Hello Nugget Bridge! I’m Lee Watson (Redemption003 on the forums here) and this is the team I used to achieve second place at the Pokémon UK Battle Tournament and reach the top 16 at this year’s UK Nationals. I’ve developed the team over the course of the entire season, so I’ll run through a couple of different versions of the team and how the changes I made produced these results.
Humble Beginnings
When the rules for this VGC season were announced, I’d been running a doubles team that was rendered illegal (thanks to three of its members being outside the Kalos Dex). This meant that I had to go back to the drawing board and come up with something totally new. Sign-ups for the UK Battle Tournament were announced while I was on holiday in Japan, so I franticly fought to sign up using a borrowed iPad. A website error meant that I assumed I was unable to sign up and forgot about the tournament in favour of enjoying the rest of my holiday. A surprise invitation e-mail shortly before the tournament left me with limited time to build a team for the Newcastle regional qualifier. I managed to throw together a team using some Pokémon I already had lying around (including a random Choice Scarf Haxorus and Baby Doll Eyes Vaporeon) and qualified for the final tournament in London. A stronger team would be needed to produce a deep run at the London tournament and I had been impressed with how Meowstic-M performed on my team at Newcastle. This became the starting point for my new team.
Meowstic @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Prankster
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 124 Def / 132 SDef
Timid Nature
- Safeguard
- Light Screen
- Shadow Ball
- Thunder Wave
The MVP of the qualifying tournament. My teams always have some form of heavy support Pokémon and Meowstic’s Prankster ability provides invaluable support before (almost) anything else happens in the turn. Light Screen combines with Intimidate and Will-o-Wisp from the rest of the team to help my Pokémon absorb hits that would otherwise threaten to one and two hit KO. Safeguard shuts down the likes of Dark Void Smeargle, while protecting my team from crippling status like burns and paralysis. This removed the necessity for Lum Berry on my team, allowing me to use a stronger item on my Garchomp. Speed control is scarce in this meta-game, so I opted to carry Thunder Wave to give my team the speed advantage when I needed it – particularly to avoid the base 100 speed wars. Choice Scarf Salamence is one threat that was alleviated by Thunder Wave (allowing Garchomp to outspeed it). Shadow Ball is one move selection that I have been questioned about. Early incarnations of this team had problems with Gardevoir and Shadow Ball allowed Meowstic to chip away at Gardevoir’s HP better than a STAB psychic attack would. Kangaskhan’s ubiquitous presence made having Shadow Ball annoying at times, but Meowstic needed to avoid using attacking moves with the kangaroo around anyway due to Sucker Punch. Rocky Helmet is a brilliant way of punishing physical attackers, especially with Meowstic being Fake Out bait. I originally ran Leftovers to keep Meowstic around longer, but the recovery was too small to be game-changing in most cases. The Timid nature was originally due to lazy breeding, but some of the best discoveries are made by accident. This Meowstic is able to outspeed a lot of other Meowstics (unless they are going max speed for Fake Out purposes), giving it the upper hand over those Meowstics. During practice, it was also able to outspeed a lot of random Pokémon that dropped speed in favour of bulk. For that reason I stuck with the Timid nature to see how it would work out in actual competitions.
Charizard @ Charizardite Y
Ability: Drought
Level: 50
EVs: 92 HP / 164 SAtk / 252 Spd
Modest Nature
- Heat Wave
- Flamethrower
- Solar Beam
- Protect
Charizard was one of my favourites in the early days of Pokémon, so the addition of its Mega forms was a welcome one by me. I really wanted to use the offensive nuke machine that is Mega Charizard-Y and this was a quick build that I put together early in the season just to try it out. At that point a lot of players seemed to be running 252/252/4 attacking spreads, but I felt that Charizard was strong enough under the sun to justify removing some SAtk EVs to increase its bulk. I wanted to keep 252 speed EVs to speed tie with other base 100s with an attack boosting nature. As for move choices, Heat Wave is pretty much a necessity due to it being a powerful spread move. Flamethrower was chosen to remove the accuracy issues of Heat Wave and to dodge Wide Guard. I would later regret not using a more powerful move in Flamethrower’s spot, as it was unable to one-hit KO Kangaskhan with just Flamethrower. Solar Beam allows Charizard to hit water types hard under the sun and gives it a coverage option against a number of other types. Admittedly, the EV spread was horribly inefficient and was one of the first things I looked at changing once I had the time to do so.
Scrafty @ Coba Berry
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 132 Atk / 120 Def / 4 SDef
Impish Nature
- Detect
- Drain Punch
- Fake Out
- Stone Edge
This is a spread I was very happy with at the time. It was designed to bait Talonflames and strike back with Stone Edge. Early versions of this team had issues with Talonflame and this was a strong fallback option for me. I used Scrafty last year to soak up Latios Draco Meteors, so I knew that he had the potential to do the same to Brave Birds thanks to his Defense being equal to his Special Defense at base 115. With this EV spread, he is able to survive with roughly 40% HP remaining without Intimidate and KO back with a Stone Edge. Fake Out is typical team support from Scrafty, shutting down an opposing Pokémon for a single turn and freeing up Scrafty’s partner to do work. Drain Punch keeps Scrafty on the field for longer and deals with Kanganskhans, steel types and dark types. While Detect takes a little more work to get than Protect, it does defend Scrafty from Imprison shenanigans.
- 252+ Atk Choice Band Talonflame Brave Bird vs. 252 HP / 120+ Def Coba Berry Scrafty: 91-108 (52.9 – 62.7%) — guaranteed 2HKO
- -1 252+ Atk Parental Bond Mega Kangaskhan Return vs. 252 HP / 120+ Def Scrafty: 69-82 (40.1 – 47.6%) — guaranteed 3HKO
- 132 Atk Scrafty Drain Punch vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Mega Kangaskhan: 90-108 (42.4 – 50.9%) — 2% chance to 2HKO
Rotom-Wash @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Levitate
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 124 SAtk / 4 Def / 116 SDef / 12 Spd
Modest Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Protect
- Will-O-Wisp
- Hydro Pump
I like my Rotoms with a bit of an offensive punch to them and this one is no different. Rotom-Wash forms one corner of my fire/water/grass combo, which is a feature of most of my teams. The UK Battle Tournament coincided with the rise in Rotom-Heat usage and this guy was a key part in my strategy for dealing with the microwave. Along with Light Screen, Rotom-Wash is able to soak up anything a special attacker wants to throw at it – in particular Draco Meteors from Salamence (it can then two-hit KO most variants). Hydro Pump and Thunderbolt provide basic offensive coverage. Will-o-Wisp is vital for crippling physical attackers and again is pretty standard fare, though deciding whether to burn or paralyze an opponent with Meowstic could be difficult at times – particularly in the case of Tyranitar before knowing which set it runs. I often used Rotom as a way of dealing with opposing sweepers with little bulk investment (such as Mega-Manectric) due to its ability to take a hit, heal back up with Sitrus Berry and then proceed to cripple the opponent with a hard hitting attack.
- 252+ SpA Salamence Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 116 SpD Rotom-W through Light Screen: 46-54 (29.2 – 34.3%) — 6.8% chance to 3HKO
- 252+ SpA Rotom-H Thunderbolt vs. 252 HP / 116 SpD Rotom-W through Light Screen: 30-36 (19.1 – 22.9%) — possible 5HKO
- 252 SpA Mega Manectric Thunderbolt vs. 252 HP / 116 SpD Rotom-W through Light Screen: 33-40 (21 – 25.4%) — 0.4% chance to 4HKO
- 124+ SpA Rotom-W Hydro Pump vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Mega Manectric: 96-114 (66.2 – 78.6%) — guaranteed 2HKO
- 124+ SpA Rotom-W Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 12 SpD Rotom-H: 152-180 (96.8 – 114.6%) — 75% chance to OHKO
Garchomp @ Choice Band
Ability: Rough Skin
Level: 50
EVs: 124 HP / 52 Atk / 76 Def / 4 SDef / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Claw
- Poison Jab
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
This is the 199 Garchomp set created in Japan by Arue with a minor change to the Atk and Def stats. I stumbled on this set a while ago and fell in love with it. 199 Garchomp is able to win mirror matches with anything other than other Choice Band users regardless of the speed tie result. With Thunder Wave support (and while avoiding Intimidate) it is able to deal with Choice Scarf Salamence. It can also beat non-scarf 140 HP Hydreigon, while other variants of Garchomp will not. On top of its anti-dragon abilities, 199 Garchomp can survive a Mega-Manectric HP Ice if need be (although it will not KO back with a -1 Earthquake) and Light Screen support allows it to stay in on many other super effective special attacks. Iron Head is used to KO Gardevoir after paralysis support (or on the switch in) along with hitting other fairies for a decent amount of damage. The ability to form a paralysis/flinch combo with Thunder Wave was helpful in theory, but was never used in practice. I did play around with using Poison Jab to hit Azumarill with, however this would usually only result in a two-hit KO (which I could also achieve with Earthquake) and I did not enjoy being locked in to a poison type attack. I also had other ways of dealing with Azumarill, such as Rotom and Venusaur.
