Schwarzer Schnee der Frühe – Nugget Bridge Circuit 2 Top 8 Report and Team Analysis

Seiet gegrüßt! It has been a while since I introduced you to this neat offensive Hail Room concept that, honestly to my surprise, still hasn’t been forgotten. In fact, I may have even played a major part in it still being existent in people’s minds, when there are people popping up every now and then who seek to build teams that follow a similar idea, when exactly those people are often linked to my old report, when other people copy my original team and then put their own spin on it, and — most strikingly — when people specifically prepare for facing it in tournament play. Naturally, the story of the team wasn’t quite written to the end with that original report.

This report features several upgrades and alternatives to the original build, discussing advantages and disadvantages and also features tournament experiences with some of them. To keep me from repeating things more than absolutely necessary, it is highly recommended that you know the contents of the original report.

Before I get into the actual topic, though, I would like to make a late addition to the old report: the battle videos, which I didn’t get around to include back then. You may very well already know them if you subscribed to Nugget Bridge’s YouTube.

• vs. bulky offense
• vs. double Prankster
• vs. high-BST sand
• vs. Murkrow and friends
• vs. the bulkiest Lapras I have ever seen (this one is most likely not a quality game but it’s there!)

I. Cobamoonguss

Double Ghost, double Trick Room — just as before.

This is actually not the first change I made to the known team; I just put it here first for you to get a better feeling about its development. There’s in fact only a trivial change and I have already foreshadowed it in the original report: the Coba Berry to mitigate the team’s issues with strong STAB Flying-type moves. With Tornadus rising in usage thanks to Defiant, it pretty much became a necessity. Oh, right, and I changed Effect Spore to Regenerator, of course, as there was no reason not to do that eventually.

I thought this was the team’s best build for a long time. Its roles are cleanly distributed, it has optimally different ways to set up the Trick Room it so desires, and it has also a good offensive game outside of it, should the need arise. Maybe it still is the best build in some people’s opinions — most notably those who love to play Amoonguss, whereas I probably hate it even more than before. Here’s why: It has no valuable damage output, sleep adds more randomness that rather works out in my opponent’s favor more than mine, and thanks to its skyrocketed popularity in tournament play, people are obviously even better prepared for it! And to hammer the final nail into its coffin: I have brought this variant to the recent Nugget Bridge Major and a few Live Tournaments proximal to it, and I believe I didn’t win a single match with it. The only time that Amoonguss’s Coba Berry ever activated, it came to nought, as a timely critical hit literally blew that improvement away. It was all cursed.

Speaking of hammers …

II. Hammertime

Triple Ghost, Explosion — those were the days.

The Idea

All right, from now on I present the teams in the same order as they have been created and used. This wacky looking one emerged somewhere around the start of the second NBC season, where I decided that I wanted to play Trick Room all season long. Not really because I thought I would have super great chances with that, but — having dominated the German Wi-Fi tournaments throughout the 2011/12 season and looking for a new challenge — I wanted to finally play internationally again, and do so preferably without revealing too much of my plans for the real tournaments. (Or, to put it disgustingly bluntly, I was pretty much sandbagging, because I still believed I had a shot at Worlds, but I thought there was no way this team would take me there.)

One of the articles that were published around that time was Cassie’s Hail Room article. With my style of running Hail Room pretty much set in stone, I probably didn’t gain too much insight from the bare lecture, but that Sableye part towards the end of it instantly sparked my interest. There are only few things in this generation of Pokémon that I hate as much as fighting against Sableye, yet for some reason it never crossed my mind that this puny bling-bling zombie had very well some form of utilizable synergy with my team, more so than those random ideas that I spouted in the original report. Again, I believed the team with Amoonguss and Hydreigon was pretty much perfect for what it was, so I also believed it would be very hard for me to improve it no matter what. There was only that personal flaw concerning Amoonguss, and if I just could somehow get my hands on an alternative support Pokémon that can do more than pestering disposable opponents. If there ever was a way forward for this team, it had to be Sableye!

So, my first step then was to simply take the old core (Chandelure, Hariyama, Jellicent and Abomasnow, for the forgetful ones), add a Sableye to them and finally look for a sixth member, may be a new one as well. I would have been totally fine with keeping Hydreigon and thus basically just replacing Amoonguss, but that triad of Ghosts was simply too appealing not to have something else go boom on them, just for the heck of it. I was allowed to try and fail it, right?

