[SV BH] A Rainbow Crossed Gensokyo
The Team:
The Concept:
This team is a sequel to a previous team I made during the time before MMX got banned. It explores an archetype that is common in several OU tiers but, to my knowledge, has not been substantially used in BH, or at least hasn't been this generation. That archetype is the "superman" team, a team that instead of playing the hazard game instead chooses to completely ignore it by using Pokémon that are either fully immune or highly resistant to hazard chip.
As for why this structure seemed appealing to me in BH, the reason is twofold. First, I believe that Magic Guard is among the most powerful abilities in the SV Fulldex metagame, especially since Take Heart arrived, given the huge prevalence of strategies reliant on inflicting passive damage with Salt Cure, Thunder Cage and statuses. A superman team is able to take advantage of Magic Guard users well to absorb Knock Offs for the Heavy Duty Boots users, both this team and the previous one make use of a Magic Guard Arceus equipped with a plate to be able to take Knocks very comfortably from opposing support and regenvest Pokémon.
Secondly, I think that hazard control is in a poor state in the current meta. Tidy Up sets either struggle with longevity if placed on offensive users or are significantly less threatening than Take Heart sets on defensive Arceus or simply chip-based sets on other defensive users. Mortal Spin and Rapid Spin are able to be blocked and the most common users, Regenvests, are exploitable by Imposter. Many teams using spin will be able to block Imposter's spin, which necessarily means using either a bad Pokémon (e.g. Primsea Celesteela to wall ground/fire/mortal coverage) or have their spinner be vulnerable to a common and viable blocker.
Hazards meanwhile are very, very potent but are often a struggle to set, with Regenvests usually trading rocks against Imposter and Spike users being frustrating to Improof and limited to either selfproofed sets (that can still let 3 layers up even if they kill the Imp) or force the team to include a Magic Bouncer, which is a tricky role to fit on most of the offensive teams that enjoy Spikes support.
As such, in this meta superman's drawbacks are heavily mitigated and its strengths are very notable. It is forced into running Boots on several defensive mons that may prefer chip-mitigating items like Lefties or Cloak, but it also has to run Magic Guards to absorb Knock effectively (levitate steels and rock-neutral fliers can do the job but MG is preferable) and these Magic Guards can take on the role of absorbing chip moves like Salt and Mortal.
Meanwhile the Superman team can freely use hazards and not worry about Improofing them, in fact if the opponent chooses to set hazards, which is nearly always a correct strategy in the early game before sets are scouted, they'll instead be unknowingly wasting turns and allowing the superman user to scout, position and set their own hazards.
So in my opinion, superman hazard stack teams are an extremely effective anti-meta teamstyle that is only really held back by the difficulty of building a coherent defensive core within the restrictions, of the fact that the team cannot fit Imposter unless it runs the weak and tough to use Boots Imp, and the need to play extremely well to avoid a surprise kill or knock that could shatter the core.
The sets:
Funeral Pyre (Arceus-Fire) @ Earth Plate
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Judgment
- Torch Song
- Spikes
- Strength Sap
Arceus is the primary knock off absorber and is tasked with being the progress maker that cleans up an opposing team battered by hazards. Fire and Ground is a deadly type combination that is very rarely resisted and even against something like PSea Celesteela it can still set spikes meaning it'll never find itself completely useless. It also switches in to moves that threaten Ting Lu and Koraidon like Kyu-B's Glacial Lance and the occasional physical Fairy. Soft Selfproof but also Improofed by Nihilego.
Innocence (Nihilego) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Sand Stream
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Spikes
- Revelation Dance
- Shore Up
- Leech Seed
Nihilego serves as the team's Sapblocker and is tasked with handing Sap users like Arceus Fairy and Eternatus. It also sets sand which compounds the chip that the opposing team is already taking from status and hazards. With Leech Seed, it can easily 1v1 most Eternatus and Arceus sets despite their boosting as they cannot effectively heal against it. It is vulnerable to Ground moves but Magearna can handle most sets that are using ground coverage as they rarely also have fire moves to hit it. Improofed by Koraidon.
