty like 66% on a defensive pokemon like Blastoise, is one of the best feelings I've experienced in Pokemon Champions. It's stupid! It's braindead! It's a blast! If you're okay with...well, losing a fair bit, then I'd recommend Tyrantrum just for the fun of Head Smash Going Brrrrrrrr in the occasions where it can really pop off.
Now, as I alluded to earlier, there is still a downside to Head Smash even if you're not taking the recoil damage: It's accuracy is only 80%. Now, that might sound like it's good enough, but 20% is barely less likely than flipping a coin twice and getting Heads both times. A thing that happens all the time. A 20% miss rate is more than enough to be put in a bad position from a good one, or lose a game altogether. I decided I needed to build my team in a way that could eliminate this potentially disastrous outcome…and I think it made the team worse than if I had just crossed my fingers and hope for the best.
Y'see, there IS a move in Pokémon that can ensure Head Smash hits. The move Gravity causes the Gravity field condition, which has two effects: One, any Pokémon that is Flying or has the ability to levitate is grounded, taking away their immunity to Ground type moves. Second, the evasiveness of all Pokémon is lowered, in a way that effectively increases accuracy by 66%. This is usually used for a kind of cheesy strategy built around spamming Hypnosis to try and set up a sweeper (which I actually faced in my first win!), but it can also make it so Head Smash is guaranteed to hit. With this in mind, the first member of the team was Sableye.
Sableye is certainly a Pokémon. It's stats are Bad, with a base stat total of 380 and no individual stat above 75, the only thing that makes it usable is it's ability Prankster (which gives status moves +1 priority, meaning they'll move ahead of anything besides other priority moves) and it's large suite of supporting moves. But make no mistake, Sableye is perfectly good in the role of Supporter: it can set up Reflect and Light Screen to reduce the damage you take, it knows multiple status-inducing moves like Will-O-Wisp and Thunder Wave, it can pull off a nasty Encore/Disable combo to force an opponents Pokémon to struggle even when it has plenty of moves left, it can be really annoying! It can also learn Gravity, and so I put it on the team with a set that also included Fake Out, Light Screen (to help with Tyrantrum's terrible special defense), and Quash, which can force a particular Pokémon to move last in turn order even if it's faster or using a Priority move.
This Sableye was…bad. It was really terrible, and in retrospect the team would have been better with just about anything else, but especially a fire-type to help with Steel Pokémon or literally anything that could use Tailwind, so that Tyrantrum wasn't getting outsped even with Choice Scarf if the opponent got a tailwind up, which they usually did. I hardly ever used Gravity because I was too busy trying to stop my opponent from killing Tyrantrum before it could do anything, and in a lot of games I ended up with 3 fainted pokemon and only Sableye left, unable to do anything, because my opponent was able to effectively ignore it while taking out the rest of my team. I'm not doubting it's support potential, but on this team, with this set, with me as an admittedly not-great pilot, Sableye was a complete bust that I'd replace if I did this again. The occasional Head Smash miss (and there were a couple!) was less painful than the multiple times I forfeited because I was literally incapable of winning with a Pokémon that couldn't deal damage. If you want my suggestion, I'd go with Whimsicott as a support Pokémon over Sableye; this Tyrantrum gimmick relies quite a bit on being faster than your opponent expects, and that's much easier with Tailwind up on your side, especially if your opponent also has it. Whimsicott also gets Light Screen, so Sableye can't even claim that over Whims.
I won't lie; even more than all of my other teams, this one started with a few good ideas and then eventually I just wanted to start playing games so I just threw some extra Pokémon onto the team that seemed useful and got to battling. I ran two different Mega pokemon: first was Gardevoir, who I've talk about at length here. Initially it was a secondary Gravity setter, and also knew Focus Blast, another high-power low-accuracy move that I thought could be useful. Once I realized Gravity wasn't very essential and I was getting away with just eating the occasional miss, I changed the moveset to swap Gravity for Protect and Focus Blast for Vacuum wave, leaving me with…the set I recommended using in the Gardevoir writeup. Hmm.
The other Mega Pokémon on my team was Mega Gyarados. Gyarados turned out very handy; before mega evolving, it has the Intimidate ability which lowers the attack stat of both your opponents Pokémon, which can help quite a bit with survivability. While it sadly doesn't keep Intimidate when it mega evolves (it gains Mold Breaker, a much less useful ability), it does gain a lot of attack power and bulk, ditching the flying typing that makes it 4x weak to electricity for a dark typing that adds some new weaknesses but gives you extra powerful Crunch's, which came in handy a lot! The nice thing about these Pokémon is that they're both pretty powerful even without mega evolving, so it wasn't the worst thing in the world if I brought both of them to a battle.
I also threw Tsareena on this team, who was a bit of a sleeper hit between preventing priority attacks and actually dealing a lot of damage. Despite it's 85% accuracy, I don't think Power Whip ever missed even outside Gravity, and Triple Axel got me a lot of KOs. Looking through the Pokémon I had lying around, Sneasler was a generally powerful Pokémon that served as an extra Fake Out user, so I brought it along as well. It did good, but it's a pretty known quantity at this point so that's not surprising.
I dunno, I got the wins with the team, but there were a lot of losses that felt like the team not gelling together great. If I could do it again, I'd make sure there was a tailwind setter, maybe a fire type or a steel type to make a Fantasy core alongside Tyrantrum and Gardevoir. I usually feel at least kind of okay about my teams, but I think I could do a lot better if I tried again. Maybe some day!
Before signing off, some additional notes:
Despite being Dragon type, Tyrantrum can actually counter Mega Floette! Mega Floette actually gets outsped by Choice Scarf Tyrantrum, even if the Floette has a speed-boosting nature and the Tyrantrum doesn't. In addition, assuming the Floette has maxed out Special Attack and Speed (which they usually do), they can only survive a Head Smash if they put both of their leftover points into Defense, and even then it's only a 6.2% chance of survival. I know this because I ran the calcs after Tyrantrum failed to OHKO a Mega Floette and left it at 1% HP.
An early idea for this team actually included the Pokémon Flapple: it's signature move Grav Apple gains a 25% damage boost when Gravity is up, making it a pretty powerful 120BP move that ALSO reduces your opponents attack stat! I ended up not using it, mostly because I didn't feel like going out and getting a Flapple. Flapple is also, incidentally, #2 on Wolfe Glick's list of the Worst Dragon Type Pokémon Of All Time. Is that good?
The match where Tyrantrum had the most potential to shine was against someone who brought Basculegion, and also Mega Scovillain, Ceruledge, and Aerodactyl. Head Smash was super effective against 3/4s of the team! Tyrantrum proceeded to miss 3 of the 5 Head Smash's it did that weren't blocked by Protect. I still won, but I'd be pretty heated about it if I didn't! Also, Tyrantrum got burned that game and was still guaranteed a kill on Aerodactyl and only failed to kill the Ceruledge because it was running Focus Sash. It turns out 150 base power is a lot!
In one match, my opponent led with Charizard and Talonflame (both 4x weak to Rock), did nothing to protect them, then forfeited when I got the double KO with Rock Slide. I'm not sure what they thought was going to happen.