Venusaur @ Venusaurite
Ability: Chlorophyll
Level: 50
EVs: 124 HP / 140 Def / 120 SAtk / 84 SDef / 40 Spd
Modest Nature
- Protect
- Synthesis
- Giga Drain
- Sludge Bomb
Previously, my grass type was the lesser used Rotom-Cut (to counter the early popularity of Rotom-Wash). However, the switch to Rotom-Wash meant I needed a replacement grass type to complete my fire/water/grass core. Venusaur was beginning to rise in usage while I was building this team and several reports on the old school grass type prompted me to try one. This thing is one of the best bulky-offence Pokémon I’ve ever used. It walls fairies, Rotom-Wash and all sorts of other things. With Light Screen and Thick Fat after Mega Evolving, moves that would otherwise cause problems to Venusaur barely scratch it. Just as an example, this Venusaur took a +3 Atk Crunch from Tyranitar and survived (only to be KO’d by sand thanks to some previous chip damage), showing that it can shrug off attacks from both sides. Chlorophyll on regular Venusaur allowed me to create a hyper-offence mode with Drought from Charizard-Y, but I rarely opted to use this mode in battles. I chose to use Synthesis over Sleep Powder and Leech Seed to give Venusaur strong instant healing and to avoid conflicts with my other status inducers in the case of the former. Synthesis also avoids the immunity that some Pokémon have to Leech Seed and synergizes well with the sun if need be (sun increases the healing to 2/3 of Venusaur’s health). Taunt causes some serious problems for this Venusaur though.
UK Battle Tournament Grand Finals
I won’t go in to too much detail about this tournament, as I have the battle videos for all of them except the final (which I can provide a YouTube link for). The tournament was initially split in to groups (which were drawn by Johnny Vegas sans monkey), with the winner of a round robin in each group going through to a single elimination knockout bracket.
Group Stage Battle Videos
2CCW-WWWW-WWW7-LKKG
RDMG-WWWW-WWW7-LKKJ
QGWW-WWWW-WWW7-LKKN
The group ended in a tie between myself and Steve Edgson. Some panic set in, as Steve had finished all of his battles with a greater total number of Pokémon remaining while I had beaten Steve in our match, with us being unsure as to which tie breaker came first. Luckily for me, the head-to-head tie breaker won out and I was able to advance to the knockout stages. Worth noting is the fact that my loss came against a bulky set-up style Pokémon (perhaps a sign of things to come?).
While the VGC tournament circuit usually demands near perfection, the single elimination format of the knockout stages meant that every turn could cause you to go home empty handed. The pressure was truly on and I wanted to make as deep a run as possible to make my trip from Newcastle an even more memorable one. The knockout stages produced some brilliant battles, with my semi-final match against Sam James being my personal favourite. Sam’s Smeargle managed to Skill Swap Prankster (a move I’d been using myself on a different team, but did not expect from my tournament opponents for some reason), so paralysis and sleep being spread across both teams made the dice rolls more stressful than ever before. This battle also brought to my attention the fact that my Charizard was unable to threaten Kangaskhan with a one-hit KO, which would be vital for future adjustments made to the team.