The Team Magnified

Moveset and item. Fake Out can obviously be used to help the Trick Room setup or buy time, nothing too surprising. Taunt made the set because I had to face many Amoongusses and those games were often decided by how long my Pokémon would sleep, when I gave them an opening to fire off Spores. The rest is dedicated to what is inarguably Sableye’s best asset: to make foes’ lives a misery. I can’t imagine running Sableye without Will-O-Wisp at all, so it’s there, and people have to think twice whether they want to expose their valuable physical attackers to a 75% chance of having their damage output halved forever or just let their special attackers or support Pokémon chew on 1/8 residual damage per turn instead. Last but not least, the combination of Trick and Full Incense (it’s the same as Lagging Tail — I just had no idea where to get one in-game and the Incense is so much classier anyway) has proved to be very powerful in practice. Aside from stealing possibly important items from the foes, it provides another method of speed control for the various situations where putting all eggs in the one Trick Room basket may not be enough. Precisely, Full Incense moves the holder right to the bottom of the priority bracket so that, for example, a Dragon Pokémon becomes easy pickings for Abomasnow even outside of Trick Room, or an Amoonguss forever loses its ability to Spore my attackers before they move in Trick Room. So, if I get the Full Incense onto the one Pokémon that my opponent definitely needs to keep me in check, it can be totally devastating.

Numbers. I gave my Sableye some arbitrary speed to try to outspeed other Sableyes and Taunt them before they Taunt her, the rest is exactly how you would expect it. With Will-O-Wisp, there is no real need for further physical investment, and this spread exactly enables Sableye to withstand a Draco Meteor after Tricking off the boosting item, as well as an unboosted Meteor Mash, and she will have enough HP left to endure at least one round of hailstorm.

Options. Initially, I had Feint in the slot of Taunt. Both are very situational moves and it’s exactly Amoonguss’s presence and my practical experience of actually using Feint too rarely that led me to remove it. There are some more options, but since I considered them in a mostly different team layout, I’d rather discuss them there.

Moveset and item. “Metagrosses without Meteor Mash are impure beings and have no right to live” — I can’t see myself ever using one like that, it’s the clearly the best STAB and non-STAB lacks damage output when not hitting for weakness. I use Life Orb to receive meaningful boosts on all attacks instead of just one and Meteor Mash does fit well with that idea, rivaling bulkier Choice Band builds in sheer power. Protect is there for the sake of just having it available. Explosion, again, for turning the friendship with a total of three Ghosts into some immediate value. Usually, people would Protect with one Pokémon to have the other Explode with controlled risk, but since Ghosts are perfectly immune to it, they can attack in the same turn and thus make up for the loss of power that Explosion has experienced through the generational transition as well as using Life Orb instead of Normal Gem. Being immune to Intimidate thanks to Clear Body is especially nice for that purpose as well. Hammer Arm, finally, can be used to make Metagross faster (and thus more threatening) under Trick Room and it achieves neutral coverage with the other moves, except for a few certain Ghosts that I’m ironically using myself.

Numbers. This odd speed makes my Metagross faster than popular 14-IV variants that are likely used together with minimum speed Cresselias outside of Trick Room and it gets to underspeed minimum speed Scrafty after one use of Hammer Arm. The triviality in the EV spread is justified by the fact that Life Orb and hailstorm chip damage would most likely ruin any attempt of taking hits anyway, so I just basically just want to hit them first and hit them hard. Thus, the attack is enough to OHKO a standard Latios with Meteor Mash and the HP number (187) is not perfect but good enough to keep the residual damage as small as necessary, and if I’m not mistaken, it maximizes the overall bulk as well.

Options. While the stars would need to align for me to remove Meteor Mash, I acknowledge that a Life-Orb boosted Bullet Punch might sometimes be very useful. I didn’t get around to trying it or anything else, but if I had the chance, I would get rid of Protect for it so that I wouldn’t ruin the other good aspects of the set. Zen Headbutt and Ice Punch should generally also combo well with Life Orb — I just didn’t use any of them because they would mess with my (STAB-focused) neutral coverage for sure, and I had no strong idea about what I would particularly like to hit.

Unsurprisingly, the other four Pokémon I kept unchanged. For convenience, here they are again:

Evaluation and Findings

This team was essentially an experiment in multiple ways. The main focus was testing out Sableye and other than that, since I wasn’t (and still am not) sure what stance to take in those recurring scouting discussions, I also wanted to find out how I perform with this team when the majority of it is straight available to my opponents thanks to Nugget Bridge. I will also discuss in how far I consider this build better or worse than the previous one.

Sableye. She was not absolutely perfect but a clear success nonetheless. And by “not perfect” I mean, there were simply some matchups or opponents that managed to turn her into a liability — by no means worse than Amoonguss though. Let’s start with the positive things: Usually, Sableye was a very welcome leading Pokémon and supporter, doing the things she does. Most notably, she improved my game outside of Trick Room: With the old build, there were only few matches where I did more work outside of Trick Room than the other way around, mostly needing Trick Room exactly two times to win a battle, but with Sableye, my amount of games won with only one use of Trick Room increased dramatically. Therefore, Sableye gave me a feeling of mobility that I hadn’t really experienced before. Now to the other side of things, Sableye obviously has no offensive presence with a moveset like that, and one of the main selling points of the full team is, well, its offensive presence! Sableye forced me to have more turns with only one attacking Pokémon on the field and this was only good as long as Sableye was effective in shutting down the opponent’s team. An easy practical scenario of turning the use of Sableye against me would be to start with Tyranitar and a (preferably non-physical) partner that can OHKO Chandelure as well, so I have to sacrifice Chandelure early and then I’m stuck with only two attackers against a completely unharmed team.