Broken Cycle (Ting-Lu) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Careful Nature
- Earthquake
- Knock Off
- Topsy-Turvy
- Strength Sap
Ting Lu acts as the primary physical wall with its incredible physical bulk. It has poor type matchups into many attackers but those are covered by teammates allowing for the raw bulk to let it take hits from extremely high power breakers like Mega Garchomp and even take some super effective physical coverage moves very well. It also serves as a check to SNR Ghostceus, some Ultra Necrozma sets and miscellaneous Power Trip and Stored Power setup users you'll find on ladder that need to be accounted for given the team's lack of Imposter. Improofed by Magearna.
Planetarium (Lunala) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Ice Scales
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hex
- Psystrike
- Nuzzle
- Shore Up
Lunala acts as a special defensive answer to threats that Nihilego has poor type matchup into while also having a significant offensive presence. It can use psystrike to deal big damage to Poison-Types, Blissey and Kyogre-Primal and uses Nuzzle/Hex or take advantage of Tspikes to deal big Ghost-Type damage. The team has adequate answers to Dark and Ghost-Type moves so it's very hard to threaten for Super Effective damage. Improofed by Ting-Lu.
Antique Terror (Koraidon) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- High Jump Kick
- Stone Axe
- Dragon Tail
- Strength Sap
While the first four Pokémon on this team were unorthodox but ultimately guessable sets, these last two are the particularly wacky inclusions to the team due to significant challenges in covering certain threats. Koraidon is the team's secondary Magic Guard and serves 4 different purposes. First, it is complementary to Arceus-Fire typing wise and handles most of the Regenvests and other chip-based Pokémon that Arceus has a poor matchup into. Secondly, it checks Ash-Greninja who would otherwise tear up the team. Greninja can fit coverage but Koraidon's presence makes it tricky for it to freely click Surging Strikes which would be punished by 50% chip from helmet. Third and Fourth are forcing progress through hazards by setting rocks and phazing respectively. Koraidon isn't very good on its own but on this team it acts as a glue that patches up as many miscellaneous weaknesses as possible. Soft-Improofed by Magearna, Lunala and Itself.
In your walls (Magearna) @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Burning Bulwark
- Moonblast
- Toxic Spikes
- Strength Sap
Magearna is another support / glue Pokémon that fills out the defensive profile of the team like Koraidon. It serves the vital role of setting Toxic Spikes. While you could think that its inability to threaten Poison-Types is a liability, in reality this isn't a significant issue as Nihilego sapblocks the most common Poison in Eternatus meaning it can't repeatedly come in to remove Tspikes. Magearna's Burning Bulwark makes it very hard for the opponent's breakers to come in on, forcing a more defensive and chip based approach to removing it. As such, Magearna generally gets up a Tspike and burns an opponent if possible, then once the opponent sends out a defensive chip user to eliminate it, you can bring in Arceus or Koraidon to set additional hazards or start making progress. Its Fairy typing gives it an exellent matchup into Yveltal, who can otherwise give the team significant trouble and remove hazards effectively. Improofed by Arceus-Fire and Nihilego.
Weaknesses:
My experience with the team has been that it performs very strongly against "meta" teams, but unfortunately as most "anti-meta" teams do, it is less effective against opposing offmeta strategies due to its reliance on resistances and accumulated hazard damage rather than raw defensive and offensive stats. It generally does poorly into random unimproofable setup on ladder, as most teams without Imposter do, but it also has a few more crippling weaknesses that i'll list below.
Take Heart sets are very troubling for the team. Ting Lu can handle Tcage variants and Magearna can handle Mortal variants but Magma Storm is nearly impossible to deal with.
Alakazam is able to always get a kill with Specs Beads of Ruin if it predicts correctly, however it takes chip quickly and struggles to get in, so outplaying it long enough to outlast it isn't out of the realm of possibility by any means.
Opposing Magic Guard is obviously a problem for a team reliant on racking up hazard chip and Ting Lu is the only Pokemon capable of Knocking opposing Boots. However, you can easily muscle through or sapblock many MG users, so this only really becomes a concern if there's a poor type matchup or multiple MG/Boots users on the opponent's team. And if that is the case they are likely also reliant on chip strategies so the playing field is relatively equal.
Generally, the team is pretty inflexible against poor matchups due to the lack of Imposter and the fact that the team falls apart once it starts losing pillars. When it works, it works exellently but sometimes you can just load into a loss. The team has been used successfully in several tour games and I laddered up to 1500 pretty comfortably, but I don't have a ladder peak achievement due to this inconsistency problem.