Knockout Stage Battle Videos
Quarter-final: WANG-WWWW-WWW7-LKKS
Semi-Final: AN2W-WWWW-WWW7-LKLW
The final turned out to be an extremely close match, but I do feel that it did not fully represent the abilities of both me and my opponent (Oliver Reilly). The early turns were a chip damage snooze-fest and I probably could have gone more on the offensive to improve my position in the game. I did not switch early as I felt too comfortable in the position I was in, while not wanting to take any unnecessary damage on my Charizard or Venusaur that I’d brought in the back. In particular, the choice to Mega-evolve Venusaur and protect Charizard on the penultimate turn has been called out many times since the event. I honestly was not expecting Weakness Policy on Tyranitar (in fact, I’d seen an Aegislash in team preview and predicted that to carry a Weakness Policy, if anything) and felt that Mega Venusaur would be more valuable at this point in the battle. I also did not want to activate Drought in case Mawile had Fire Fang (which it did). As for protecting Charizard, that was just a horrible misplay on my part. I was definitely outplayed in this battle overall and I have to congratulate Oli on a well-deserved win.
The final can be viewed here, complete with commentary by PokéRob (thanks to Supereffectivesingh for recording/uploading this video).
We Can Rebuild It, We Have The Technology
With the UK Nationals looming ever closer, I knew that the holes in my team would have to be patched up. The competition at Nationals would be much tougher and I couldn’t have obvious weaknesses being exploited by my opponents. The May International Wi-Fi Competition gave me the perfect opportunity to test out any changes, so I made some adjustments in preparation for the online tournament. For this build, I prioritized improving the defensive side of my team. I experimented with a support Machamp and new offensive Pokémon such as Clawitzer (even with Heal Pulse to apply some late game pressure), but none of them had the impact that I desired and actually weakened the team in some cases. The team’s core would need to stay mostly the same, but I had a few changes in mind that would definitely strengthen it.
Klefki @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Prankster
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 124 Def / 132 SDef
Impish Nature
- Safeguard
- Light Screen
- Foul Play
- Thunder Wave
After experiencing the usefulness of Meowstic first hand, I knew that a prankster support Pokémon would be key. However, Meowstic did not fit my team very well defensively. One thing that was on my list of changes to make was the inclusion of a steel or fairy type and Klefki fit the mould perfectly. The loss of speed compared to Meowstic was slightly annoying, but it was worth the sacrifice to strengthen my team overall. The move set stayed pretty much the same as before for the same reasons. Foul Play allows me to punish the likes of Kangaskhan, along with any physical attackers that feel the need to set up. A lot of people prefer to combine Foul Play with Swagger to increase the damage it deals, but the other moves in Klefki’s set were far too useful to give up. I’m also not a fan of rolling the dice when I can avoid it.
These EVs allow Klefki to survive Earthquakes from a number of opponents even before any Intimidate or burn support. After a Light Screen, it is able to survive a Flamethrower from Salamence (in rare cases where it is more beneficial for Klefki to stay in). The Rocky Helmet punishes Fake Out users even more, thanks to Klefki’s resistance to normal type attacks. Mega-Kangaskhan’s often found themselves in a dangerous position after taking Rocky Helmet damage, with Foul Play threatening to deal a significant amount of damage in subsequent turns. Klefki’s importance to this team was invaluable and it was without a doubt the MVP of my run at Nationals.
- 252+ Atk Garchomp Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 124+ Def Klefki: 122-146 (74.3 – 89%) — guaranteed 2HKO
- 252+ SpA Choice Specs Salamence Flamethrower vs. 252 HP / 132 SpD Klefki through Light Screen: 96-115 (58.5 – 70.1%) — guaranteed 2HKO
Charizard @ Charizardite Y
Ability: Blaze
Level: 50
EVs: 124 HP / 116 Def / 100 SAtk / 4 SDef / 164 Spd
Modest Nature
- Protect
- Solar Beam
- Heat Wave
- Overheat
Right at the top of my list was the fact that Charizard needed to be bulkier. Taking out Charizard seemed to be a high priority in the game plans of my opponents. I decided that speed tying with other neutral base 100s was not as much of a necessity any more, as other trainers were starting to slow their Pokémon down in favour of more bulk. Charizard 2.0 will survive most -1 Atk Rock Slides with at least 25% HP remaining, along with taking hits from Kangaskhan much easier. Most Kanganskhan’s can also now be one-hit KO’d due to the switch to Overheat (while one-hit KOing 252HP/4SDef 37.5% of the time). I decided that the power increase was worth the 90% accuracy that Overheat brings and Charizard’s new bulk meant that missing an attack wasn’t necessarily as crippling as it would have been before. At no point did I regret the change to Overheat and I would highly recommend it to anybody not using it already. These speed EVs would have allowed Charizard to outspeed anything trying to speed creep positive natured 252 speed Smeargle, but I made an error while re-training the EVs on my Charizard and it actually wound up speed tying with the Smeargle speed creepers. This became a key factor in my Top 32 matchup.
