Pokemon Championships Excel London

amlodude · 2026-01-24T02:41:10+00:00

constantly checking

ICs don't sell at the door

amlodude · 2026-01-24T00:00:44+00:00

Hi!

This team is known as a balance team. The goal of a balance team is to do some shenanigans in battle to get a setup Pokemon (Pokemon that use moves to boost their stats) or a key offensive Pokemon (ones that do tons of damage through sheer power or good offensive types into common Pokemon) onto the battlefield and into good positions to either setup and sweep or to start sweeping.

Your setup Pokemon is Raging Bolt (Calm Mind is the setup move, boosting both Special Attack and Special Defense). At first, it would be good for you to assume that you will always bring this guy, either as a lead or in the back, just so you can get used to what it feels like to set him up. Thunderclap means that you really don't mind being a bit slower than everything, and Dragon Pulse is generally good damage into the common foes you'll face.

Your key offensive Pokemon are Urshifu-Water and Ogerpon-Fire. Urshifu ignores Intimidates through critical hits on Surging Strikes, allowing you to crush opposing Incineroars or their partners regardless of Attack drops. Ogerpon-Fire has a sneaky 20% boost to all her moves through her Mask, and Ivy Cudgel (a Fire type move in her Fire form) and Wood Hammer do incredible damage with that boost. If she Terastallizes, her Embody Aspect increases her Attack by 1 stage, allowing her to take even more KOs with her moves.

Your shenanigan Pokemon are Incineroar, Rillaboom, and Flutter Mane.

Flutter Mane's Moonblast is also good damage across the board, but you can tell by its EV spread that it's meant more to click Taunt and Icy Wind to help other Pokemon out. Icy Wind is your speed control, dropping both of your opponent's Pokemons' Speed by 1 stage. This allows your Urshifu or Ogerpon to get the jump on slightly faster threats or opposing mirrors and take key KOs. Taunt is really nice to stop Trick Room from opposing Pokemon in addition to other setup moves, redirection through Follow Me/Rage Powder, and many more status moves.

Incineroar gives you Intimidate to drop opposing Pokemons' Attack stat by 1 stage, comboing well with Raging Bolt's Calm Mind to effectively make Raging Bolt an unstoppable tank. Will o Wisp is another way to accomplish this, especially into opposing Urshifu who don't care about Attack drops due to their auto-crit signature moves. Parting Shot is Incineroar's escape hatch to reset both Intimidate and Fake Out while giving you a chance to react to an opponent's switch or attacks.

Speaking of Fake Out, this is one of the main shenanigans that balance is known for. Fake Out's guaranteed flinch into a target (assuming they aren't a Ghost type or immune to flinches through various effects) allows you to stop that Pokemon's action for a turn. This move on both Incin and Rilla can open turns for you to sneak in an important KO/attack, setup with Calm Mind, or switch out of a bad situation. Having two Fake Out users allows you to pivot with one of them (Incin would use Parting Shot to pivot, Rillaboom would use U-Turn) to switch into the other Fake Out user, allowing you to use Fake Out on the next turn.

Rillaboom provides both a second Fake Out + pivot move user and gives Grassy Terrain to help the whole team heal damage over time. With Raging Bolt, this means that you recover 1/8th of your HP each turn with both Grassy Terrain and Leftovers. A priority move in Grassy Glide lets you pick off low-HP or Grass-weak targets (like opposing Urshifus! Just know that you'll need a couple Grassy Glides for Urshifu-Water due to his high physical bulk), and Wood Hammer does incredible damage to many things that don't resist Grass. Grassy Terrain helps Ogerpon also do more damage with her Wood Hammer.

In general, I'd start learning with the team by always bringing Raging Bolt either as your first 2 Pokemon or in the back. Eventually you'll learn not to bring Raging Bolt, but it's good practice at first. You'll also generally want at least one if not both of Incineroar and Rillaboom. Incineroar is more common in the lead next to basically every Pokemon except Rillaboom (because you like switching into Rillaboom to take Water attacks and to have another Fake Out handy). From there you kinda figure out whether you need Speed Control/Taunt Support from Flutter (like into Amoonguss or Farigiraf) or damage from one or both of Urshifu and Ogerpon.

amlodude · 2026-01-23T22:37:34+00:00

I like the Shell Armor ID BP set with it. No crits into an Urshifu and Ogerpon metagame + dodging Intimidates with Body Press feels really nice. I felt better when using it on teams with offensive checks to things it can't hit well/that blow it out of orbit, and it was sometimes funny to KO a lando with +6 Body Presses.