I did actually have a second Tyrantrum set up to use for a more consistent Strong Jaw set, which I named Gallant. Unfortunately, I chose to run the Goofus Head Smash set first and had so much fun I did all my games in one day, despite a pretty bad losing streak towards the end.
I ran into several Oranguru Trick Room teams on my climb up the ladder. In sharp contrast to when I was using that stupid monkey, it was impossible to kill before it got trick room up. Where was that resiliency when I was using you, jerk?????
In conclusion, should you use Tyrantrum? Honestly, probably not. Tyrantrum has a pretty specific niche, which is that it's capable of dealing out a HUGE amount of specifically single target, specifically Rock type damage. The reality is, most teams don't need that, and if you do need that you can get a pretty close approximation from a Pokémon that's better overall like Aerodactyl or Garchomp. That said, I still had a ton of fun seeing how much damage this dino could do, and if you're more interested in something a bit silly than something "meta", you can do a heck of a lot worse. Just be sure to clear the way of anything that could take it out first.
When I rolled Tyrantrum as the next Pokémon I'd be using, I felt entirely neutral about it. Tyrantrum is one of the many fossil Pokémon the franchise has introduced, and honestly it would be shorter to list the ones that have had a lasting impact on me in one way or another than to name the fossil Pokémon that have completely sloughed off my mind, barely remembered. That said, Tyrantrum seemed familiar to me somehow, like I had heard it's name somewhere kind of recently…oh right, competitive Pokémon player Wolfe Glick talked about him in a video a few weeks ago!
Is that good?
Now, Tyrantrum may be considered the worst Dragon type Pokémon in history by one of the most famous competitive Pokémon players in history, but as he mentions in that clip it doesn't mean Tyrantrum is bad. It's got decent physical attack and bulk (121 Attack and 119 Defense), it's just let down by an EXTREMELY bad 59 Special Defense stat and a 71 speed stat that is both too slow for Tailwind and too fast for Trick Room, an extremely awkward middle ground that makes a Pokémon hard to use. That said, there are 2 different paths you can go down if you want to use Tyrantrum: there's The Smart Path, where you take advantage of it's Strong Jaw ability (giving a 50% damage bonus to all biting moves) to effectively give it STAB on bites, give it something like a rock move, a dragon move, whichever biting move you think is best, and protect, and use it normally. My plan initially was to make a set like this, as it seemed far more consistent and reliable than the alternative.
But the more I looked at the alternative, the set much more used by other players, the more it called to me. It relies on a move that doesn't hit nearly a quarter of the time, it's a gimmick at best…but the point of this challenge is to try new things, not get a 10 win streak and brag about it online. Tyrantrum isn't the worst Pokémon in the world, but between it's stats being at most Good Not Great and it's typing giving it a whopping 6 weaknesses without offering much in return, this thing wasn't going to be tearing up a Regional any time soon no matter what it did. And so, as I looked at the more common moveset, I decided to dare to dream. To dare to have fun. To dare to fly, to soar! I dared to be stupid.
Ladies and gentleman, everyone in between and outside of that spectrum, I present to you Goofus the Tyrantrum. He is fully invested in Attack and Speed, with the final 2 points shoring up it's terrible Special Defense, and equipped with a Choice Scarf because I need him to be faster and I'm usually only going to be pressing one button anyway. Make no mistake, by the way: Tyrantrum is surprisingly fast at max speed with Choice Scarf, even outspeeding Aerodactyl by 1 point if it's running an Adamant nature (+Atk/-SpAtk) instead of Jolly (+Spe/-SpAtk) and not under Tailwind.
Tyrantrum's Rock Head ability prevents him from taking any recoil damage from moves, and there's only one recoil move in Tyrantrum's arsenal: Head Smash, a beefy 150 base power move that normally carries the drawback of making the user take half the damage it deals, compared to the more typical 1/4th or 1/3rd damage of every other recoil move. To round out the moveset we have Rock Slide, for when spread damage is necessary, along with Earthquake and Close Combat for coverage.
How was this set? Well, I'll tell you: clicking Head Smash and seeing it do SO MUCH more damage than you expect, either getting an unexpected KO or just doing something nutty like 66% on a defensive pokemon like Blastoise, is one of the best feelings I've experienced in Pokemon Champions. It's stupid! It's braindead! It's a blast! If you're okay with...well, losing a fair bit, then I'd recommend Tyrantrum just for the fun of Head Smash Going Brrrrrrrr in the occasions where it can really pop off.
Now, as I alluded to earlier, there is still a downside to Head Smash even if you're not taking the recoil damage: It's accuracy is only 80%. Now, that might sound like it's good enough, but 20% is barely less likely than flipping a coin twice and getting Heads both times. A thing that happens all the time. A 20% miss rate is more than enough to be put in a bad position from a good one, or lose a game altogether. I decided I needed to build my team in a way that could eliminate this potentially disastrous outcome…and I think it made the team worse than if I had just crossed my fingers and hope for the best.
Y'see, there IS a move in Pokémon that can ensure Head Smash hits. The move Gravity causes the Gravity field condition, which has two effects: One, any Pokémon that is Flying or has the ability to levitate is grounded, taking away their immunity to Ground type moves. Second, the evasiveness of all Pokémon is lowered, in a way that effectively increases accuracy by 66%. This is usually used for a kind of cheesy strategy built around spamming Hypnosis to try and set up a sweeper (which I actually faced in my first win!), but it can also make it so Head Smash is guaranteed to hit. With this in mind, the first member of the team was Sableye.
Sableye is certainly a Pokémon. It's stats are Bad, with a base stat total of 380 and no individual stat above 75, the only thing that makes it usable is it's ability Prankster (which gives status moves +1 priority, meaning they'll move ahead of anything besides other priority moves) and it's large suite of supporting moves. But make no mistake, Sableye is perfectly good in the role of Supporter: it can set up Reflect and Light Screen to reduce the damage you take, it knows multiple status-inducing moves like Will-O-Wisp and Thunder Wave, it can pull off a nasty Encore/Disable combo to force an opponents Pokémon to struggle even when it has plenty of moves left, it can be really annoying! It can also learn Gravity, and so I put it on the team with a set that also included Fake Out, Light Screen (to help with Tyrantrum's terrible special defense), and Quash, which can force a particular Pokémon to move last in turn order even if it's faster or using a Priority move.
This Sableye was…bad. It was really terrible, and in retrospect the team would have been better with just about anything else, but especially a fire-type to help with Steel Pokémon or literally anything that could use Tailwind, so that Tyrantrum wasn't getting outsped even with Choice Scarf if the opponent got a tailwind up, which they usually did. I hardly ever used Gravity because I was too busy trying to stop my opponent from killing Tyrantrum before it could do anything, and in a lot of games I ended up with 3 fainted pokemon and only Sableye left, unable to do anything, because my opponent was able to effectively ignore it while taking out the rest of my team. I'm not doubting it's support potential, but on this team, with this set, with me as an admittedly not-great pilot, Sableye was a complete bust that I'd replace if I did this again. The occasional Head Smash miss (and there were a couple!) was less painful than the multiple times I forfeited because I was literally incapable of winning with a Pokémon that couldn't deal damage. If you want my suggestion, I'd go with Whimsicott as a support Pokémon over Sableye; this Tyrantrum gimmick relies quite a bit on being faster than your opponent expects, and that's much easier with Tailwind up on your side, especially if your opponent also has it. Whimsicott also gets Light Screen, so Sableye can't even claim that over Whims.