Aside from these changes, the team stayed the same with Garchomp, Scrafty, Mega-Venusaur and Rotom-Wash rounding out the line-up. However, I did seriously consider changing Scrafty. My team now dealt with Talonflame really well, so the Coba Berry/Stone Edge combination was not as necessary. I experimented with an Assault Vest Scrafty with Crunch instead in place of Detect, but Scrafty became extremely vulnerable without Detect. This testing brought the usefulness of Crunch to my attention and brought up a hard decision to make: would Crunch be a better move choice than Stone Edge? In the end, I kept Stone Edge to give me an extra way to hit Charizard and Talonflame hard. Hindsight would later show that Crunch would have been a much better choice, but the Coba Berry remained a good item choice (allowing me to survive Talonflame hits while striking at its partner, which on one occasion was a Hydreigon that could have caused some problems). I almost replaced Scrafty with the previously mentioned support Machamp, with Fake Out being the deciding factor in me not sending Scrafty to the bench.
The final team:
The Final Test
Day 1: Swiss Rounds
My notes for the UK Nationals are not the best, thanks to me trying out note taking during battles for the first time at this event. So instead of the usual run down of each battle, I’ll give an overview of the tournament along with some general thoughts about the event.
While the delay starting the event was annoying, it honestly didn’t ruin the day for me. It did mean that my mind was a little off track at first (which the bye round didn’t help with), but playing my first match of the day against Lajos Kowalewski (Lajo) soon got my brain in Pokémon gear. I’d normally hope to play matches against more renowned opponents later in the day, but the way he outplayed me (with an impressive, original team at that) made me focus a lot more on my game throughout the rest of the tournament. Thanks for that, Lajos.
I actually began my second game of the day on the back foot against a Moltres/Ludicolo lead, having lead with Klefki and Charizard (his Moltres was carrying Ancient Power to attempt to KO Charizard, which I managed to scout with a Protect on turn 1). Thankfully some clever switching got me in to a better position. This was one of the few games in which I ran both Charizard and Venusaur in the hope that I could use the sun to give Venusaur a speed advantage. However, I realized that Venusaur would be more valuable (and would need Thick Fat to resist fire and ice attacks) and mega-evolved it instead of Charizard. Charizard was merely used to KO the opponent’s Scizor, which I was able to do through predicting my opponent’s switches well. Opting to not mega-evolve Charizard was actually my favourite play (of my own) of the weekend and seems to have become a tendency of mine (thanks to the final of the UK Battle Tournament).
Round 4 was rather uneventful. I was able to unlock the game controlling power of Klefki though, as it shut down the opponent’s Smeargle. I believe that the Smeargle was Choice Scarfed, so Klefki was really able to shine and feed me the win. He also brought an Amoonguss, so The Key was able to shut down half of his team thanks to Safeguard and Light Screen. Round 5 allowed me to show off another one of my team’s tricks, with Scrafty happily taking a Talonflame’s Brave Bird to the face and in return crippling the foe’s Hydreigon with Drain Punch (all while Rotom-Wash finished off the Talonflame).
My second loss would come in Round 6. Luke Chaplin brought back my apparent Tyranitar weakness and played the game in such a way that I was helpless by the last few turns. His Ferrothorn meant that bringing Charizard was pretty much a necessity, which allowed him to play around the rest of my team and get in to a position where I was unable to reset my sun over sandstorm. Luke did make the Top Cut in the end, so I can at least be happy that both my losses came against high quality players that just straight up outplayed me.
I won my remaining games and feel that I played well, but I would still be relying on my opponent’s win percentages to Top Cut. I scraped by as the 14th seed from Flight A, meaning that I would play the 3rd seed from Flight B – not exactly how I was hoping my first time in Top Cut would begin.