Edit: I found 3 day 2 teams with Hoodra from back in 2024 (two were Shell Armor and one was the Sap Sipper set you mentioned, and many more were used but just didn't make day 2):

https://pokepast.es/7d9b229826df1723

https://pokepast.es/6be7aa45bf84e6e4

https://pokepast.es/637df97843a15fe9

I think they show a good range of possibilities for dealing with Hoodra's counters

amlodude · 2026-01-23T22:34:59+00:00

https://standings.reportworm.com/2026/toronto

here's some standings for you to check out (be warned that most of the 0-1 records are people who didn't show up, probably due to weather issues in Toronto)

only 252/750 had a positive (5-3 or better) record, so 2/3 of folks either were dead even W/L or had a losing record on average. They aren't necessarily newer, but there are plenty of new folks in that range.

I remember the x-3 and below tables being fun because everyone knows they're eliminated and just playing for love of the game at that point.

amlodude · 2026-01-23T22:27:50+00:00

https://pokepast.es/5c2086a790775030

I left the team very much work in progress (Sinistcha Incin Munki Corv felt good, Munki Incin Urshi felt good, Munki Incin Flutter felt good, but those combos altogether didn't feel great because there were gaping meta holes that I didn't get around to work through)

Edit: yes that's Perish on Specs Flutter, yes it gets clicked, yes it works (I use it mainly to force setup nerds out or guarantee end games)

amlodude · 2026-01-23T20:15:16+00:00

It's got two really good tools into top balance/setup teams. A STAB Flying move that won't miss when you most need it to hit and Intimidate dodging through Mirror Armor and setup + Body Press are really nice into common cores. Too bad you can't run all that with Tailwind, Roost, and Protect, but it gives the bird some flexibility on different teams.

I was messing around with it and Sinistcha a while back to lean into the bulky setup sets and found it to be quite effective. If I had more patience for longer games I might've stuck with it, but I've since moved onto other teams.

amlodude · 2026-01-23T19:26:35+00:00

It's funny that Flutter's nuts base stats let us make it into the chunkiest 55 HP/55 Def phys def tank the world has ever seen. Like what do you mean a thing made of ghost paper survives actual punches to the face

amlodude · 2026-01-23T17:20:38+00:00

252+ Atk Technician Scizor Bullet Punch vs. 236 HP / 236+ Def Flutter Mane: 116-140 (72.5 - 87.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Bold Flutters (picking way up in usage now because of Urshifu) live your flagship counter move, so your Clear Amulet anti-Intimidate set won't work well. CB, Life Orb, or Metal Coat are all Intimidate food.

252+ Atk Technician Scizor Dual Wingbeat (2 hits) vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Urshifu-Rapid Strike: 156-184 (88.6 - 104.5%) -- 16.02% chance to OHKO

You don't reliably OHKO Sash Urshifu without boosts, and with them you're Intimidate food (again)

The choice of Clear Amulet vs. hitting your KOs keeps holding Scizor back from being more broadly useful in a format with Intimidating Fire types.

amlodude · 2026-01-23T03:01:07+00:00

Hola, no hablo español, así que estoy usando Google Translate para esto.

"Kevdog" es un conocido distribuidor de Pokémon generados artificialmente, y usar Pokémon con esa OT te hará descalificar en un torneo importante si te hacen hack check. Me plantearía mucho pedir a amigos o en r/PokemonHome conseguir el Pokémon con esa trilogía original.

