Hey friends, I’m back to help you guys prepare for US nationals this year. I would make sure your team doesn’t autolose to any of the following teams, and some of them might even inspire you to pull directly from this list!
The breakdown is going to be that I will have all teams listed by archetype, with several different teams from an archetype. After all the teams are listed, a brief explanation will follow. In addition, I will try my best to include accurate pastes of teams that don’t have EV spreads, so essentially all the information you could find on pokemon.com anyways. I will also be listing as many of the team’s notable finishes as I can find. Let’s begin!
One final note, I’m going to spread this out over a few days. Today’s article will contain CHALK, Metagross, and Snorlax teams. Part 2 will be published tomorrow (6/28) and will contain Charizard, Kommo-o, Salamence and Rain. The final part will be published on Saturday (6/30) containing some other, more specific teams to watch out for.
CHALK (Sample Paste 1) (Sample Paste 2)
team accomplishments:
wins: Madison Regional, Tours Special Event
top 4s: Virginia Regional, Madison Regional
top 8s: Virginia Regional, Sheffield Regional, Singapore Special Event
With no Pokemon on the CHALK squad having a BST below 570, it’s easy to see how the team has re-appeared back into the limelight. With some new tools in Kartana and Tapu Fini, the team has easier times breaking through Water-types and bulking up, respectively.
On any version of this team, Kangaskhan is used to gain and instant pressure advantage and output consistent damage. Its powerful attacks and Fake Out faster than that of Incineroar are what make it such a threat. The Kartana varies between Assault Vest, giving it more coverage and versatility, or Grassium Z, giving it the ability to nuke a single target and start snowballing. The Cresselia is also one to vary, mostly between its Calm Mind and Trick Room sets, one of which plays to make Cresselia its own win condition, the other used to support the slower members of the team, such as Heatran, Tapu Fini, and some bulkier Kangaskhan.
Heatran, Tapu Fini, and Landorus-T are the more static members of the team. Heatran is almost always Heat Wave / Earth Power / Protect with a Shuca Berry, the last move practically being left up to player preference. Tapu Fini is even more static, hardly seeing anything else used other than its typical Calm Mind set. I have seen the Landorus-T vary from Choice Scarf to Groundium Z, especially on the Calm Mind Cresselia variants. This gives Landorus less utility, but ramps its damage output through the roof, especially if the player opts to run Swords Dance over Superpower.
Metagross (Sample Paste 1) (Sample Paste 2) (Sample Paste 3)
Team Accomplishments: Too many to document. Moving on.
Team Accomplishments: Top 8 Virginia Regional, Top 8 Malaysia Regional, Top 4 Singapore Special Event
Team Accomplishments: Top 8 Sheffield Regional
All roads lead to home, and all Metagross teams lead to Edu. Starting off is the updated version of everyone’s favorite Mudsdale user’s original squad. The team is as old as the format itself, with variants top cutting local events since literally January 1st. Similar to chalk, the team blends offensive pressure and control really well in order to take control of board states when the majority of its matchups are nearly even.
The 2nd variant is the brainchild of none other than 2013 US National Champion and twitter superstar Gavin Michaels. While Gavin has had a rough season, his team has had a huge surge of popularity ever since Chuppa Cross was able to secure a top 8 at the Roanoke Regional with the dreamteam of Rotom-h and Gastrodon. It has neat tools such as the Psychic Seed Gastrodon and the infamous Z-Ally Switch Tapu Lele, almost used as a form of speed control as much as a form of cheese. The team is much more offensive than Edu’s team and in trade has some more good matchups and some more bad ones.
The final team is based off of the squad Max Waterman recently used to top 8 the Sheffield Regional. It’s been something that’s been right outside of multiple regional and SPE top cuts for quite a while. Out of the the three teams, it’s definitely the most aggressive, thriving off the pressure that the Metagross / Lele and Pelipper / Ludicolo cores create.
When it’s all said and done, I’m looking forward to seeing how the “best” Mega in the format does at the penultimate tournament of the year.
Snorlax (Sample Team 1) (Sample Team 2)
*
Team Accomplishments: 1st Virginia Regional, 2nd Toronto Regional*
Team Accomplishments: Top 8 Collinsville Regional, Top 8 Roanoke Regional* (yeah that’s right, I’m putting my own result here, deal with it)
Snorlax is without a doubt one of the strongest Pokemon in the 7th generation of VGC. It dominated events all season last year, and he hasn’t shown much sign of slowing down this year either. I strongly advise running multiple answers to Mimikyu/Snorlax and Gothitelle/Snorlax, as those cores aim to create game states where Snorlax can run all over the field. However, it is important to note that on both of these compositions, the Snorlax-less modes are perfectly viable in their own right, meaning if your team is weak to Manectric or Gengar + fat stuff, you might want to do some re-evaluation. Both teams struggle with Charizard quite significantly, and as such players have taken preventative measures such as running Stone Edge Virizion or Rain Dance Manectric, whereas some other players just rely on boosting up Snorlax and mopping the field.
That’s it for part 1 of this series, check back tomorrow and Saturday for the following installments! by @c9_joseph
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