Transparency. It’s hard to evaluate that. Matches have been affected for sure in some way, as there are people who have admitted to special preparations against me and this matchup, and there are some more who still are much afraid of having to play it. From that information coupled with my performances that were still not too bad, we can deduce that the team really must be kind of strong and that I am maybe a worthy player behind it. Still, there is no denying that the public knowledge did harm me to an extent — could have been much more if I were “someone great” for most of Nugget Bridge, not just a random old one-hit wonder, so I better draw no big conclusions from that.

The Team. Sableye granted me more mobility in the way of conducting battles, but the loss of Amoonguss and Hydreigon took away from my mobility in starting them off. The team preview basically screamed Fake Out + Trick Room, and I’m certain there were not more than three games where I led with something not fitting that description. I could only cover that up by not actually going for that Fake Out + Trick Room play instantly a lot of times and instead attack right off the bat or do something else. Ultimately, people would be able to discern that façade and then, I believe, I would be left with a team that is mostly worse than the old one. Metagross plays a notable part in that as well, because it is somewhat selfish, if you will. It contributes nothing to the setup, it contributes nothing to the pace, its resistances and bulk mean little with the layout of itself and the team overall, and the only thing it really does is to attack. Another one of the main selling points of the team used to be the great synergy within it and it seems like Metagross strayed away from that — certainly not as badly as Glaceon in the early stages of team development, but quite in a similar way.

Online Tournament Experiences

I used Sableye/Metagross variants for most of our own live tournaments and also the most recent Hydreigon/Amoonguss build for the major and a few lives as well. At the end of the season, I was at 495 points, 9th place, with a a buffer of 137 points to non-qualification — only 60 of those points I’ve gained using teams other than these, so I can rightfully claim that I’ve made it to the invitational using Hail Room “exclusively”. I didn’t expect to make it this far at the beginning of the season but a good start made it very possible, being the first player to win two lives as early as week 6. However, that was also my last win, and then it was mostly my seeding that still racked up some small points for poor performances, and possibly also a lot of people slacking off that could have easily knocked me out of the top 16. Anyway, I have compiled a few interesting games against great players — all of them made Worlds later! — on my way, and here they are for you to watch:

So much for the good stuff, on to some oddities. Here are my chronologically ordered records with both teams, not counting inactivity wins: 1-1, 5-0, 1-1, 5-0, 0-1, 1-1, 3-2 + 2-1 (4-2 swiss bubbled into cut, made the grand final), 1-1, 0-1, 0-1, 0-1, 0-1, 4-1, 0-1, 0-1, 2-3 in the lives, and 1-2 in the major, which makes for a total record of… a measly 25-18, close to losing half of my games. The first part of the season looks like just what seems realistic, very “extremish” with those wins and pretty much meaningless performances back to back. Then, the other part, well, I hate to say it, but my luck was horrible almost every week. I fully know and accept that a mostly Trick Room reliant team magically draws in bad luck, if you will, but I feel like pretty much every successful team right now has some very promising ways of getting unlucky as well. Thus, I don’t see the fault on my side at all, but because I am cynical enough for all of this, I did get some good entertainment out of that peculiar taste of humor that the RNG gods unleashed on me then. Never forget to accept them as your saviors. Oh, and to a lesser extent, I also may have played badly a few times, with my personal worst Nationals performance ever lying right in there, though I was far away from using any the teams in this report in them — if justifiably or not, that is now but void conjecture.

Having explained that, I am still surprised that it was enough for the invitational, because except for maybe one 3rd place my second-half run was: absolutely useless. People had every right to think of me as a fluke, with my only consistency being in losing. I do even think of myself as a fluke because I doubt I would have made it if even half of all those world-class (read: better-than-I) players around here would have put more effort towards the NBC. However, online tournaments without notable prize support and with a faulty connection system are just what they are and what they should be at the most. End of story: silly Mathias is possibly a legit player in his own living room but if you take him more than an hour-drive away from home, better place your bets on someone else unless you’re too generous for this world.

That said, I did eventually get back on track and that’s when this team finally was developed further.

III. Meet in the Middle

Triple Ghost, double Dark and long overdue.