I won't lie; even more than all of my other teams, this one started with a few good ideas and then eventually I just wanted to start playing games so I just threw some extra Pokémon onto the team that seemed useful and got to battling. I ran two different Mega pokemon: first was Gardevoir, who I've talk about at length here. Initially it was a secondary Gravity setter, and also knew Focus Blast, another high-power low-accuracy move that I thought could be useful. Once I realized Gravity wasn't very essential and I was getting away with just eating the occasional miss, I changed the moveset to swap Gravity for Protect and Focus Blast for Vacuum wave, leaving me with…the set I recommended using in the Gardevoir writeup. Hmm.
The other Mega Pokémon on my team was Mega Gyarados. Gyarados turned out very handy; before mega evolving, it has the Intimidate ability which lowers the attack stat of both your opponents Pokémon, which can help quite a bit with survivability. While it sadly doesn't keep Intimidate when it mega evolves (it gains Mold Breaker, a much less useful ability), it does gain a lot of attack power and bulk, ditching the flying typing that makes it 4x weak to electricity for a dark typing that adds some new weaknesses but gives you extra powerful Crunch's, which came in handy a lot! The nice thing about these Pokémon is that they're both pretty powerful even without mega evolving, so it wasn't the worst thing in the world if I brought both of them to a battle.
I also threw Tsareena on this team, who was a bit of a sleeper hit between preventing priority attacks and actually dealing a lot of damage. Despite it's 85% accuracy, I don't think Power Whip ever missed even outside Gravity, and Triple Axel got me a lot of KOs. Looking through the Pokémon I had lying around, Sneasler was a generally powerful Pokémon that served as an extra Fake Out user, so I brought it along as well. It did good, but it's a pretty known quantity at this point so that's not surprising.
I dunno, I got the wins with the team, but there were a lot of losses that felt like the team not gelling together great. If I could do it again, I'd make sure there was a tailwind setter, maybe a fire type or a steel type to make a Fantasy core alongside Tyrantrum and Gardevoir. I usually feel at least kind of okay about my teams, but I think I could do a lot better if I tried again. Maybe some day!
Before signing off, some additional notes:
Despite being Dragon type, Tyrantrum can actually counter Mega Floette! Mega Floette actually gets outsped by Choice Scarf Tyrantrum, even if the Floette has a speed-boosting nature and the Tyrantrum doesn't. In addition, assuming the Floette has maxed out Special Attack and Speed (which they usually do), they can only survive a Head Smash if they put both of their leftover points into Defense, and even then it's only a 6.2% chance of survival. I know this because I ran the calcs after Tyrantrum failed to OHKO a Mega Floette and left it at 1% HP.
An early idea for this team actually included the Pokémon Flapple: it's signature move Grav Apple gains a 25% damage boost when Gravity is up, making it a pretty powerful 120BP move that ALSO reduces your opponents attack stat! I ended up not using it, mostly because I didn't feel like going out and getting a Flapple. Flapple is also, incidentally, #2 on Wolfe Glick's list of the Worst Dragon Type Pokémon Of All Time. Is that good?
The match where Tyrantrum had the most potential to shine was against someone who brought Basculegion, and also Mega Scovillain, Ceruledge, and Aerodactyl. Head Smash was super effective against 3/4s of the team! Tyrantrum proceeded to miss 3 of the 5 Head Smash's it did that weren't blocked by Protect. I still won, but I'd be pretty heated about it if I didn't! Also, Tyrantrum got burned that game and was still guaranteed a kill on Aerodactyl and only failed to kill the Ceruledge because it was running Focus Sash. It turns out 150 base power is a lot!
In one match, my opponent led with Charizard and Talonflame (both 4x weak to Rock), did nothing to protect them, then forfeited when I got the double KO with Rock Slide. I'm not sure what they thought was going to happen.
I did actually have a second Tyrantrum set up to use for a more consistent Strong Jaw set, which I named Gallant. Unfortunately, I chose to run the Goofus Head Smash set first and had so much fun I did all my games in one day, despite a pretty bad losing streak towards the end.
I ran into several Oranguru Trick Room teams on my climb up the ladder. In sharp contrast to when I was using that stupid monkey, it was impossible to kill before it got trick room up. Where was that resiliency when I was using you, jerk?????
In conclusion, should you use Tyrantrum? Honestly, probably not. Tyrantrum has a pretty specific niche, which is that it's capable of dealing out a HUGE amount of specifically single target, specifically Rock type damage. The reality is, most teams don't need that, and if you do need that you can get a pretty close approximation from a Pokémon that's better overall like Aerodactyl or Garchomp. That said, I still had a ton of fun seeing how much damage this dino could do, and if you're more interested in something a bit silly than something "meta", you can do a heck of a lot worse. Just be sure to clear the way of anything that could take it out first.
Just realized I wrote my whole Tyrantrum writeup like 2 days ago in Notepad to make editing easier and then forgot to finish it up and post it OOPS. Will be posting it tomorrow, or I guess later today technically. I swear I didn't forget I just worked late the last few days and also the next pokemon I rolled was Appletun and I really don't wanna have to use Appletun.
I used Mudsdale (and also Oranguru) in Pokemon Champions
Everyone's favorite pokemon horse Mudsdale has a fair bit going for it. It's got a decently beefy 125 base attack stat, pretty good defenses with 100 HP, 100 Defense, and 85 Special Defense, and a speed stat low enough that it's usually the first thing moving in Trick Room.
However, using it revealed some flaws with Mudsdale. Ground is not a fantastic type at the moment with the ubiquity of Basculegion and the dearth of good Electric types to counter, Trick Room isn't a particularly powerful strategy at the moment, and worst of all there's a different pokemon that does just about everything Mudsdale can do, but better.. Mudsdale provided some of the highest highs I've experienced thus far with this challenge. It also sent me down to my lowest lows. Let's talk about it.
First off, per usual, the build. For the first time with an offensive pokemon, I opted not to max out it's Attack, instead giving it enough bulk to take a decent beating from pokemon while staying on the field. The attack is hypothetically just enough to OHKO a Charizard with Rock Slide, provided they're not defensively invested at all which they frequently aren't. In retrospect, I regret not maxing the stat: there were a few too many scenarios where my opponents were left with just a few percentage points of HP after Mudsdale's attack, allowing my opponent to clap back under Trick Room and take a win off me.
I don't recall what exactly I was speccing against with this spread (I think it was to tank a Heat Wave from Charizard? I need to start writing down my stat spread thought process...) but if I did this again I would probably opt to take some points out of Defense to max out Attack instead, given that the Stamina ability I ran frequently gave Mudsdale a ton of survivability, even against pokemon that otherwise should have been able to beat it. More than a few people figured they'd get around Trick Room with Aqua Jet or Sucker Punch, discover it did less damage than they expected on account of Mudsdale's defenses, then when they tried to use a more powerful move the following turn, still not getting the KO on account of the defense boost Stamina provided. If Mudsdale got a couple of boosts, it became surprisingly hard to take out if the opponent didn't have a special attacker.