Day 2: Top 32 vs Sam Bentham (SuperIntegration)
The first round of Top Cut had me facing off against Sam Bentham (SuperIntegration). I’d heard his name before, but could not remember seeing any of his battles. I had no idea what to expect from this best of 3. You can read his take on these matches (as well as the rest of the tournament) here.
During team preview it became evident that Klefki would be a key factor in controlling the game. Sableye and Rotom-Wash meant that Safeguard had to be up during these matches as much as possible to block any status moves intended to cripple my team. Light Screen and paralysis are always part of my game plan against Salamence. Game one saw him bringing Sableye, Tyranitar, Salamence and Kangaskhan. This was a strong team, so I needed to gather all the information I could get early on and make things easier for me in later matches. I managed to find out Sableye’s move set (Taunt, Will-o-Wisp, Foul Play and Swagger), so there would be no unwelcome surprises from the darkness Pokémon. He also revealed Protect and Return on his Kangaskhan, so I knew that one of its staple moves would have been dropped to make room for Protect. Game one went my way (aided by Sam’s Will-o-Miss) and gave me a nice confidence boost in my first ever Top Cut.
I wasn’t entirely sure how to play game two, since my experience in best of 3 situations is next to nothing. I decided to see how Mega-Venusaur would fare and sent Charizard to the bench, which turned out to be a mistake. His Aegislash set up a substitute and revealed Leftovers before stalling out the game with us both down to one Pokémon, giving Sam the win on time. Kangaskhan revealed the rest of its move set to be Power-Up Punch and Sucker Punch. Despite this fact, I remember still playing as if he had Fake Out for some reason. I should probably pay more attention to my notes in future.
Aegislash had given Sam a strong win condition in game 2 and I knew that I couldn’t allow that to happen again. Game three saw me going full aggro mode, running both Charizard and Venusaur to make use of Venusaur’s Chlorophyll ability. I managed to take down Aegislash and Tyranitar, but the Sableye Swagger/Foul Play shenanigans started to come in to play. Some good plays on Sam’s part put the game in jeopardy as my weakened Rotom-Wash (confused, taunted and waiting to take extra Foul Play damage due to Swagger’s attack boosts) and Mega-Charizard were sat facing down his +2 Attack Kangaskhan with yellow HP and a full HP Sableye. Venusaur was in the back, so I knew that he’d be likely to use Return instead of Sucker Punch in case I switched. I opted to leave Charizard in and just used Heat Wave (I’d already Protected the previous turn, but probably should have gone for the double Protect anyway rather than hoping that he’d target the wrong Pokémon) and used Rotom’s Thunderbolt on Kangaskhan in the hope that I could KO it, allowing Venusaur to go head-to-head with Sableye. With a stroke of luck, it turned out my Charizard actually speed tied with his Kangaskhan and won. It had previously been outsped by the Kangaskhan a couple of times, so I had assumed that he was faster. Sam mentioned that his Kangaskhan was EV’d to outspeed Smeargle’s by a single point and it became apparent that I’d made a mistake when re-EV training Charizard.
These matches really pushed me and I was glad to have advanced to the Top 16 by beating a high quality opponent. Good games, Sam.
Top 16 vs Joshua Schmidt
It was a good feeling to have made Top 16 and beat my expectations, but I knew that I could have a deeper run if I played at my best. Unfortunately, his team looked very threatening the moment Team Preview came up. My notes for this set of games were really weak, so I’ll do the best I can from memory. Game one went down to the wire, with his Substitute/Leftovers Aegislash being left in a 1vs1 against Scrafty. Aegislash’s Flash Cannon was a 3HKO on Scrafty, but his Aegislash had taken damage previously in the game and I was able to throw Stone Broadside at it (rather than Stone Edge, which misses far too often) until it went down. Another Aegislash was causing me issues already and I was beginning to wish that I had gone with giving Scrafty Crunch.
Even though I was up one game, I was still in a very awkward position. I did not want another Aegislash stall war to begin, but Charizard was threatened by his team in general – Garchomp especially. It would be difficult to maneuver around his team while preserving Charizard. Game two was pretty uneventful and I got completely outplayed, but I did manage to learn that his Garchomp had Lum Berry (which burnt out three turns worth of Rotom Will-o-Wisps, turns that would have been better spent trying to just KO Garchomp). He won game two handily with two of his Pokémon remaining.