Somewhere in July and with my qualification in the bag, we all were waiting for the second Nugget Bridge Invitational to be announced, and my feelings about what team to use there changed pretty much every day — drastically, even. I was again playing around with all sorts of things to see if I liked them enough and, you see, that didn’t quite work out. At the same time, Human made it all the way to the US finals with another Hail Room team — I was most surprised, having forsaken my own with respect to official premier events and seeing how he just got “matchup’d” in the finals, I can’t even say I was wrong with my worries. Anyway, my coldest team was probably the one I could pilot most flawlessly and it would no doubt deserve the honor to maybe fish for a prestigious match on stream. So, after convincing myself once more that Amoonguss simply doesn’t suit me, I finally just tried to play Sableye with Hydreigon, and it felt in fact better, it became the new “best version” for me.

However good it may have been though, it didn’t quite solve one major problem that has become very apparent to me during both the Nugget Bridge Live tournaments and my personal testing: Tyranitar, especially bulky variants. You might remember, I have always taken special precautions with this team against Tyranitar, but they just turned out too weak in the end. Jellicent and Abomasnow can underspeed Tyranitar by a million points if they so will, but they still lack the means to remove it most of the time, and then it will retaliate hard! Sableye was my only way of weakening its damage output but wasn’t too best of a pick in Tyranitar matchups, since they would often take the 4-3 lead turn 1, narrowing down my resources significantly. And games where I didn’t bring Sableye usually came down to whether they could keep Tyranitar and an arbitrary favorable partner healthy enough till Hariyama went down, and wearing down Hariyama obviously wasn’t the hardest task in the world. It’s intriguing how it took me so long to see that loophole, but I think people have just become overall smarter in using Tyranitar and friends over the course of the season — better late than never.

IV. Make Ice Colder: Add More Fire

Triple Ghost, triple Dark — get on my level.

With all that talk about Human’s outstanding performance and my own issues with that very archetype that has ultimately stopped him cold (yeah, bad puns ftw), I obviously had to question whether this fully offensive approach that I’ve followed with the team in every day of its existence was really the only way to do it. In fact, I did some more defensive drafts long before that but then just shunned them, because every one of them gave me that feeling: “stop it, you will be lacking damage output and it will be no feat for anyone that doesn’t have the same problem themselves to capitalize on that.” Human’s team, however, was built differently. He still kept the setup at a rational minimum, using the defensive parts mostly to shut down the physical sides of his opponents. That would force them to mainly use their special attackers but those happen to be easier to take down for the team thanks to striking weaknesses (for example: Latios and Thundurus to Ice, Volcarona to Rock) or inherently negligible damage output (Cresselia, defensive Thundurus, etc.). With the inaccuracy of Will-O-Wisp and the elevated susceptibility to well-timed critical hits, I definitely wasn’t immediately sold on the strategy, but it was worth trying it out nonetheless.

So what did I do then? I basically took the build from the previous section and changed various details about it to turn a formerly offensive team into one with a bit less offense but much more hostility to physical attackers. The dreaded Tyranitar is apparently a very big one of them and since a Fighting-type glass cannon and some minor tricks simply weren’t enough to handle it, might as well try to ruin its day with Intimidate and a barrage of Will-O-Wisp and work from there. The need for Intimidate obviously forced Hariyama right out of the team — would have to bend the layout much more if using a Flying-type Intimidator. Jellicent received an entirely new and significantly more annoying set. On the other Pokémon I tried different things at some point as well — I’m just keeping this a minor and undetailed section because I sadly didn’t manage to come up with a really convincing build of those quite intriguing looking six. (How often does it happen that someone builds a strong team with triple Ghost and triple Dark?)

The main reason for this lineup not quite succeeding was none other than the most apparent new element, Scrafty. It may be possible that my Scrafty was just badly designed, or maybe I’m just no good Scrafty player at all. I was never fond of its limited damage output and its durability isn’t the greatest either, especially with hailstorm damage and surroundings that need Scrafty to help get Trick Room up in the crossfire, rather than protecting it from early damage. Naturally, Scrafty ended up getting knocked out too easily and getting too few damage on the board in exchange for that. What left me really speechless, however, was this: People started to switch in their physical attackers right before Scrafty’s face to try to sneak around Intimidate, and some of them were exactly those that Scrafty was supposed to counter, namely Excadrill and Tyranitar! So here we have Tyranitar switching into Scrafty, taking hardly damage from Drain Punch thanks to Chople Berry and very lopsided stats among them and thus being able to pester my remaining team without much fear of retaliation (especially when I miss Will-O-Wisp trying to counteract that)! This felt by no means better than having to conserve Hariyama, by no means at all.

In a nutshell, the concept in itself had legitimate potential, but the balance in the actual team was off. Scrafty isn’t the only Fighting-type Intimidator, so…

V. Enter the Magical Girl

Back to triple Ghost and double Dark, now with snowflakes in deep purple shades.

