JCS Qualifier 4th Place Team Article (Rating 1807)

Introduction

In the Oceania zone you can qualify for the regional qualifier with a record of 0-1 and a rating of 14xx. So you may wonder, why try so hard for this online competition? 

In 2018 I qualified for Japan Nationals in the last chance qualifier with a rating of 1733. Since then I have not been able to get an invite – the necessary rating to qualify got astronomically high in 2019 (especially with the shiny tapu giveaways); top 30 being a minimum of 1810 rating for instance. Despite this I noticed that the same players (people like Kaeru, Alcana, Kinugawa and Zeen to name a few) always managed to qualify in the first INC with a rating of 1800+. I have succeeded in bo3 tournaments but that consistency in bo1 ladder tournament was just unfathomable to me and I could never figure out why. There must be something they are always doing right to achieve such a feat. I would read their team reports to understand their thinking; after doing so it made a lot of sense why they were able to succeed but I was still not able to translate that thinking to my own success.

So going back to my initial rhetorical question – why try so hard for this online competition? For personal satisfaction; even if bo1 ladder isn’t considered “competitive” I wanted to prove to myself that I can achieve a good result in this format if I really tried. I’ve always been a showdown ladder fiend, getting top 10 or better in every format so why can’t I manage this in a single INC? My goal was 1800.

To do this I needed to learn from my mistakes in previous INCs. The biggest one: TEAM. Well it wouldn’t be a team report otherwise would it. To be more specific: Building and perfecting a team within a specified timeframe that’s suited for ladder and the current meta. One of my biggest weaknesses was just coming up with a good concept for a team in the span of weeks. I would always be scrambling at the end without a team that consistently keeps me in high ladder and be stuck in building phase. By “perfecting” a team I mean not only building it but also developing strategies to consistently beat all the top archetypes in the meta. And I always struggled to do this in a timely manner for online INCs. Luckily I was able to get a starting point from my partner Lacquer (@is26yk), who I’ve strategised with for years. He is really talented and has a knack for teambuilding that I lack; without his guidance and initial concept for the team I would not have achieved this result. More on this in the next section.

This article will place more emphasis on the thought process that lead up to the final version of the team because I don’t think English reports ever cover this well enough at all. Without further adieu, here’s the story of how the team came to fruition.

Teambuilding Thought Process

Original Concept
In the second half of March, Lacquer managed to hit #1 with a rating of over 2000: 

https://twitter.com/is26yk/status/1373925231803383812/photo/1
I told him I will play in the online competition so he gave me the team he got 1st with:

https://pokepast.es/264a6dc2249fc3f1
I noticed it was quite similar to the February 1st place team on battle stadium:

【S15／ダブル】
TN 「」　レート 2029
最終1位達成しました！
1番好きなキングドラを入れて1位取れたのですごく嬉しいです！#ポケモン剣盾 pic.twitter.com/3Oj5xJtu6M

— tog' (@to71330469) March 1, 2021

Lacquer confirmed that this was indeed the origin of the concept. When I tried the Zacian rain team I did think that the Prankster Thundurus was actually really useful, so it made a lot of sense to use it even without rain. Prankster Thundurus was perfect for Bo1 ladder tournament because Defiant was undeniably the expected ability on Thundurus. This meant that people would lead accordingly expecting a physical Dynamax Thundurus only to be surprised by a Thunder Wave crippling their Zacian, or an Eerie Impulse on their special attacker that just expended Dynamax. It would also deter them from leading intimidators which was important because our big hitters were physical. These points alone could win games; I cannot emphasise enough the importance of elements like this in a ladder tournament since with up to 45 games you want to be mentally taxed as little as possible. Pokemon is a game of information; the situation where you gain a significant advantage because the opponent is strategising for a certain expected outcome but that strategy completely crumbles right off the bat because you have the information advantage wins games.

I immediately found success when I tried the team but we both agreed on some weaknesses of the team:

・Calyrex-Ice
・Calyrex-Shadow
・Pretending to be Defiant Thundurus wasn’t enough for staving off Intimidate which was annoying for our main attackers, Landorus and Zacian
・In that sense, it could be easy for the opponent to position their own Landorus which could get out of hand with speed boosts since it is immune to Thunder Wave.
・Rotom and Kingdra were decent but don’t have the best stats and felt like they were lacking sometimes especially in bulk. They were also weak when I didn’t dynamax them; Landorus was the main candidate, so if I brought 2 of Landorus/Kingdra/Rotom-H then it felt like I was just lacking in usefulness in one slot for the match. In general when I build teams in gen8 I like to stick to 2 dedicated dynamax users and select between them based on the matchup in team preview. I also didn’t like reliance on Ally Switch for certain matchups like Calyrex-Ice and Metagross/Solgaleo teams. I prefer more “solid” gameplans so to speak.
・Rotom still wasn’t enough to beat Metagross that also had Kyogre on the team because its fire attack would be weakened and we would inevitably just lose the damage race unable to come back from 3 turns of +2 Metagross Max Moves.
・Kingdra just by existing could actually hinder the camouflage of our Prankster Thundurus because by this point it was common knowledge that the Thundurus on the Zacian rain team shown previously was a Prankster variant.
・Bulky Pokemon like Porygon2 and Dusclops were difficult to deal with especially if the opponent played well and didn’t let me position Zacian. Rillaboom has fake out but isn’t the best switch-in to the main Trick Room sweepers (Torkoal, Calyrex-Ice) so it can be hard to stall out Trick Room.
・We could not work out a way to beat lead Indeedee+Dragapult, where they Turn 1 Follow Me and Dragon Dance.

Things I liked about the team (other than the Thundurus which I already explained):

・The concept of leading Thundurus/Zacian, stalling out their Dynamax, then reverse-sweeping with Landorus was a really strong strategy. I knew I wanted to keep these 3 going forward. In gen8 if you are able to sit through the opponent’s Dynamax turns relatively unscathed then that usually translates to a win. Eerie Impulse, Thunder Wave, Intimidate, Behemoth Blade and Substitute are all effective elements the team had to mitigate their Dynamax.
・This was effective against Sun and opposing Zacian teams, which are the most common archetypes in the meta. When I build teams I am always looking to counter the most popular teams in order to achieve a high win-rate. You are not going to hit 1800s in the tournament if you are constantly at a disadvantage especially when you consider RNG factors.
・Rillaboom was strong at being a pivot covering the water weakness (and providing fake out pressure the next turn), overriding opponent’s psychic/misty terrain which was a hindrance for Thundurus, and its priority was really welcome considering we didn’t have traditional speed control like Tailwind or Trick Room. Furthermore very good against Kyogre (obviously) since it could just OHKO a lot of them with Grassy Glide. So it was likely I will keep Rillaboom.

Improving the Team

So with all this in mind the next thing I tried was Kangaskhan because I remember @TofuHeatranVGC doing well with a Thundurus/Zacian team that also had a Kangaskhan on it for the Ghost Horse matchup:

I thought it might be good because it could Fake Out Mimikyu and Dusclops to prevent Trick Room, thus helping with the Calyrex-Ice matchup as well as being a Calyrex-Shadow matchup just by being a normal type. It is also immune to Intimidate which I explained to be a problem for the team. Helping Hand was also nice to boost Zacian and Landorus’ attacks. But other than that Kangaskhan didn’t do enough at the end of the day as without its mega-evolution it’s just a really mediocre Pokemon. One thing I did learn was that having Fake Out if I didn’t bring Rillaboom was really good for enabling Zacian’s Substitute to set up end-games. This simple realisation was a key factor for why I eventually added Incineroar; more on that later.

To fix the bad Horse matchups, Lacquer came up with this:

https://pokepast.es/8cdf35bd5b95f256

Which I thought was smart. I changed the Centiskorch item from Coba Berry to Grassy Seed because flying moves are basically non-existent on Calyrex-Ice teams, which was Centiskorch’s main purpose. Some key points:

・Calyrex-Ice could not do anything to Centiskorch and would lose the damage race after a coil. It was initially overwhelmingly strong in this matchup and I basically never lost.
・The residual damage from Centiskorch GMax move was obviously really welcome (important realisation for later)
・Porygon2 was good for Calyrex-Shadow but they usually had good ways to either disrupt it or focus-KO it before it could Trick Room. Porygon2 itself also doesn’t do much other than Trick Room and sit on the field hitting for usually meaningless damage. You couldn’t switch it out easily because nothing else on the team other than Rillaboom was really comfortable with taking free damage.
・People started to learn how to play around Centiskorch as we faced more on ladder, ie taunting it with Mimikyu or leading Regieleki and Dynamaxing it turn 1, which meant the Calyrex-Ice matchup wasn’t as consistent as I once thought. If people just “happen” to decide to make these reckless decisions I can’t afford these kinds of losses in the bo1 competition. I needed a more stable way of managing this matchup.
・Electroweb was solid but Taunt ended up being a much more useful move after testing, which helped a lot against the previously mentioned Porygon2/Dusclops as well as disrupting random gimmicks like Ally Switch. In this sense it could set up guaranteed win-conditions, eg Taunt one of the Pokemon as Thundurus faints so that you know it can’t Ally Switch or Protect on the next turn when your Zacian comes in to KO it. It also gave Thundurus something to do in front of a Groudon, stopping it from using Swords Dance.
・I changed the Landorus item to White Herb because:
     - With Porygon2 on the team, Assault Vest became less necessary for dealing with Calyrex-Shadow
     - As explained previously, Intimidate in general was a real hindrance for Landorus sweeping lategame so being able to ignore it for a turn was extremely significant for momentum. Opponents would switch Incineroar in thinking they could stall out my Dynamax turns but then be met by a nasty surprise where they put themselves in a position to be Max Quaked for free in the Incineroar slot after I just got a +1 speed boost for example. Remember: the situation where you gain a significant advantage because the opponent is strategising for a certain expected outcome but that strategy completely crumbles right off the bat because you have the information advantage wins games. Thank you @Huyubare_Poke for the idea, he was using Zacian/Landorus as well and also came to this item conclusion. White Herb was also coincidentally good against opposing Prankster Thundurus that had Scary Face, or Screech Regieleki which was a gimmick that saw use in the online competition.
    - I changed Rock Tomb to Rock Slide because I never needed the speed drop and Rock Slide was not only a much better move to use once Dynamax ended, but the extra power when it becomes Max Rockfall actually changed calcs on bulky Charizards. My plan against Charizard was usually to paralyse it then OHKO it with Max Rockfall later on so I felt this was an important change.
   - U-turn was really only useful for positioning around opposing Intimidate, which White Herb achieved much more effectively anyway. So Swords Dance was chosen instead to help set up end-games when Dynamax had ended.
・With all that said and done, without Rotom-H this team ended up being even weaker against Metagross/Solgaleo teams. Since they naturally boost their defense stat with Max Steelspike, Centiskorch being physical would not be enough to out-muscle them despite being a fire type and since they always Dynamax early there is no possibility of positioning a Coil. Centiskorch also has low Defense so it takes way too much from a Max Quake whilst not dealing enough damage in return. This is not even considering the possibility they could Max Rockfall. Porygon2 also takes too much damage from a +2 Max Move so getting up Trick Room is also difficult. This problem is once again compounded when they have a Kyogre on the team as well, which I was very concerned about because at the time of using this variant of the team I believe someone hit #1 on the ladder with Metagross/Kyogre and Jon Evans also had made Players Cup 3 finals with it.
・I was also starting to see some Regigigas/Weezing at this time which was also impossible to beat no matter what decisions I tried.
・In general this team had no good switch-ins to special fire moves, especially Torkoal, as well as Ice moves if Zacian was already on the field.

Problem-Solving

By this point I had laddered with the team so much that people were starting to catch on to Prankster Thundurus and people were even copying our team concept. It got to the point where people would even turn 1 Taunt my Thundurus so I was getting concerned that this strategy would even be effective anymore in the online competition, but I was so far invested in this team concept there was no turning back at this point. I reminded myself that the online competition is a much, much larger pool of players and I really doubt many will yet be privy to my team details. As an aside, I did consider Mental Herb for my sanity’s sake against Whimsicott leads but the mileage from Sitrus Berry was too much to give up. Thundurus staying on the field longer meant it could do one or two more jobs before fainting which increased my chances of victory so I just kept Sitrus which ended up being the right call in the tournament. If we were to continue playing Series 8 and this team got more known then I would probably switch to Mental Herb.

So I set out to change the team again. I was very satisfied with the updates to the Thundurus and Landorus sets so I looked to changing Porygon2/Centiskorch to Pokemon that would fix the weaknesses mentioned. I wanted the following elements:

・Ice and Fire resists. Lacking these was a key reason why Calyrex-Ice/Metagross/Solgaleo were difficult
・Special Dynamax Pokemon
・Ways to deal with Calyrex
・Way to deal with Metagross/Solgaleo (+Kyogre potentially)

So naturally I want a Fire and/or Water type:

Incineroar was of course the first Pokemon that came to mind and it’s silly how long it took for me to try it. I think I was too wary of having double Intimidate in a meta where Defiant Thundurus is so rampant but I shouldn’t have worried so much. It complemented the late Dynamax gameplan perfectly, being able to provide a switch-in to many moves (especially Ice/Fire like I said before), as well as then being able to provide a safe pivot for my Landorus to come in unscathed (it’s very important to keep Landorus as healthy as possible). Incineroar also provided further insurance against opposing Zacian, weakening it with Intimidate, guaranteeing Fake Out because Zacian can’t Dynamax, and threatening a KO with Flare Blitz. This surely contributed to my win-rate because Zacian is 30%+ usage, so there is obviously good reason Incineroar is on 50%+ teams. It also greatly improved my win-rate to basically 100% against Sun teams; with Shuca Berry if they had Groudon then you could stay in and Parting Shot into Landorus and then they’d be -2 in a single turn whilst having to deal with a Max Airstream the next turn, all whilst Zacian is ignoring their Grimmsnarl behind a Substitute. Furthermore, Incineroar is invaluable for stalling out Trick Room turns in the Calyrex-Ice matchup – it’s impossible to prevent Trick Room so stalling out Trick Room and sweeping with Zacian later is how you win this matchup and Incineroar is the key to this. You can Substitute Turn 1 and then Protect+Switch Incineroar in, then you have Fake Out next turn, etc. Thanks to Incineroar I was able to have an even matchup against Calyrex-Ice without relying on Centiskorch which wasn’t great in other matchups, whilst Incineroar was great in other common matchups as well. Burning Jealousy was chosen as the optional move because if they self-proc their Metagross Weakness Policy with a move other than Bulldoze (big if, I know), then Shuca Incineroar can just take the boosted Max Quake and burn the Metagross in return. This also applies to Regigigas/Weezing, since Incineroar is EV’d to survive a Life Orb Max Strike if they’re Jolly. Furthermore, Burning Jealousy was just useful for catching Zacian switch-ins and keeping opposing Dynamax physical attackers honest (I’ve even burnt a Landorus and Zacian in the same turn). It also gave me a way to check the Indeedee+DD Dragapult lead I mentioned before. I thought it was better than using another move like Taunt since we already had it on Thundurus and after Wolfe Glick popularised Taunt it was too expected on Incineroar anyway, so opponents are more likely to play around it to their advantage.

I used Kingdra as filler because I wanted something that could hit Incineroar/Landorus but its lack of bulk still didn’t sit well with me. I knew I wanted a special Dynamax water type because the team only has Thundurus to hit on the special spectrum, and matching the opponent’s Metagross Dynamax with my own and trading hits seemed to be one of the few good ways to manage that matchup, especially if they have Kyogre. A water type would also help with opposing water/fire types which were extra resistances I really wanted (Fire/Water/Grass is tried and true for a reason). I was looking through water types and came across Lapras and Tapu Fini. However they don’t resist steel because of their secondary typing, which is a problem if I’m bringing them to fight Metagross/Solgaleo. I also don’t want Fini’s Misty Terrain, because it interferes with Rillaboom and Thundurus’ Thunder Wave. I also think Lapras lacks damage output, is too slow (have to invest to outspeed Incineroar meaning less bulk, even then you have to guess the speeds) and is only good for the Aurora Veil; I don’t really think it’s a good Pokemon. So I needed a water type that would fulfill these conditions:

・Resist steel
・Decent speed
・Decent damage
・Good bulk
・Dynamax Candidate

I remembered how good the residual damage was from GMax Centiskorch, so I thought “What about GMax Blastoise?” It’s not really used much but it fulfills all these conditions except 3., which it more than makes up for that with the residual damage from GMax Cannonade, which perfectly complements the team, and trades well with the opponent’s Dynamax.

https://pokepast.es/d7191124973b4406

When I tried Blastoise it already improved my win-rate in the matchups I theorised, and it was especially good against Kyogre teams because you could basically ignore the Kyogre and KO the partners with Blastoise; in fact your moves would be boosted by their rain. Blastoise was also especially useful against rogue Lightning Rod users on Kyogre teams, which often carry Focus Sash; Cannonade is able to kill them in one turn so you get more out of your Dynamax whilst getting rid of their Thundurus answer. Blastoise’s main job was to stay on the field and trade with their Dynamax, so extra damage output wasn’t really a concern. For this reason, rather than Mystic Water or Life Orb, I gave Blastoise a Wacan Berry since Kyogre often carries Thunder and Regieleki is so common. Not having to worry about fainting to an electric move and then being able to retaliate with Cannonade is very significant and caught a lot of opponents off-guard.

With Blastoise added I was very satisfied with the team and how it fared against the common archetypes (I beat all of these in the actual competition):

Zacian
Grimmsnarl Sun, (Groudon or Torkoal)
Kyogre
Calyrex-Ice
Grimmsnarl Palkia/Dialga stuff
Coalossal
Kyurem-W Whimsicott
Metagross/Solgaleo stuff (barely)

I was able to maintain a rating in the 1900s which gave me confidence; even if I dropped to 1800s I would always get back up. But there was one glaring weakness missing from this list: Calyrex-Shadow. I just could not reliably beat this team if they had Regieleki or Thundurus (which they always do) and/or Indeedee to prevent Thundurus from doing anything. I could maybe make Rillaboom Assault Vest and Zacian bulkier, but I didn’t have time to test these changes and I wasn’t sure if it would be enough anyway. I realised something Agati and I always mention is “you can’t cover everything so you need to learn from the Japanese and recognise which matchup(s) to give up on”. I decided to give up on consistently beating Calyrex-Shadow. I thought since the current meta is filled with Grimmsnarl people might think Calyrex-Shadow isn’t favourable to use at the moment, so if I have to lose to something then Calyrex-Shadow is an acceptable choice. I feel like this phenomenon is especially pronounced in Series 8 but is a factor in almost any format; you can’t cover everything so rather than racking your brains trying to always win every matchup one needs to recognise where to cut their losses. A good example of this is Kaeru when he built his Groudon/Ultra-Necrozma team for Worlds 2019 – he gave up the YvelOgre matchup in favour of consistently beating more common matchups in order to increase his chances of going deeper in the tournament; he pulled one YvelOgre in Day2 Swiss but still managed to go 5-2 and then get all the way to finals. It turned out my intuition was right (or I just got lucky) and I faced zero Calyrex-Shadow in the 25 games I played in the online competition which of course was a big factor to me losing only 2 games.

If I had more time before the competition, some changes I wanted to test were:

・Replacing Scald for Yawn on Blastoise to help with endgames post-Dynamax
・Assault Vest Rillaboom with U-turn; I really think Rillaboom being able to pivot and take attacks from Calyrex-Shadow better would bring a lot to the team.

But I only added Blastoise the Tuesday or Wednesday before the tournament so I decided to just stick with what I had at the time. Other than that I was very satisfied with how complete this team felt; I think it has almost all elements I would want in a team. 

Closing Thoughts

So that’s how the final team was built. I played all my games on the Sunday, started 1-1 and then went on a huge win streak, ending up at a rating of 1807 with 23 wins and 2 losses. It is a huge milestone to me because it is something I have wanted to accomplish for nearly 3 years. Agati wanted me to keep going and I would have been perhaps one win away from rank 1, but at the time I had no idea how many more wins I would need (my ranking didn’t change from winning when I went from 1794 to 1807) and I was already content enough with the result and didn’t want to risk losing anymore.

As an aside, I gave this team to 3 members of my NPA team, Cruisers, and they all won in the same week, suggesting the team’s potential strength in Bo3. However I cannot make any conclusions on open-teamsheet Bo3; I do believe it would be harder for this kind of team to win if the opponent knew everything before Game 1 however.

This article has already gotten too long and since Series 8 is over I’m not going to do analysis on the individual Pokemon of the team; I’ve already covered most key points when explaining my building thought process. I also will omit matchup explanations because they’re not going to be much use if Series 8 isn’t played anymore. If any of these things are of interest to you please feel free to send a DM my way and I will happily answer. What I do think will be useful even if Series 8 has ended is understanding how a successful team is built which hopefully I managed to document in this article, especially since I don’t see many English reports covering this aspect in great detail. Some key takeaways would be:

1. Find a concept that is effective in the current meta and isn’t common knowledge (this prevents opponents from out-strategising you). This is maybe the hardest part of the process; luckily I was given one.
2. Understand the weaknesses of the team and how to best cover them. Knowing what decisions to make here require knowledge, experience and some creativity. Don’t be afraid to use ideas from other players if you think it could work (like I did with Huyubare’s White Herb Landorus, in fact many successful Worlds teams have taken strong elements from other peoples’ teams).
3. Accept that in Pokemon you cannot cover every archetype and there will be one or more matchups you have a high chance of losing to. Recognising which matchups are acceptable to give up on based on your knowledge/experience of the meta should improve your win-rate in the long run.

If you stuck through to the end, I must applaud you. Hopefully it was somewhat informative/educational and perhaps it will be a resource for your future teambuilding. At the very least it was useful for me to document my thoughts. I am very content with this result but there are still achievements in VGC that I wish to accomplish; until they are realised I will not rest. Some final acknowledgements:

- Lacquer for providing the original concept and always strategising with me
- Huyubare for the White Herb Landorus and Incineroar/Zacian EV Spreads
- NPA Cruisers which I’m manager of; you guys are awesome and I must thank you for the support you gave me in my climb

Thank you for reading!