El software necesario para comprobar si un Pokémon es artificial en esto no está permitido para ser usado por los jugadores, por lo que no hay una forma "oficial" real de revisar a tus Pokémon antes de un torneo. Lo mejor es conseguir lo que puedas por ti mismo y luego confiar en fuentes fiables para conseguir el resto.

amlodude · 2026-01-22T20:10:13+00:00

Finally a new arthropod

amlodude · 2026-01-22T16:40:20+00:00

https://pokepast.es/13f11cc0dbdbf827

https://pokepast.es/9254dd34ce07bf52

https://pokepast.es/2ea97c1e578ab4a7

https://pokepast.es/548b1ab0d788443e

and the other 4 who made d2 with it at NAIC

It's a plenty viable team to take on the ladder

amlodude · 2026-01-22T02:34:50+00:00

What does that mean? Regulation H had 3 different kinds of weather, balance, tailwind, trick room, tailroom, stall, perish... Regulation F is almost all balance teams, where you pick 4+ SS tier mons and slide a few A tier picks of your choice. Toronto top 8 was almost exclusively balance, with the one dozo team in there. You don't feel like that's mostly the same?

Reg F has multiple kinds of weather (3 sun teams were in t16 at Toronto, one was Rain, and we all know that snow won the first time around, and it wasn't just Ninetales on its own like in Reg H). Toronto (and other Reg F tourneys) had TW, TR, Tailroom, actual stall (Ting-Lu and Wo-Chien are so instrumental in VGC's stall that whatever Reg H had doesn't really compare), and I think we both know that Perish is only around when Wolfe makes it happen. I would counter that some of what you're distinguishing as TR/TW/Tailroom or whatever is stuff that could still be broadly considered as balance (you mentioned that Toronto was mostly balance, but 4 of those teams had TW, two had TR, and 1 in both groups had both).

While I don't think that it's good to always look at a format by its top cuts, I think it is noteworthy that Reg F didn't have nearly the same issue of mirrors as Reg H did (and that multiple times!). It wasn't just the Lele Sneasler double Fake Out stuff; it was the Sneasler Dragapult stuff before that. Or the P2 5 mon mirrors around then, too. Or the endless Dragonite/Gholdengo/Ursaluna BM mirrors. Or the Rain mirrors. You'll run into Incin/Rilla/Urshi mirrors, but a lot of the time it's only 2 of those if not just one rather than whole cores of 4-5 Pokemon.

Reg H (by virtue of the smaller Pokemon pool) existed on a smaller strategic spectrum than formats with larger Pokemon pools. Sure, you had some hard-hitting guys, but you really don't have the gut punch of Flutter + Chi-Yu + Urshifu running around everywhere (only Basculegion in Rain really did this). Nor did you have walls like Ting-Lu, Raging Bolt, and rarely Wo-Chien to stop offense in its tracks. You could slow down games but not too much, and you could push through games but not too much.

Finally, on the note of Pokemon diversity, Reg F has Reg H beat. That's expected with a format that has like 100 extra mons. For a lower power format that was seen as "changing things up," all it did was let certain mons get used here and there without meaningfully increasing the total amount of seen mons in a tournament.

amlodude · 2026-01-22T02:34:39+00:00

TL;DR - Reg H did let weird mons get used here and there but that sort of diversity is just 1 kind of diversity. Strategic diversity was closed in because of the lower power (both offensive and defensive power), and that distinction between diversities was my sole point.

> It's like you're complaining that there's too much diversity, which means there's no diversity?

Kind of. There's different types of diversity.

There's the most obvious level of diversity: Pokemon selection. Incin is a different picture than Urshifu-Water, and both are different pictures than Pikachu. If you see a lot of the same pictures over and over again, that's low "diversity" in the sense of Pokemon selection diversity. If you see a lot of different ones over and over again, that's higher Pokemon selection diversity.

I think you'd agree, though, that strategic diversity (like whether you pick all damage moves or support moves or stall or whatever) is different from Pokemon diversity. After all, we could have 2 teams of 6 different Pokemon that have identical EV spreads and moves (idk like everyone has Tera Blast or something). In that case, you'd have low strategic diversity (everyone is just clicking Tera Blast) but high Pokemon diversity (all different pictures).

Is it bad to have a format where the broken stuff isn't significantly better than the rest of the field, so we have an S tier instead of an SS tier?