The Idea

There you have it in plain sight: good old Hitmontop is the savior. Compared to the failed Scrafty, he/she/whatever keeps the Fake Out and Intimidate support and trades those hardly useful other attributes of Scrafty for some raw power again. I feel like having two defensive Pokémon in Sableye and Jellicent is enough; with four offensive ones I have to pick at least two per battle and those are the ones that make the most use of incapacitated foe Pokémon, after all.

So, besides the old and simple offensive approach, which is still very well possible with that new layout, this new team can also quickly rack up chip damage via burns and weather as an alternative. People usually engineer their Pokémon’s EV spreads against strong attacks like featured in this team, but if we join those strong attacks and accumulating chip damage together, those sophisticated EV spreads become useless. Even not very effective hits play a huge part in spoiling calculations, since — thanks to the offensive nature of most Pokémon in the team — those can be treated as “particularly big chip damage”. If people for example try to waste Hitmontop’s Fighting Gem with Thundurus, it might do them no good in the long run, as this hit does easily set up an unboosted Blizzard knockout for later, whereas Scizor tends to take that Ice Gem Blizzard a lot just to be worn down easier afterwards, and so on, you get the idea. That’s actually not new at all — it has just become easier to force situations like that, and I now have better answers to some matchups that used to be unfavorable.

The Team Magnified

Moveset and item. Trick Room and Recover are already known from the old set, and they serve the same purpose in this one — getting Trick Room up easily and survive long enough to control the flow of battle till the very end, if need be. Will-O-Wisp I tend to input a lot, because that is probably the best that this entirely defensive Jellicent can do when she doesn’t need to twist the dimensions or heal up. Scald is that one arbitrary STAB that is reliable at least in hitting — my burn luck with it, on the other hand, is rather lowly, and 75% are better than 30%, which I don’t even believe in, anyway. With all ways of burning the opposition as well as Cursed Body involving the RNG gods’ mercy, this very Jellicent is probably even more luck-dependent (not: based) than the whole Trick Room concept in itself. However, assuming Jellicent doesn’t go down early, odds are in my favor. Leftovers, finally, simply help her longevity the best.

Numbers. The new EV spread takes some points away from the physical side to make the special side a bit safer against strong attacks, since surviving Tyranitar’s Crunch has just become easier thanks to Intimidate and the overall idea of crippling physical attackers while there is absolutely nothing in the team that ever weakens special attacks. In the actual numbers, this spread (and remotely also the moveset) is inspired by Zach‘s Jellicent from the 2012 Fall Regionals.

Options. Old Water Spout, if anything. I decided against using it this time because people tend to find ways to keep my old Jellicent’s HP low (and get lucky via Cursed Body not activating in time *cough*) once they know what they are in for, and then Water Spout can grow so weak that it can’t even break a Heatran’s Substitute. Additionally, I wasn’t in the mood for raising yet another Jellicent, that was already more advanced to breed due to the shininess, to level 69, so I chose Scald and never regretted it.

Moveset and item. Actually, I hate to use Hitmontop. But this is not “Hitmontop”, this is Feintmontop! Whenever I was happy with using some spinning guy, he always knew Feint. Always. Ok, so in all seriousness now, while Feint failed me on Sableye earlier, it’s an amazing move to use on Hitmontop in a team with a time-constrained setup. Hitmontop along with another attacking partner makes for some offensive pressure, which entices people to use Protect to stall, and then Feint followed by a fitting attack gets a cheap knockout. And then there’s also the possibility to simply pick off mortally weakened targets, of course. Fake Out, Close Combat and Fighting Gem are the general go-to picks for Hitmontop and this fully offensive one certainly makes no difference there. Stone Edge was chosen to keep the Rock move that the slot formerly occupied by Hariyama contained, for Volcarona is always very threatening and I think the Rock coverage — assuming it eventually hits, you know — is generally helpful enough in this team to forsake the stronger priority that Sucker Punch would provide.

Numbers. It’s a trivial spread, and it was already prominently featured in Flash‘s 2012 Worlds semifinalist team — I simply wanted the highest damage output I can get (apart from Stone Edge outdamaging Rock Slide, it’s still overall inferior to the mighty Hariyama who just wrecked stuff all day) and not having to care about speed much, I already get reasonable bulk from pouring all the rest into the HP, nothing more I need. The special speed enables Hitmontop to underspeed regular Careful or Adamant Scrafties and minimum speed Chandelures, and not going straight to zero enables me to scout for speeds in that medium-slow quantile with less guesswork via ability activation, while the rest of the team does excellent work in keeping the respective Pokémon in check whether Trick Room is active or not.

Options. Helping Hand, Sucker Punch and even Detect would all be interesting moves to have — it’s just that space is painfully lacking. The four that I have right now perform so well that I don’t feel like changing them up any time soon without possible other modifications triggering something here.

Moveset and item. Old set is old! It’s new that I now can fuel Flash Fire with my own Will-O-Wisp, I guess, but usually my opponents beat me to that (they even dare use Sunny Day against me — well, thanks for the boosts??). Oh well, on we move!