Mudsdales moveset is pretty self-explanatory: I mentioned why Rock Slide was on the set before. Earthquake is bar none the best STAB move Mudsdale can be using on account of it's power and spread damage. You may think the fact that Earthquake hits your ally is a problem, but honestly if you build your team around it (and I did) it hardly ever comes up as a serious problem. Protect is protect, you should almost always run it if you have a spot for it, and Body Press can become VERY useful if you get a couple of defense boosts off of Stamina. That being said, Body Press actually wasn't that handy in my games. It was not especially common that my opponent would give me multiple Stamina boosts while also running something weak to Body Press, and when they did, the weak Pokemon would almost always be running a Chople berry, which halves damage from incoming fighting-type moves. Mudsdale is pretty heavy, and Fairy types are fairly common, so Heavy Slam might be a better option, but for some reason in my testing I didn't run into many fairy types either. Depends on what your team needs, I suppose, but in retrospect I probably should have been running Slam over Press. The item is Soft Sand to boost the power of the Earthquakes, though I think there's an argument to running the Hard Stone instead to make Rock Slides more powerful, or even something like Leftovers to increase survivability in longer fights.
Mudsdale is a powerful pokemon that was able to deal a ton of damage, which made me wonder why it's not seeing a little more usage. It's not the best pokemon in the world, but surely it has a niche? Once I realized the problem, though, it was obvious: why would you use Mudsdale when you can just use Garchomp instead? Dragon is a useful typing that mitigates a lot of Ground's weaknesses, Garchomp has a higher attack stat, it has enough speed that it doesn't need a frequently unreliable setup move to be usable, and it won't be taking as many attacks because the pokemon it's fighting are more likely to have been defeated by the time their turn comes around. It sucks to say it, because I did enjoy using Mudsdale, but outside of Body Press spam Garchomp outclasses it in just about every way.
Normally I'd go into the team at large next, but I think I should give a particular member of the team a spotlight first, given how important it was to how I built the team and how I played: Oranguru.
(Hey fair warning, the Oranguru section ended up uhhhhh Extremely long. If you don't want the full breakdown the short version is: Oranguru turned out to be harder to use than I expected, in a way that made me mad but also made me better at the game. Feel free to scroll until you get the full team picture if you don't want to read the exhaustive full thoughts on this monkey.)
Oranguru is a normal/psychic type from Sun and Moon. It has fairly unremarkable stats across the board (it's lowest are Speed and Attack at 60; it's highest is Special Defense at 110), and as a trick room setter would be a Temu-brand Farigiraf if it weren't for two very useful things that, hypothetically, made it a great addition to the team: the ability Telepathy, which prevents it from being hit by it's allies attacks, and the move Instruct.
Instruct is Oranguru's signature move, and it's extremely powerful: when used on a pokemon, they will immediately use the last move they used again, without using up their normal attack for a turn. In other words, Oranguru can effectively give up it's move for a turn in order to give another pokemon a second move. Hopefully, you can see the plan I had in mind: use Oranguru to get Trick Room up, then absolutely blast my opponent with Earthquake over and over again to decimate their team! Oranguru won't even take damage from the Earthquake, thanks to Telepathy! It's the perfect strategy!
Well, not quite. Oranguru is susceptible to being stopped, so I planned around it: the Mental Herb item would allow Oranguru to shake off being Taunted once per battle, more than enough to get Trick Room up, and the third member of the team, Tsareena, would provide protection from Fake Out via it's Queenly Majesty ability which blocks priority attacks. Foul Play gives it a way to deal damage should the need arise, Protect because obviously, and the moves were set.
With this all figured out, I got the rest of my team figured out (more on that in a moment), loaded into Ranked, and...lost. A lot. I lost a ton playing this team, and the losses were more frustrating than I had ever experienced in Pokemon Champions before. Camerupt was frustrating because it would routinely be so bad for a matchup I had to decide between trying to make progress on my challenge or standing a chance at winning; this team was frustrating because I kept losing in the most bullshit and unlikely of ways.
Part of this was just bad timing: the ranked ladder reset while I was using the Camerupt team and I ended up climbing a fair bit using the Gardevoir team. This meant the Mudsdale team was the first one being used primarily in Master Ball rank and, for some reason, when I hit Master Ball rank my starting ranking was way higher than it actually should be, so I got matched against people much better than me and lost and lost and lost and lost. Even once I got down to a ranking that was more appropriate for me, I kept getting matched up against weirdo teams that I didn't see coming that absolutely blasted my ass. These included:
Mold Breaker Tinkaton, allowing it to bypass Queenly Majesty and hit Fake Out
Incineroar running Roar, forcing my Oranguru off the field before Trick Room went up
An Ampharos team built around using Vivillon to spam sleep powder and stall for time while Ampharos got a bajillion stat boosts and became unkillable
Dragonite running Dragon Tail, forcing my Oranguru off the field before Trick Room went up
A Snorlax team built around using status effects to stall for time while Snorlax got a bajillion stat boosts and became unkillable.
In other words, I ended up running into a LOT of people that were either A) sick and tired of losing to Trick Room and made team adjustments to counter it, or B) had strategies that relied on me not doing much my first turn...which I frequently wasn't on account of trying to get trick room up. These were frustrating, yes, but they were far from the worst thing that happened while playing this team.
No, the worst reason to lose of all was... misplay. You'll notice I said Instruct targets a Pokemon rather than an Ally. This is because, for some godforsaken reason, you can target your opponent's mons with Instruct. I don't know why you would want your opponent to get two moves in one turn. I especially don't know why the game would default to targeting an opponent's pokemon with Instruct, making it extremely easy to accidentally target them with the attack and completely fucking up your entire game.
Yes I did lose games like this multiple times. Yes it made me extremely mad, madder than I've been at a video game in a long time. I'm more than a little ashamed to admit that I got tilted enough to throw my controller (downwards, onto my couch, to avoid breaking anything) for the first time in my life.
All of this was assuming Oranguru didn't just died in one turn, also. Oranguru isn't frail, but it's not bulky enough to survive a concentrated assault most of the time, so if your opponent knows Trick Room is coming (and they probably do), they'll just kill the monkey and get free speed advantage the rest of the game.
And yet...I think these tribulations helped me, in the end. At first I was just opening with Oranguru, blindly going for Trick Room and living or dying by if my opponent was good enough to stop it. By the end of this challenge, I was taking action to play around my opponent; starting without Tsareena to try and bait Fake Outs and then switching it in to block them, protecting with Oranguru on turn one so it's partner could get some damage in while they bounced off the monkey, I switched Oranguru's item to the Sitrus Berry to give it that little extra bit of health to get Trick Room off, forcing me to rely on better positioning and prediction to avoid getting taunted. It was hard, and infuriating at times, but I think I came out of it a better trainer. Nothing felt better than the first game where I outmaneuvered my opponent, avoiding commiting too early, then ran away with the game after finally getting Trick Room up around turn 5 or something. In every match as I got better, as I managed to play around my opponent who knew what I was doing and how to stop it, as I would finally manage to get Trick Room up to go all out, as I slammed my opponent with Double Earthquakes and wiped out their team? It felt pretty dang good. I'm still glad I got 10 wins with Oranguru and won't have to use it again, though. It was a pain in the ass.