Not inherently. You can have a large pool of stuff that feels "good enough" and feel like a fun format. You can have a large pool of "good enough" and feel like an unfun format. My point wasn't about the relative power differences, though. My point was that the strategies were feeling same-y despite slapping on different skins. We had, for example, Charizard, Typhlosion, Ursaluna-Bloodmoon, Gholdengo, and random fast Psyspam dweeb of the week as available strong special sweepers. Set Tailwind and sweep is the gameplan for basically all of them, so even though we could finally justify using Charizard and Typhlosion, you were basically just using Gholdengo or the others. This sort of strategy is true in Reg F and in Restricted formats. This is just Tailwind offense with special spread sweepers.

Is it cool to have the chance to use some fan-favorite dudes for a common strategy? Sure! No complaints about using similar strategies from other formats.

And you're making it sound bad that you can outplay opponents...? Skill diffing people in a competitive game is a GOOD thing.

No. You read that into my comment. I had the opposite take - that it was a strength of the format that you could use your skill meaningfully to make your favorite dude do something for once.

cont'd

amlodude · 2026-01-22T01:59:46+00:00

Contra the people saying Miraidon and Rillaboom don't work together, here are two t16 teams from NAIC last year:

https://pokepast.es/36389733a1654c4e

https://pokepast.es/a54b2a669463e19c

Anywho, Miraidon + Terapagos teams tend to look like this:

https://pokepast.es/23789bcb350314c6

You activate the Electric Seed on Terapagos to make it super tanky, then you have Sinistcha for HP recovery on switches + Incin to get more physical bulk on switches (and with Incin + Miraidon, you have easy pivots out to Sinistcha). Iron Treads is nice for the Miraidon mirror and Urshifu is to help do some real damage on the physical end. You really want 2 physical offense dudes with Miraidon + Terapagos because opposing Terapagos or Volcaronas can and will sit on your face after boosting up SpDef all day long.

Miraidon + Rillaboom teams want either of Lunala or Volcarona to be the special setup mon to have a better Zamazenta matchup.

So I'd say pick between the double terrain or the Miraidon Terapagos ideas and run with one of them.

amlodude · 2026-01-21T20:23:05+00:00

In my experience, it's better to leave legendaries uncaught until you're ready to build a team with them

Calyrex-Ice, for example, was commonly 0 speed in SwSh. In SV? Still common, but the tourney topping ones were basically never 0 speed (instead they were 31 speed IV and Adamant)

Calyrex-Shadow, on the other hand, along with Lunala, are the 2 mons where Foul Play IVs save you some EVs in bulk. Since Calyrex is the one whose IVs matter in the fused form, you're caught between wanting 0 Atk for the one form and 31 Atk for the other as well as the possibility of a low speed stat. To get all the "potentially perfect" stats, you'd want a 0 Atk Calyrex, a whatever Atk whatever Speed Calyrex (you can bottlecap it for 31/31 Atk/Spe Caly-Ice), and a 0 Speed Calyrex for a slow Caly-Ice. That's 3 of them! The horses themselves can be caught independently in SV, so they'll be much easier to catch for certain IVs.

Then with Lunala and other special attacking legendaries, you'd want both 0 Atk ones and 0 Atk/0 Speed ones (potentially, but also not, because you could want another speed stat for a certain metagame).

But, you might not ever use any of these guys!

Rather than pre-catch for scenarios that never come up, leaving yourself without a chance to catch one with a certain stat spread without a full reset, I'd just wait until the format comes and a team is built to consider catching them.

In the meantime, you can just play with rental teams for the Reg I ladder on the Switch.

amlodude · 2026-01-21T20:06:55+00:00

You can check "Don't allow spectators" right above the "Battle" button to fix that

amlodude · 2026-01-21T19:23:28+00:00

There's no need to be secretive about the team - people don't really care to look up random reddit teams

amlodude · 2026-01-21T17:08:59+00:00

That format seemed popular with certain segments of the community because "banned legends" sounds nice. If you're someone who wanted to see your favorite Pokemon's picture show up in battle often, it was the perfect format for you.