The Team:
The Concept:
This team is a sequel to a previous team I made during the time before MMX got banned. It explores an archetype that is common in several OU tiers but, to my knowledge, has not been substantially used in BH, or at least hasn't been this generation. That archetype is the "superman" team, a team that instead of playing the hazard game instead chooses to completely ignore it by using Pokémon that are either fully immune or highly resistant to hazard chip.
As for why this structure seemed appealing to me in BH, the reason is twofold. First, I believe that Magic Guard is among the most powerful abilities in the SV Fulldex metagame, especially since Take Heart arrived, given the huge prevalence of strategies reliant on inflicting passive damage with Salt Cure, Thunder Cage and statuses. A superman team is able to take advantage of Magic Guard users well to absorb Knock Offs for the Heavy Duty Boots users, both this team and the previous one make use of a Magic Guard Arceus equipped with a plate to be able to take Knocks very comfortably from opposing support and regenvest Pokémon.
Secondly, I think that hazard control is in a poor state in the current meta. Tidy Up sets either struggle with longevity if placed on offensive users or are significantly less threatening than Take Heart sets on defensive Arceus or simply chip-based sets on other defensive users. Mortal Spin and Rapid Spin are able to be blocked and the most common users, Regenvests, are exploitable by Imposter. Many teams using spin will be able to block Imposter's spin, which necessarily means using either a bad Pokémon (e.g. Primsea Celesteela to wall ground/fire/mortal coverage) or have their spinner be vulnerable to a common and viable blocker.
Hazards meanwhile are very, very potent but are often a struggle to set, with Regenvests usually trading rocks against Imposter and Spike users being frustrating to Improof and limited to either selfproofed sets (that can still let 3 layers up even if they kill the Imp) or force the team to include a Magic Bouncer, which is a tricky role to fit on most of the offensive teams that enjoy Spikes support.
As such, in this meta superman's drawbacks are heavily mitigated and its strengths are very notable. It is forced into running Boots on several defensive mons that may prefer chip-mitigating items like Lefties or Cloak, but it also has to run Magic Guards to absorb Knock effectively (levitate steels and rock-neutral fliers can do the job but MG is preferable) and these Magic Guards can take on the role of absorbing chip moves like Salt and Mortal.
Meanwhile the Superman team can freely use hazards and not worry about Improofing them, in fact if the opponent chooses to set hazards, which is nearly always a correct strategy in the early game before sets are scouted, they'll instead be unknowingly wasting turns and allowing the superman user to scout, position and set their own hazards.
So in my opinion, superman hazard stack teams are an extremely effective anti-meta teamstyle that is only really held back by the difficulty of building a coherent defensive core within the restrictions, of the fact that the team cannot fit Imposter unless it runs the weak and tough to use Boots Imp, and the need to play extremely well to avoid a surprise kill or knock that could shatter the core.
The sets:
Funeral Pyre (Arceus-Fire) @ Earth Plate
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Judgment
- Torch Song
- Spikes
- Strength Sap
Arceus is the primary knock off absorber and is tasked with being the progress maker that cleans up an opposing team battered by hazards. Fire and Ground is a deadly type combination that is very rarely resisted and even against something like PSea Celesteela it can still set spikes meaning it'll never find itself completely useless. It also switches in to moves that threaten Ting Lu and Koraidon like Kyu-B's Glacial Lance and the occasional physical Fairy. Soft Selfproof but also Improofed by Nihilego.
Innocence (Nihilego) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Sand Stream
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Spikes
- Revelation Dance
- Shore Up
- Leech Seed
Nihilego serves as the team's Sapblocker and is tasked with handing Sap users like Arceus Fairy and Eternatus. It also sets sand which compounds the chip that the opposing team is already taking from status and hazards. With Leech Seed, it can easily 1v1 most Eternatus and Arceus sets despite their boosting as they cannot effectively heal against it. It is vulnerable to Ground moves but Magearna can handle most sets that are using ground coverage as they rarely also have fire moves to hit it. Improofed by Koraidon.