Game three was similar to game two. I had difficulty keeping my Charizard alive to handle Aegislash and kept giving up any semblance of a good position on the field. I managed to take down his Kangaskhan and (possibly Choice Banded) Talonflame, putting up at least some kind of a fight. Once again Joshua backed my team in to a corner and I was unable to find a way out. I played an inferior game for most of the Top 16, but at least I can try to learn and bounce back from the losses (and be happy that I managed to take one game in the best of three).
And with that I was out of the tournament. I was satisfied with how I performed, but would have liked to go a bit further after having my first taste of Top Cut. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to attend next year since I will be starting my Master’s Degree later this year, though I was almost unable to attend this year so anything could happen. Regardless, I’ll be hanging around the forums and hope to get in on a few Nugget Bridge tournaments. Thanks for being such a great community.
Where to Go From Here?
I’ll probably retire this team now, but that doesn’t mean I can’t speculate about where to take it from here. I might even use it during the upcoming June 2014 International Challenge if I can’t build a new team in time.
First of all, Scrafty needs to have Crunch. I’m not sure which move will have to be dropped. Fake Out didn’t see as much use as I’d hoped, despite having a useful niche on the team. Stone Edge also became more of a liability than a benefit, but dropping it makes handling the likes of Charizard slightly more difficult. I’d probably test out dropping Stone Edge for Crunch first and go from there. Trying out Assault Vest Scrafty again could also be an option.
Next on the list is Charizard. He was strong a lot of the time, but allowed opponents to break open a gaping hole in my team in some games. I’m happy with the Speed EVs, but the offensive/defensive balance could use some work. Feel free to suggest some more efficient spreads on that front. Personally, I’d probably swap Mega Stones on Charizard and run a physical set that would look something like this:
Charizard @ Charizardite X
Ability: Blaze
Level: 50
EVs: 172 HP / 108 Atk / 4 Def / 12 SDef / 212 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Protect
- Dragon Claw
- Dragon Dance
- Flare Blitz
Running Charizard-X would help to lessen the rock type weakness that Charizard suffers from. Offensive pressure would be maintained by clever use of Dragon Dance, taking advantage of opposing Protects to improve my position on the field. The downside of Charizard-X on this team is that it overlaps with Garchomp’s role to some extent and makes the team fear opposing Intimidates more than before. With this in mind, swapping Garchomp for a Salamence would tilt the team back in favour of special attackers and bring another Intimidate to the team. While a Choice Scarf would give me a speed advantage in most cases (outside of Trick Room) without having to rely on Thunder Wave so much, I’d probably lean towards giving Salamence Choice Specs to give it more offensive power – something that my team would really appreciate.
At the moment I’m actually trying to build a team around Mega-Blastoise, but I am really fond of the team in this report. Any other suggestions that you have for building on this team would be welcomed, as well as any other discussion this report may bring up. This team will no doubt make another appearance in any matches I take part in and Klefki will no doubt be a feature on many of my teams from now on. The little key-chain has unlocked the path to Top Cut for me and it would be a shame to throw it to one side after such a great performance.
Thanks for reading what has turned out to be a very long report and I hope to see you all around the forums.
Thanks
A shout out to the following people for helping make this a brilliant tournament season:
- Once again, thanks to you guys: the community. For the most part, you’re an awesome group of people and you make this game a pleasure to be involved in.
- Thanks to my fiancée, Lauren, for putting up with my nonsense and travelling all the way to London just to watch me play Pokémon. She also drew the great artwork for this article.
- Also a big thanks to my friend Jonny, who travelled to Manchester with me and entered the tournament himself (going 6-2 and hitting the bubble outside of top cut in his first ever tournament).
- To anybody that I battled in practice and during the tournaments, you’ve really helped me to push myself this season. It’s a tough learning process, but my ability is improving with every battle, win or lose.
The post The Keys to Top Cut: A 2nd Place Pokémon UK Battle Tournament and Top 16 UK Nationals Team Report appeared first on Nugget Bridge.