For the rest of the team, I started from Tsareena, who was brought in to block Priority moves with Queenly Majesty. I gave it Power Whip as it's grass attack, which is very powerful but with a pretty bad 85% accuracy. I don't think I ever actually missed with it, but it was always a concern, and if you want a more consistent option, Trop Kick does a decent amount of damage while also lowering the opponents Attack, which can be handy. Low Kick and Knock Off are on for coverage; in retrospect it might have been better to go with the ice-type Triple Axel in place of Low Kick since Low Kick never felt like it did much damage. In lieu of Protect, my Tsareena was running U-Turn: the thought process was I'd lead Oranguru and Tsareena, Tsareena would block priority attacks with it's ability, then typically after the opponents pokemon had moved it would U-Turn out to get a sweeper onto the field for free (typically Mudsdale of course) before Oranguru got Trick Room up, and we were off to the races. In reality, things rarely went this smoothly, but it was pretty good when it worked! Kebia Berry made it more resistant to poison type moves, particularly Dire Claw from Sneasler, which did come in handy a few times (and is what the somewhat odd defensive stat spread is there to help with).
I wanted something to help against Rain teams since Mudsdale wouldn't be great into them; Tsareena was part of that, and the other part was Rotom-Wash, which helped not just with water-types that could cause Mudsdale trouble, but with Flying and Fire types that might cause Tsareena trouble as well. Rotom is usually decently bulky and I did give it some bulk, but only after maxing out attack to make it as powerful as possible, giving it Thunderbolt and Hydro Pump for STAB and Volt Switch to let it pivot. I would say Rotom-Wash did decently enough for my purposes, never really the MVP but good enough I never considered removing it. At this point, the teambuilding was taking longer than I wanted and I just wanted to start playing, so I rounded out the Grass/Water/Fire core with Torkoal and called it a day. I gotta say: Double Earthquake was pretty good, but Double Full HP Sun Boosted Eruption was frequently even better. Rotom and Torkoal were given the Magnet and Charcoal to boost their damage, respectively.
My final spot shifted around a bit. I started with Hatterene, as a hypothetical second trick room user that I already had trained up (again, I was sick of teambuilding and just wanted to play some games), but I never really ended up using it. Eventually I got mad enough at always losing when Oranguru fainted that I swapped it out for Whimsicott and made some adjustments to the rest of the team to give me a Tailwind mode. However, it was around this time that I started figuring out how to play a bit better, and never actually ended up using it. Oh well. I still think Whimsicott could have been useful, it also has a good suite of supporting moves, I just never had a good opportunity to make use of it in my testing.
Some additional thoughts before I sign off:
One of the things that this team suffered a bit against is Basculegion. Typically by the time a Basculegion hit the field, at least two of their other pokemon had fainted and Trick Room was either over or about to end. Last Respects would be at 150 base power, boosted not only by STAB but potentially the Adaptability ability as well, and absolutely tore through my team in a late-game scenario where they didn't outspeed it. I figured out a hypothetical counter: Sucker Punch Mega Kangaskhan could take care of that exact scenario if it came up, but I never decided what I'd want to give up for it and it didn't come up enough in my testing to be a hugely pressing issue.
Speaking of Mega Evolution: I never thought of one I thought would be good for the team, at least not good enough to replace an existing member, so I never ended up using one. A bit of a waste, but what are you gonna do.
I think the ranking I ended up at once I stopped constantly losing was a weird sort of sweet spot where I ended up facing two different kinds of players: One was very good players who should have been higher ranked but whether because of boredom, a desire to use a favorite non-meta pokemon, or perhaps the urge to prove themselves, were using extremely unconventional teams. I ended up losing to these players a LOT.
The other sort were players who were not especially good, but were using very powerful meta pokemons, with everything on their team being something you'd expect to see throughout a Top 16 of a major tournament, meaning they probably frequently got wins just coasting off the inherent power of their pokemon. These people were typically very easy to outmaneuver and outplay, and if I loaded into a match against someone running Sneasler, Kingambit, Basculegion, Aerodactyl, Charizard, etc, I actually felt pretty relieved and I don't think I lost a single one.
Mudsdale also gets access to Inner Focus, an ability which prevents both flinching and Intimidate from working on Mudsdale. In retrospect, this may have been a better ability than Stamina, especially if I dropped Body Press for Heavy Slam.
I actually did face one other opponent who was running Mudsdale, which is surprising because it's not very popular! Unfortunately they didn't bring it, so idk what their build was.
Mudsdale is a cool and powerful pokemon that isn't seeing any play right now because there's no reason to use it over the other, cooler, more powerful pokemon that's helping to define the meta right now in the form of Garchomp. In most scenarios, you'll want the dragon over the horse, unless you desire one thing in particular: to have a fuckin MASSIVE pokemon on your side of the field look at the SIZE OF THIS THING:
"Vanderhorst had been under the influence of MDMA and three litres of vodka she had consumed on the night of the offence last September, her lawyer Michael Hill told the court."
If my math is right and she actually drank that much vodka, this woman's BAC would have been over twice the level where you die from alcohol poisoning.
Why are we putting her in jail when we should be studying her for science
idk if anyone is actually like. Following the Pokemon Champions posts I've been doing but the next one might take a little bit, I just hit Master Rank again which means the game auto assigned me a ranking that's way too high so I gotta get my ass beat for 20 straight games until I'm back where I belong.
I think it's safe to say the first two pokemon I got for this little challenge were both underdogs, at best. Both Cofagrigus and Camerupt are not especially beloved pokemon, aren't typically considered powerful, and don't see much play in Pokemon Champions. This means playing them gave me a touch of insight most people probably didn't have, a bit of first hand experience with pokemon that turned out to be surprisingly good and surprisingly bad, respectively.
What is there for me to say, then, about a pokemon that is straightforwardly good? A pokemon that's popular, known to be strong, and while not format-defining at the moment is certainly seeing enough play that it's not a surprise to run into it? That's the conundrum I have in front of me as I tell you about my experience playing with Gardevoir, it's mega evolution in particular.
First off, the set. There's not much to it; I went all out in terms of offense and speed, with a little in Defense to shore up it's worst defensive stat. Technically it's HP is a little worse so maybe it's better to put the extra two points into that, but in all honesty Gardevoir is meant to be offensive and I never bothered to try to do defensive calcs or anything. I set it's ability prior to mega evolving to Telepathy to avoid friendly Earthquakes; I don't think this came up a single time, but the theory behind it is checks out.
Mega Evolution does Gardevoir a world of good; it's base 125 Special Attack turns into a MASSIVE base 165, and it's relatively meager base 80 speed becomes a respectable base 100. Combine that with the PIxilate ability, which turns Normal moves into the Fairy type and gives them a 20% damage boost, and clicking Hyper Voice can quickly dent or even wipe out an opponents team.
And that's, uh. That's mostly what I did. Pixilate-boosted Hyper Voice is so powerful, I almost never needed to click anything other than that or Protect. Initially I was running both Psychic AND Psyshock (which uses your Special Attack stat but deals damage using the opponents Physical Defense stat), but I never encountered a situation where Psyshock was the play. Late in testing, I swapped it for Aura Sphere to give me the ability to take out opposing Kingambits, but even facing a few teams with Kingambit on them my opponent never actually brought it and I never had a chance to try it out. Vacuum Wave is probably the better option, however; it doesn't OHKO Kingambit but it still does a fair bit of damage, and the moves +1 priority combined with Mega Gardevoir's speed means you can get avoid getting Sucker Punch'd unless something weird happens. But again, despite seeing a few Kingambit's on teams I never actually faced one in my testing.
I hesitate to say Gardevoir is boring, but it's certainly a straightforward pokemon. I wish I had some sort of insight or interesting thing I learned while getting these wins, but really I just confirmed what I already knew: Mega Gardevoir is a good pokemon with a strong ability that can deal a ton of damage. This is known. Moving on, I guess!
Slightly more interesting is the team I built around Gardevoir, which started with a 3-pokemon Core. A Core in competitive pokemon is a pair or group of pokemon with types that cover each others weaknesses rather well. The starter pokemon types, Fire/Grass/Water, make a good core, for example: Fire takes the Grass hits that Water can't, Grass takes the Water hits that Fire can't, and Water takes the Fire hits that Grass can't. Gardevoir, being part Fairy type, fits well into what's known as a "Fantasy Core", Fairy/Dragon/Steel.
Garchomp is generically quite strong, and I already had one trained up, so I put it on the team as the Dragon type. Equipped with a Choice Scarf to grant it additional speed, it also knew Earthquake, Rock Slide, and two other moves I didn't click much. Actually, I say that, but I did win a game because Dragon Claw gave me a move that hit Pelipper that it couldn't block with Wide Guard. Rounding out the core was Scizor. Kingambit is probably better in most scenarios, but I still quite like Scizor and wanted to use it, plus since it's only weak to Fire, it was usable into a ton of different matchups. The Technician ability, which boosts the power of moves with 40 or less base power by 50%, means Dual Wingbeat has a beefy effective base power of 120, which was very useful against Sneaslers and Venusaurs. Bullet Punch, between Technician and the Metal Coat item I gave Scizor, also packed a hell of a punch for a priority move. And while it doesn't benefit from the ability, Close Combat is great coverage in this format. Scizor isn't a highly-regarded pokemon at the moment, and Kingambit is probably better in most scenarios, but I was pleasantly surprised at how it did overall and recommend trying it if it's strengths could be useful.
Talonflame is on the team because I wanted to try it out as a Tailwind setter. The Gale Winds ability gives it's flying type moves priority as long as it's at max HP, which combined with it's impressive base 126 speed means it can get Tailwinds out even faster than Whimsicott. I'm afraid that's where the positives end, however: as I discussed with Camerupt, being weak to Water is a bit of a liability at the moment, and since Gale Winds is only active when you're at max HP, it's easy for Talonflame's one advantage to get taken away by a Fake Out or any random spread move an opponent might use after you get Tailwind up. I went without an item to use Acrobatics (double power if you're not holding an item), but in retrospect it probably would have been better to have some sort of item and just stick with Brave Bird, it's not like Talonflame kept Gale Winds up very often anyway. I dunno, Talonflame never felt especially good, and I think I'd use basically any other common Tailwind user over it in the future unless the fire typing seemed especially useful.
Weavile is on the team as my anti-trick room mon, being a fast, non-priority Taunt user that can hypothetically stop Farigiraf in it's tracks. Without getting too deep in the nitty-gritty, I kind of failed to ever use it for that. I consistently forgot to bring it against Farigiraf teams, and the one Trick Room team I remembered to bring it against was running Hatterene instead, which was immune to Taunt thanks to Magic Guard. Oh well, Knock Off and Triple Axel meant it still dealt decent damage in the one win I got with it.
Finally, Mimikyu was here as an offensive Trick Room setter. A few of my pokemon are on the slightly slower side, and even most of the faster ones are not so fast they'll outspeed my opponents consistently. Mimikyu was on the team for opponents who seemed so fast it'd be easier to use Trick Room instead. Unfortunately, my time using Mimikyu was riddled with bad luck; opponents would consistently read my plan to use Trick Room and avoid using Tailwind, and even when the plan worked, Mimikyu somehow always managed to end up getting Burned, cutting its Attack stat for the rest of the battle. Mimikyu didn't look bad, per se, but circumstance stopped it from being as strong as I know it can be.
Finally, some additional notes:
I briefly considered being cheeky with my 3-pokemon core, using Hydreigon and Lucario so I would have a Fairy/Dragon/Steel core one way, and a Psychic/Dark/Fighting core the other way. However, Lucario is actually quite bad for this, as being Fighting/Steel means it takes neutral damage from Fairy moves that A) it's supposed to be on the team to help take, and B) are quite common at the moment. Considering this, I scrapped the idea.
I actually remembered to tally my wins and losses this time, and I'm happy to say this team ended with 10 wins and only 3 losses with a 6 win streak at one point. Compared to the Camerupt team, I was pleasantly surprised at how well I did.
Another point in Mega Gardevoir and this teams favor: I misplayed a LOT and still managed to do pretty well. Misreading my opponent, only surviving moves because my opponent low-rolled, in one game my opponent managed to successfully outlast Trick Room and was left with Chandelure against my Scizor...which I won after Heat Wave missed. I just wanted it more, I guess.
Two of my three losses were against Tsareenas. I think what this means is, I need to stop being dumb and forgetting about Queenly Majesty.
Overall, uhhhhhhh yeah Gardevoir is good. I used it on a good team with (generally) good pokemon and got good results. I wish I could say much more about it, but other than being a bit of a bad match into Kingambit and Basculegion, Gardevoir is a very good pokemon that you should keep in mind when teambuilding during the current format. Onto the next one, I guess!
“The Kent State shootings (also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre)[3][4][5] were the shootings on May 4, 1970 of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio during a mass protest against the bombing of Cambodia by United States military forces. Twenty-eight guardsmen fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.[6][7]”
“There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of 4 million students,[10] and the event further affected public opinion, at an already socially contentious time, over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War.[11]”
Student strike of 4 million students! Let’s do that again lol
But it was not just Kent State, eleven days later Mississippi Police fired 150 rounds into a dormitory at Jackson State College, killing 2 and wounding 15 black protesters.
Thank-you to all of my new Internet stranger friends for being so gracious about having my post shoved onto your dashboards. I loved reading all of your kind tags and comments! Both Martin and Bosco have been gone for several years now but for 24 hours, they felt very present in my life. I greatly appreciate this gift. ❤️
When I first started this little mini-challenge of getting every pokemon in Pokemon Champions up to 10 wins, there were a few pokemon that stuck out as ones where getting those 10 wins would be difficult. Watchog, the most "They let them in!?" Pokemon of the bunch, will likely be a pain in the rear. Audino, while adorable, is not especially strong in battle. And while I don't hate them as much as others, I'd be lying if I said I was looking forward to using any of the elemental monkeys.
I was not expecting to have much trouble with Camerupt, especially using it's Mega Evolution. On paper, it's got a solid enough statline. 145 special attack deals a good bit of damage, 70/100/105 defenses means it should be able to tank some damage, and a base speed of 20 makes it tied for slowest pokemon currently legal...meaning it's tied for fastest pokemon currently legal under Trick Room. It ends up filling a similar niche to Torkoal, but without needing to be under Sun to get the damage and dealing more damage with Earth Power thanks to its ground-type STAB. Indeed, for the first version of the team, I simply took the Cofagrigus team I used before, replaced Torkoal with Mega Camerupt (and Cofagrigus for Hatterene, more on that later), and figured I'd rack up wins relatively easily.
I was wrong! To my surprise, it turns out that Mega Camerupt is not only not currently good, but quite a bit worse and harder to use than the smoking turtle it replaced.
First off, the set. For the most part, it's pretty similar to the set I used on Torkoal, running Heat Wave and Earth Power for offense and Protect for...well, protection. The main switch I did was subbing out Eruption for Flash Cannon. My thought process was as follows: When it mega evolves, Camerupt gains the ability Sheer Force. Sheer Force removes the secondary effect (burn chance, stat reductions, etc.) of moves the pokemon uses, and gives a 30% increase in damage in return. With this bonus, Heat Wave (which normally has a 10% chance of burning anything it hits) has an effective base power of 123 or so. Eruption, a move which scales its power relative to the users remaining HP, has a base power of 150. Meaning, if Camerupt is at 82% or less HP, Heat Wave is more powerful than Eruption anyway. That's not much damage before the consistent option is simply better. So, why not take Eruption off the set and replace it with some coverage for the powerful Fairy type pokemon in the format?
As it turns out, Flash Cannon wasn't great. I only used it once, against a Sylveon that handily survived the attack despite the hypothetical great damage it should have been doing. Camerupt's move pool isn't great; there's nothing obvious I can see that I should have been running instead. But Flash Cannon hardly got used, so I can't make a good argument that it was the right choice.
Regardless, on paper this is a solid set that should be able to dole out a ton of damage to opponents, taking people out before they can move in Trick Room. I ran into one teeny, tiny problem. One small little issue that prevented Camerupt from coming off especially strong:
The Meta right now absolutely sucks for Camerupt right now.
Yeah, that Ground secondary typing? Absolutely screws Camerupt. In a game where everyone on-meta is using Basculegion and everyone off-meta is running Milotic, there's no place for a stupid camel that takes 4x damage from water type moves. Aqua Jet from Basculegion can take Mega Camerupt out in a single hit. Flip Turn is a guaranteed kill. And if you get hit with Wave Crash, you're screwed even if you have sunlight up.
Fun fact: every other pokemon on my team got to 10 wins before Camerupt did, even the ones I added *after* Camerupt! If my opponent was running a water type pokemon, I thought very hard about if I was willing to bring it. If they were running 2 of them? Absolutely not. I ran into someone running Milotic AND Gyarados, not bringing Camerupt to that. Ran into someone running Basculegion AND Aqua form Paldean Tauros, not bringing Camerupt to that.
You want to know the worst one? The absolute, worst, most rage-inducing loss I experienced because of this stupid camel and it's ground typing? My opponent leads Tsareena and Weavile. Easiest win in the world, get trick room up, one shot both of them, coast to victory past whatever they have in the back. Unfortunately, Hatterene gets knocked out before it can Trick Room. Well, that stinks, but if Camerupt can launch Heat Wave it should still take them both out, right? I dunno! That stupid goddamn ground typing meant it took neutral damage from Power Whip and Triple Axel, and DIED BEFORE IT COULD DO ANYTHING.
I had a match where I got Sun up, and Politoed still nearly OHKO'd it with Surf. A water type spread move in sun almost took out Mega Camerupt in a single hit. This pokemon is bad. Do not use it, at least not in the current meta.
As I said, initially the team was just a slightly modified version of the team I used to get Cofagrigus to 10 wins. Cofagrigus was replaced with Hatterene, mostly because I wanted to experiment with a more aggressive Trick Room setter that could dish out some damage once Trick Room went up, and Hatterene (the real winner of this testing tbh) did a very good job of that with Dazzling Gleam as a spread move. Despite wanting Hatterene to be dealing damage, I did opt to run the slightly weaker Psychic Noise over Psychic, due to it's utility in stopping pokemon from healing for a few turns. This helped a fair bit against Milotic, which is an extremely annoying and bulky pokemon to deal with that frequently runs Leftovers. Hatterene's two main weaknesses are that A) if you invest in it's special attack, you invest less in it's defense, so it's much more likely to get knocked out before setting up Trick Room, and B) unlike Cofagrigus, it's not immune to Fake Out, so if your opponent knows what you're up to, they can stop it. The Magic Bounce ability does make it immune to being Taunted, and bounces that taunt right back at the opponent, which did help win one of the matches I did. I'd say Hatterene is a solid choice for back-up trick room setter, for when you're more worried about getting taunted than getting fake out'd. Kebia Berry might not be the right item, though, I don't think it ever successfully prevented a KO.
Incineroar and Kommo-o fulfill the same roles they did in the last version of this team: Support and Anti-Charizard Measure respectively. More testing did reveal that giving Kommo-o Ice Punch made it a surprisingly good answer to Garchomp as well, though it was not 100% consistent due to being slower outside trick room and taking super effective damage from Dragon Claw.
When I hit 10 wins with Aegislash, I initially replaced it with Scizor, a pokemon I had been wanting to putz around with. However, I eventually figured out that Kingambit would be more useful, due mainly to it's utility in taking out opposing Basculegion with it's Dark-type STAB. It's also slower than Scizor, making it more effective in Trick Room, so that's nice. As for Whimsicott...unfortunately, this Whimsicott is the result of my jokerfication after multiple matches having to leave Camerupt behind because of water types. It serves as a Trick Room setter than can ALSO use Sunny Day with priority on the second turn, giving Camerupt's Heat Waves extra oomph when the opponent might not expect it. I managed to pull this off without Whimsicott dying once. It didn't help Camerupt deal any additional damage because my opponent's Whimsicott Encore'd it after it used Earth Power the previous turn. The next match I attempted it again, only to discover my opponent was so sick of facing Whimsicott their Garchomp was running Poison Jab. I did not have a chance to try again. I do not think this set is good.
This writeup has kind of been all over the place, and that's where my mind is at with Camerupt. On paper, it should be great: tons of damage, a useful offensive type that Torkoal doesn't get, it should be a great option. In practice, it dies too quickly to the plethora of water types currently in use. I'm pretty sure the only reason I got 10 wins in a reasonable amount of time is because rankings reset while I was doing this, and I started being able to fight noobs and children instead of competent battlers. If you're considering using Mega Camerupt, my advice is: use Torkoal instead.
With Pokemon Champions released, I have taken my first real steps into Pokemon VGC. I built my team, played some games, and after about a week of semi-regular play got to Master Ball tier. At which point I lost a bunch, tumbled down the rankings, and basically did the pokemon equivalent of eating shit before settling where I'm at now with a mid 1600s ELO, good enough for the upper 200,000s in ranking.
All of which is to say, I'm not particularly good at Pokemon battling! I have no delusions of hitting Champion tier or winning a Regional, I'm battling pokemon because I'm enjoying myself. But with world championship firmly out of reach, I've had to find a different motivating factor for play. And I made a decision: I'm going to (try to) get the Admirer title for every pokemon in the game.
On it's face, this might seem like a very time consuming thing to do. This is because it is. For anyone who doesn't play the game, getting the "[POKEMON NAME] Admirer" requires not just using, but winning 10 games with the given pokemon. Unless you get lucky, or play out of your mind, it will almost certainly take more than 10 matches to get 10 wins, and it's not enough to just have the pokemon on your team: when you start a battle, you pick 4 of your 6 pokemon to bring to the match, and the pokemon has to actually come to the battle to make any progress. If you want to become a Watchog Admirer, you can't just keep it in the baby bjorn while Sneasler and Kingambit and Basculegion and Charizard get you wins. It has to show up, and if worst comes to worst it has to contribute. There are some games where a pokemon is simply the wrong choice if you want to maximize your chances of victory. All of this is to say, getting 10 wins with a pokemon can take well over an hour if you lock in and do really well, potentially much longer if you don't. And I am not the sort of person to sit and play a competitive game, queuing into match after match, for multiple hours in a row.
All of this is to say, after loading all 186 pokemon currently legal in Pokemon Champions into a random selector and getting Cofagrigus, it still took me 3-4 days of playing to get those 10 wins.
Cofagrigus is a Ghost type pokemon introduced in Generation 5, Black and White. While it's HP stat of 58 leaves a lot to be desired, it's 145 Defense and 105 Special Defense still makes it pretty bulky, and it's low speed stat of 30 makes it perfect for setting up Trick Room, which is exactly what I did. I gave it enough physical bulk to survive a Kowtow Cleave from a max attack Kingambit, further protected by it's Colbur Berry item. Between it's bulk and it's immunity to Fake Out, I don't think I ever failed to get Trick Room up because of Cofagrigus dying in one turn.
Other than Trick Room, Cofagrigus ran Body Press, Shadow Ball, and Will-O-Wisp. Body Press was the big surprise of the set, dealing a good bit of damage against most everything; Mega Tyranitars would take a good 75-80% damage, and Weavile (the most common Taunter I encountered) would get absolutely demolished. Shadow Ball was mostly there as something to use into anything Body Press was bad against (Basculegion in particular). It didn't do spectacular damage since I didn't invest in Cofagrigus' special attack at all, but a respectable base 95 stat still meant it did Enough to occasionally pick up a KO on a weakened opponent. Will-O-Wisp I clicked the least, and honestly I kind of regret that. Looking back, there were a few matches I probably would have done much better in if an opponent's key attacker had been burned, but the hyper-offense typically required of a trick room strategy generally led me to go for KOs rather than try to play the long game, to mixed results.
For the rest of the team, Incineroar is always a fantastic support pokemon, and deals a fair bit of damage on it's own, actually making it very good for Trick Room. Torkoal may not seem impressive with a base 85 attack stat, but with Sun frequently up thanks to it's ability and the Charcoal item, Torkoal could absolutely clean house even if it's HP was too low for Eruption to really pop off. Aegislash is a strong attacker with access to STAB moves that are very powerful this format, though ironically I'm not sure Trick Room is the best environment for it. With it's defenses being so much higher in Shield form, I think you actually want it to attack last so you can have the higher defense for as long as possible, then be able to King's Shield the following turn to get the defense back before the opponent can attack. Sinistcha is specced out to be much more aggressive than usual, but the Hospitality ability and Rage Powder move made it still very useful as a support pokemon (not to mention the number of clinched games thanks to Matcha Gotcha getting a burn). That said, it was frequently too fast to go first in Trick Room, even after giving it a speed-reducing nature, which was occasionally frustrating.
I feel I need to make special mention of my final team member, Kommo-o. Kommo-o is on this team for one specific purpose: taking out Mega Charizard Y teams. It is specced to kill Mega Charizard Y in a single Rock Slide, have Ice Punch to get a follow up KO on Venusaur, has enough defense to guarantee survive a double up from the two of them if Trick Room isn't up, and was equipped with a Lum Berry to avoid getting Sleep Powdered without giving up Bulletproof as it's ability. I spent a full day figuring out this set after Mega Aggron turned out to be absolutely worthless for the role. After I added Kommo-o, I never faced another Mega Charizard Y team and it never came up.
Anyway, to wrap up, some extra thoughts on Cofagrigus:
I think the biggest thing holding Cofagrigus back as a trick room setter in this format is it's lacking offenses. Once Trick Room gets set up, you kinda need to be able to start putting out massive damage immediately, and while Cofagrigus does decent damage, it's not quite as much as you'd like. You can't even guarantee a KO on Kingambit with Body Press with maximum defense investment, and you really don't want to leave your Special Defense low in this format.
Speaking of, this spread gives Cofagrigus nearly identical Defense and Special Defense stats, which was actually surprising since taking Special attacks felt WAY worst than taking Physical Attacks.
Cofagrigus' ability Mummy (which causes other pokemon to also get Mummy if they make contact) didn't do much in this testing, since the opponent can just reset their ability by switching out. Hypothetically I could get Mummy onto Kingambit when they try to Kowtow Cleave Cofagrigus, then bring in Incineroar to get an attack drop, but...why do that when I can just kill the Kingambit with like Torkoal or something instead? The only time this was even hypothetically useful was in replacing Sneasler's Unburden, except I actually want their Sneasler to be faster on account of the fact that I'm a trick room team. Might be more useful on a non-trick room variant, I suppose.
The only thing that seemed to consistently stop Cofagrigus from getting Trick Room up was taunt, which means hypothetically Whimsicott and Sableye would be a problem due to Prankster. That said, I never encountered a single Whimsicott, and the only Sableye I encountered didn't seem to be running Taunt. The only Taunter I encountered, as I mentioned, was Weavile, which wasn't a problem with Body Press. Oh I guess I encountered a Noivern with Taunt once? But that set was uhhhhhhhhh well my opponent kinda did nothing for 3 turns and then conceded, so I don't think it'll be an issue if you encounter it.
All in all, while I understand why Cofagrigus isn't a top-tier mon at the moment, I had fun using it the last few days, and if you're looking for a trick room setter other than Farigiraf, consider giving the weird coffin a try!
asked the skyrim bandits why they were living in a cave and they explained the war effort has buried the economy so they can't find work and lost their homes. I use my shout to blast them across the cave and find a preeeetty nice sword among their belongings
Shout out to all the Black ppl that can no longer participate directly in the fandom they love because of the stresses of racism 👍🏾 you contain multitudes of value and I'm sorry that the color of your skin and the power of your voice makes people not want to acknowledge that.