Broken Cycle (Ting-Lu) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Careful Nature
- Earthquake
- Knock Off
- Topsy-Turvy
- Strength Sap
Ting Lu acts as the primary physical wall with its incredible physical bulk. It has poor type matchups into many attackers but those are covered by teammates allowing for the raw bulk to let it take hits from extremely high power breakers like Mega Garchomp and even take some super effective physical coverage moves very well. It also serves as a check to SNR Ghostceus, some Ultra Necrozma sets and miscellaneous Power Trip and Stored Power setup users you'll find on ladder that need to be accounted for given the team's lack of Imposter. Improofed by Magearna.
Planetarium (Lunala) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Ice Scales
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hex
- Psystrike
- Nuzzle
- Shore Up
Lunala acts as a special defensive answer to threats that Nihilego has poor type matchup into while also having a significant offensive presence. It can use psystrike to deal big damage to Poison-Types, Blissey and Kyogre-Primal and uses Nuzzle/Hex or take advantage of Tspikes to deal big Ghost-Type damage. The team has adequate answers to Dark and Ghost-Type moves so it's very hard to threaten for Super Effective damage. Improofed by Ting-Lu.
Antique Terror (Koraidon) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- High Jump Kick
- Stone Axe
- Dragon Tail
- Strength Sap
While the first four Pokémon on this team were unorthodox but ultimately guessable sets, these last two are the particularly wacky inclusions to the team due to significant challenges in covering certain threats. Koraidon is the team's secondary Magic Guard and serves 4 different purposes. First, it is complementary to Arceus-Fire typing wise and handles most of the Regenvests and other chip-based Pokémon that Arceus has a poor matchup into. Secondly, it checks Ash-Greninja who would otherwise tear up the team. Greninja can fit coverage but Koraidon's presence makes it tricky for it to freely click Surging Strikes which would be punished by 50% chip from helmet. Third and Fourth are forcing progress through hazards by setting rocks and phazing respectively. Koraidon isn't very good on its own but on this team it acts as a glue that patches up as many miscellaneous weaknesses as possible. Soft-Improofed by Magearna, Lunala and Itself.
In your walls (Magearna) @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Burning Bulwark
- Moonblast
- Toxic Spikes
- Strength Sap
Magearna is another support / glue Pokémon that fills out the defensive profile of the team like Koraidon. It serves the vital role of setting Toxic Spikes. While you could think that its inability to threaten Poison-Types is a liability, in reality this isn't a significant issue as Nihilego sapblocks the most common Poison in Eternatus meaning it can't repeatedly come in to remove Tspikes. Magearna's Burning Bulwark makes it very hard for the opponent's breakers to come in on, forcing a more defensive and chip based approach to removing it. As such, Magearna generally gets up a Tspike and burns an opponent if possible, then once the opponent sends out a defensive chip user to eliminate it, you can bring in Arceus or Koraidon to set additional hazards or start making progress. Its Fairy typing gives it an exellent matchup into Yveltal, who can otherwise give the team significant trouble and remove hazards effectively. Improofed by Arceus-Fire and Nihilego.
Weaknesses:
My experience with the team has been that it performs very strongly against "meta" teams, but unfortunately as most "anti-meta" teams do, it is less effective against opposing offmeta strategies due to its reliance on resistances and accumulated hazard damage rather than raw defensive and offensive stats. It generally does poorly into random unimproofable setup on ladder, as most teams without Imposter do, but it also has a few more crippling weaknesses that i'll list below.
Take Heart sets are very troubling for the team. Ting Lu can handle Tcage variants and Magearna can handle Mortal variants but Magma Storm is nearly impossible to deal with. Alakazam is able to always get a kill with Specs Beads of Ruin if it predicts correctly, however it takes chip quickly and struggles to get in, so outplaying it long enough to outlast it isn't out of the realm of possibility by any means. Opposing Magic Guard is obviously a problem for a team reliant on racking up hazard chip and Ting Lu is the only Pokemon capable of Knocking opposing Boots. However, you can easily muscle through or sapblock many MG users, so this only really becomes a concern if there's a poor type matchup or multiple MG/Boots users on the opponent's team. And if that is the case they are likely also reliant on chip strategies so the playing field is relatively equal.Generally, the team is pretty inflexible against poor matchups due to the lack of Imposter and the fact that the team falls apart once it starts losing pillars. When it works, it works exellently but sometimes you can just load into a loss. The team has been used successfully in several tour games and I laddered up to 1500 pretty comfortably, but I don't have a ladder peak achievement due to this inconsistency problem.