Numbers. Also changed nothing here. One day, I actually thought about making her fast enough to outspeed Calm Cresselias without speed investment but quickly decided not to. It’s not of much use to do that in this team and especially in Japan, there’s that trend of mostly running Cresselia either slow or fast but not too often simply at 31/neutral/0, and waiting for that to carry over to our metagames one day, I simply see no point in speed racing there. As things are right now, my Chandelure outspeeds slow Cresselias (presumably Trick Room variants) and underspeeds pretty much all that are not slow (might or might not have Trick Room in set). That position right in between is probably the best to seize control of the flow of battle against them.

Options. Having Intimidate at my disposal, using a Gem or even Life Orb would have less drawbacks compared to before, and from people who have been inspired by my Chandelure build, I’ve noticed that they sometimes prefer not to run Focus Sash for some reason. I, however, am still not comfortable with not using Focus Sash. Strong purely special leads like Latios + Therian Thundurus, Hydreigon + Chandelure (hey, I like to go with that duo myself!) or Rage Powder Volcarona + something would simply maul that. And you’re bound to run into them, period. If I had my own Follow Me or Rage Powder, it may have been a different story.

Moveset and item. And here’s another old set, but it has grown terrifyingly more effective! Dinodora VI isn’t simply a sixth Pokémon of the team anymore but a major damage dealer besides the usual difference-maker of yore. She can so easily punish people for liking to sacrifice their offensive capabilities to withstand a Timid Latios’s Draco Meteor with not only being slightly stronger but also having more support available via a bigger focus on chip damage and generally better partners. If you somehow want to know how black snow exists, bring my most beloved beast something yummy and she might tell you.

Numbers. Same as before again. I definitely wouldn’t join the speed race with all those Timid Hydreigons and what have you, simply because I like the power more than anything else, and ultimately ending up at speed ties? — thanks, but no thanks. Would rather go slower because “who uses Timid Chandelure?” but you never know. I definitely can’t complain about getting the jump on Pokémon that are not designed to outspeed Timid Chandelures though.

Options. I would like Flamethrower for matchups involving Scizor or Breloom, but again, space. Earth Power, Draco Meteor and Protect are entirely sealed and I would probably long for Dark Pulse if I didn’t have it. It makes Hydreigon my main answer to other Chandelures that isn’t my own Chandelure and it’s one out of only two moves in the team that hit Cresselia super effectively — I strongly need that one when I’m up against a rare Rest Cresselia.

Moveset and item. It’s already in this exact report you’re reading right now.

Numbers. Word count +3.

Options. All right, getting there. Someone that I suspect is not active here has suggested Gravity as a way of removing some potential for bad luck with a few terrible accuracies as well as counter-weather Blizzards and I’ve tried it — to no real success, for a few reasons. Having Sableye use Gravity usually means a turn of Sableye not disrupting anything, which can be easily punished if Sableye’s partner doesn’t take care of whatever might happen immediately. That is — similarly to the Scrafty draft — probably an ill-fated cross-dependency, at least it seemed so in my hands. And what to really get out of Gravity is hard to tell, because it just temporarily disables some miss chances, while there is no powerful Ground Pokémon in my team to shatter some fliers and I give my opponents the increased accuracy as well. Other than that, I’ve run Mental Herb then, and that is definitely a good item, with Sableye being a popular target for Taunts. There might be some merits to running Recover simply to annoy the hell out of every matchup that fails to get rid of Sableye fast, but I didn’t yet get around to thoroughly testing that — I only know that Trick + Full Incense is still very, very powerful, and in some battles I just wanted Sableye to fall at some point to get some offensive momentum going. (If she had access to Lunar Dance, I would totally try that.)

Moveset and item. And the final set is also a recycled one; the changes are rather in my head than somewhere else. Remember, Abomasnow used to be simply a strong attacker under Trick Room and the Pokémon that enabled Jellicent to fire off perfectly accurate Blizzards at the same time. Now, the second Blizzard is gone and other tricks have joined the group, so Abomasnow is still a quality attacker under Trick Room, and thanks to the Full Incense Trick now even outside of Trick Room as well. Additionally, Abomasnow’s weather that damages pretty much everything in the metagame except himself enables our ghostly friends to spread burn across whole teams to, along with some Protects, effectively whittle their health away passively, if need be. Finally, I want to present a small gimmick that I’ve just stumbled upon during refining the team: If I get to counter Tyranitar’s Sand Stream (and thus negate its special defense boost), Hydreigon’s boosted Draco Meteor does 92.75 to 109.17% damage to 252/0 variants — can’t survive two turns of hailstorm on top of that and they need to get lucky to survive after the first one.

Numbers. Again, same as before, but more Scizor-proof than back then. This Abomasnow was originally designed to survive an unboosted Bullet Punch, which degenerated into a mostly useless feature with Steel Gem and Swords Dance becoming so popular — now there’s Intimidate as an answer to the former and in case Scizor gets burned way too soon, you can probably figure out what that means to Abomasnow on your own.

Options. None really. I do find Human’s Substitute interesting and would love to run it if I had a fifth slot, but there you have it. Protect and the strong STABs are not to be replaced and Ice Shard running off that high physical attack investment is simply to good with the team, has clutched me a lot of games throughout the team’s development.

So this is it in its full glory, the version of my signature team that I have brought to the Nugget Bridge Invitational. I could add a lot more of theorymon without issues, but I doubt a lot of you still want to read that, so here’s some recapped tournament action instead!

The Invitational

Top 16: vs. dingram

So, I’m starting my final tournament of this season off against the new US Senior runner-up, and I’m the immediate underdog with his strong showing at Nationals still fresh in people’s minds. Anyhow, I feel good about the matchup, having already beaten him in a similar one (which is right in the video way above, by the way) with somewhat less favorable preconditions (Hariyama, why are you not in my team this time?). Playing the straight Trick Room game may be difficult against Scrafty and Rhyperior that can both potentially underspeed my whole team and outside of it I need to watch out for Volcarona and Raikou. The key to the matchup would be to have the right Pokémon on the field most of the time and then have them outdamage his overall rather defensively oriented ones.

Game 1. I don’t want to blow my more specific but also risky tricks as early as game 1 while my basic four feel pretty comfortable — Chandytop lead and Jellisnow back it is. He starts with Raikou and Scrafty and eventually shows Gyarados and Volcarona in the back, trying to disrupt me all battle long, possibly for a Volcarona cleanup at the end. I’d love to retell it turn by turn, but unfortunately I’m bad at memorizing games where a lot is going on and my notes are of limited use as always. So, some attacking, Protecting and switching during the initial turns without significant damage on any side and then I’m tempted to completely expose Hitmontop to Raikou and Gyarados: I want to set up Trick Room to deal with Raikou and Volcarona at some point but I don’t remember if Gyarados has Taunt, so I’d prefer to just get rid of it and thus try to get in some chip damage with a -1 Stone Edge that also gives Abomasnow an easy target for putting on Blizzard pressure. It doesn’t happen as planned however, as Raikou’s Thunderbolt takes about half HP from Hitmontop and Gyarados’s Waterfall critical hits him back into his Poké Ball. Then, I just start pushing the dreaded Blizzard button and get to freeze the incoming Scrafty with it. Freezes are usually really nice to help me win games but this one forces me to gamble: Because I need it against all the rest of his team, I set up Trick Room right in Scrafty’s face, making it a huger threat than expected. I have already lost Hitmontop and since freeze duration is impossible to predict, it’s very hard for me now to burn it (and thus halve its attack) after only one move. Just like various Cresselias and Steel types already fallen to the power of Abomasnow, though, Scrafty never thaws and I can’t remember ever losing a game to one dead slot on the field.

To my surprise, he didn’t bring Rhyperior at all, and because his selection and game was actually solid enough, I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t change much. I decide to give Chandelure some rest in order to deal major damage with Hydreigon this time, figuring Jellicent would easily be enough to control the pace and Hydreigon would protect her well from Gyarados. With that change made, however, I can’t afford to lose Hitmontop this early again.

Game 2. I open with Hitmontop and Hydreigon against Raikou and Volcarona. I expect him not to double Protect in fear of Feint + Draco Meteor and rather Snarl and/or Bug Buzz to prevent that, but he does double Protect while I also Protect Hydreigon and finally get to reveal Hitmontop’s Stone Edge for no numerical effect at all. I then replace Hydreigon with Jellicent to render Volcarona ineffective and aim Close Combat at Raikou, expecting him not to expose Volcarona to Stone Edge and also to smooth Jellicent’s path, obviously. He does predict half of it, as he hits Jellicent with Bug Buzz unpunished and wastes my Fighting Gem with Gyarados — a good position for Jellicent though, since both his Pokémon can’t touch her now. Still not knowing Gyarados’s moveset other than Waterfall and Protect, I hit Scald into Volcarona’s slot and do whatever with Hitmontop’s slot, welcome back hazy memory! That Scald hits his last Pokémon Scrafty entering the field, does it even critically and, the inarguably sweetest part of it, it burns! I do appreciate that a lot, since I have historically bad luck using Scald.

I get Hydreigon back into the arena somehow against those two and threaten a knockout against any one of them with Draco Meteor. I just don’t actually click it because I want to conserve the Gem or just my special attack for some reason (might be the Volcarona, I don’t remember for sure but I think its Protect came out slower than Hydreigon’s in turn 1), also not fearing what a defensive Gyarados and a burned Scrafty could possibly do. But lo and behold, I end up losing Hydreigon at the end of this turn thanks to Ice Fang, Drain Punch and maybe also little damage from switching in already on her. So she just got around to Dark Pulse Gyarados for some chip damage (good enough for Abomasnow to capitalize on, at least) and mitigated Scrafty’s crippled attack a bit in her last breath through Moxie.

Anyhow, his team got prepared well enough for me to wear it down, so I’m still comfortable with this 3-4 as long as no outstanding things happen. I go for Blizzard power play outside of Trick Room again, disposing of Scrafty along the way and try to bring up the Trick Room once that happens, only to have it denied by Thunder Wave followed by instant full paralysis. Still, that’s not enough at all to ruin my advantageous board position and in the end, a Feint + Blizzard play that sticks, more Feint threats and an unweakened Ice Shard succeed to take out his Pokémon one by one for me to emerge victorious again.

Top 8: vs. Baz Anderson

Interesting. I actually expected to have to deal with that pesky Liepard + Breloom lead that he has deployed against me all season again, along with that dangerous bulky Quiver Dance Volcarona. So my mental preparation before the event is basically useless now, but unless that’s an Imprison Chandelure, I actually am sort of relieved. Almost every single one of those nigh uncountable Liepard + Breloom matches eventually boiled down to whether my Pokémon would sleep for too long or too short, and not to forget, I usually had Hariyama to help me there. Against what I am facing now, however, I see no reason to feel unhappy with Hitmontop.

Game 1. His new team looks terribly Trick Room weak (aside from those STAB priority moves super effective against Abomasnow), so I just pick basic Chandytop + Jellisnow again and see where they take me. He leads off with Terrakion and his own Chandelure. If he doesn’t have Imprison nor Taunt on Chandelure, I can just Fake Out + Trick Room and work from there — and if he does have it, I have just earned me a nice auto-loss. Turns out he has only Ghost Gem Shadow Ball, burns it on my own Chandelure’s Focus Sash while Terrakion Protects away the Fake Out chip damage (or it just gets switched out for Cresselia, again I don’t remember for sure). In any case, I’m in the driver’s seat now, with up to 4 turns to wreak as much havoc as possible. As Chandelure just got knocked down to 1 HP, I trade her in for a big Shadow Ball against Cresselia, essentially removing the possibility of him reversing Trick Room and getting rid of my slot soon to be dead once Abomasnow is unleashed. In the remaining turns of Trick Room, he loses Cresselia and Chandelure. When Trick Room ends, it’s 3-2 with Hitmontop and Abomasnow against Terrakion and Breloom. I get in an Ice Shard for about half damage on Breloom (might come in handy later to know that calc), Hitmontop gets Spored and Terrakion beats Abomasnow with Close Combat. In comes Jellicent, ready to be Spored as well and it’s just over. I forfeit at 2-2 to keep my new Jellicent set secret, for it’s one that he doesn’t know yet.

Incredible. I had the edge 5 turns long and then it all collapsed like a house of cards. I actually experience scenarios like that a lot when people get lucky with double Protects or something in that direction, but in this game, I recall that there was absolutely no chance involved — only masterful resource management by Baz (and possibly good evidence for why he has qualified for Vancouver while I wasn’t even close). My matchup against his team can be however good it desires, but since bad luck is pretty much bound to come around, this very clean surprise loss hurts a lot. I decide to stick with the exact same Pokémon in the same order for game 2 and try again; it must be winnable somehow. (About changing my selection up: Hydreigon doesn’t enjoy having to deal with Terrakion and double priority and she also wishes she had Flamethrower for this particular matchup, while Sableye may be too defensive and will most notably be of very limited use if he decides to bring Thundurus with Taunt.)

Game 2. I saved this one and this all must already be lengthy enough, so just watch how it went. It was basically the same cat-and-mouse game as before and ultimately I’ve entered that infamous double Trick Room play at the wrong time and paid with the match. Sometimes you become a hero, when it works out perfectly, but sometimes you just make a tragicomic fool out of yourself.

That ends this Nugget Bridge Circuit for me, and the core part of the report with it. Good games everyone, see you whenever.

Closing

This team was originally created as a fun experiment and I have reworked it for our live tournaments to have fun again. At the same time, I had more “success” with it than with anything else. Then, Human made the US finals with another Hail Room team and, a few weeks later, Sejun made the whole world’s top 8 with yet another one. Having worked hard on my own one to improve it right between these two testimonials of great success, my confidence and faith in it, as well as my abilities in operating it, are stronger than ever before. I hope I’ve managed to shed some more light onto this still rather obscure archetype — or at least on my own way(s) of interpreting it.

Pokémon have many experiences in their lives, just like we do. I, too, have seen and suffered much in my life. Since I am your elder, let me show you what I mean. I have been with Pokémon since before you were born. I do not lose easily. I, the winter trainer, shall demonstrate my power!

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