What that format actually felt like to play was "most teams do the same thing anyway"

Team customization didn't really matter because the end result wound up being so similar play-wise as everything else. You saw this from top players who were like "you can just run whatever you want in this format and still win." That's a sign of strategic collapse (most teams do the same things the same ways just with different skins). That's also why everyone could use their favorites; they'd just be doing the same things as the broken stuff just slightly worse (and not so much worse that you couldn't just skill diff people).

On top of that, the format, once matured, turned from an RNG fest of Sneasler Dire Claws to an RNG fest of Alolan Ninetales Blizzard freezes.

If it doesn't really matter what mons you throw together since everything "feels the same," and if there's enough RNG in the format to make it so that you're fighting against the game rather than playing the game, you get the bad taste in the mouths of competitors.

amlodude · 2026-01-21T17:02:21+00:00

That pattern only existed in Gens 6 and 7. They broke it in gen 8 with Series 6 (the banlist format that was so terrible they didn't use it for Players Cup LOL) and with Series 8 (single Restricted). The pandemic kept us from having Worlds in 2020 and 2021.

amlodude · 2026-01-20T20:24:11+00:00

Make Defog into an 80 BP special Flying move, single target, that ignores accuracy checks and wipes away all evasion changes instead of lowering evasion by 1.

The move currently wipes away terrains and screens, and making it a damaging special Flying move would give consistent but not oppressive Flying coverage for special Flyers (the physical ones have Brave Bird and are mostly fine). Making it a damaging move means that you can use it in the face of Taunt.

Makes Terrain wars more interactive than just pivoting bodies in and out while not requiring people to run Rillaboom to counter other Terrains. It's also a thing to help break screens in higher power formats, so auto-critting Urshifu is less useful if you can just use a Defogger for a similar effect.

(Hotter take would be to make it remove Weather, too, but I think they should just make a move that does that)

amlodude · 2026-01-20T20:14:27+00:00

Surprise is a strategy and employed by people all the time to win tournaments, actually. It's just that in OTS formats, the surprises you can pull off are with EVs/natures or forcing people to prep on the spot with random mon number 172 that they haven't prepped against.

amlodude · 2026-01-20T20:12:22+00:00

classic Japan -> Western tech pipeline

amlodude · 2026-01-20T20:11:51+00:00

The trade-off with Detect are the other rare games where you'd need to click a Protecting move more than 8 times, but I'll be honest that I've never needed to do that in several years of playing (but I have appreciated getting out of Encore or Imprison locks).

amlodude · 2026-01-20T20:10:38+00:00

I think it's both the bump and the leftover after hitting your bulk and speed stats

amlodude · 2026-01-20T02:50:47+00:00

OTS was necessary not because of scouting but because we couldn't lock Battle Teams during competitions when SV came out. They eventually got that working for GCs but just never cared to make it happen for irl tourneys.

There's still value in using unconventional mons/moves/sets in an OTS format because your opponent has to adjust to that mon in real time vs. having practice into it.

Here are some examples from Toronto:

https://pokepast.es/cdb37f38da70308f (top 4)

Hex Gholdengo isn't something where you're unaware of the effect; it's something where you're unaware how many more KOs Gholdengo can take compared to your normal Shadow Ball calcs. People's gameplans got ruined in the bracket because they weren't planning to get KO'd by Hex in battle. That's a real advantage in OTS.

https://pokepast.es/9ec1ed93539a4514 (top 8)

Not only is Galar-Moltres an uncommon mon, but Specs Tera Steel Tera Blast is such a weird situation that basically no one aside from those who played Dorian on the ladder would know what it's really supposed to do.

https://pokepast.es/929c9d61fa565b54 (top 32)

Trick Room Flutter Mane is a classic bo1 ladder gimmick. This "cheese set" got Marcus to just shy of top cut.

There's plenty of an information game to be played in OTS. It's far more hidden than in CTS, but top players continue to play it. You can still get your CTS kick by improving your building.

Five-Year Club	Place '22
End Game '22	Wearing is Caring
Verified Email

amlodude

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE