VGC Trick Room and Tailwind unite! (Doubles Troubles)

(Doubles Troubles)
VGC17

The team is a fire water grass core with two intimidate users to alternate intimidates if needed and two forms of speed control. The basis of the team is to hit hard with lele, gyara, Arc, and sometimes mimikyu. While supporting with mandibuzz or mimi depending on what speed control you choose. Mimi does hit hard enough to hold its own tho. This team is set up for both types of speed control with mint speed and negative speed nature mon's
(Sample videos at the bottom)

Gyarados @ Waterium Z
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 228 HP / 244 Atk / 36 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Ice Fang
- Protect
- Waterfall

This team started around mandibuzz and tapu lele. My biggest issue with this lead was garchomp and gigalith threatening heavy damage from poison jab/Rockslide and heavy slam/stone edge. Needing a hard counter to both gyarados seemed like a good option, not only bringing good typing but an intimidate to further lower the damage output of these two very physical mons. Gyarados is the water type in my FWG core, a bulky DD setter, and the holder of my Z Crystal of choice. Im running ice fang for garchomps and waterfall to cover arcanine & gigalith. Most gigalith can take a waterfall and fire back with a stone edge but the Hydro vortex can fix this issue. Some arcanines carry Wild charge such as i do but you have a hard swap for that with kartana if your positive they wont flare blitz you. Otherwise mimikyu or arcanine is a solid switch if you wanna play it safe. i played around a bit on the Evs i found a decent spread for what i want to accomplish with this team. A slower speed with more Hp and SpDf. When trick room is up gyara is first up to bat on my team being the slowest with a speed of 101, while still gaining 202 speed when tailwind is up to outspeed tapu koko.


Kartana @ Assault Vest
Ability: Beast Boost
Level: 50
EVs: 12 HP / 252 Atk / 244 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Leaf Blade
- Night Slash
- Sacred Sword
- Smart Strike

Kartana is seeing less usage these days but not in my team kartana brings the grass typing to my FWG core along with some obnoxious fire power against some rather unsavory mons my team doesn't enjoy dealing with. After tweaking kartana's stats a bit and changing its item from a choice band to the assault vest I found it easier to tank special attack moves and retaliate after speed control comes back into play. Night Slash was an oblivious move to counter drifblim lele leads. If you come up against drif/lele combo i recommend leading kartana/mimkyu and setting up TR with mimikyu. Pheromosa is quite speedy and may threaten a KO with high jump kick but with a speed of 116 under tailwind you still outspeed pheromosa with a speed of 232. Otherwise you have a hard swap in mimkyu to waste the attack and deal some damage back to that pesky bug! The rest is a pretty basic set for kartana with sacred sword/SS/and leaf blade.

Arcanine @ Aguav Berry
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 76 HP / 244 Atk / 4 Def / 180 SpD / 4 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Flare Blitz
- Wild Charge
- Protect
- Roar

Arcanine is one of my physical attackers and has the fire typing to my FWG core and also a hard counter to celesteela, seeing as to the rest of my team being weak to a steela set up stall fest.... It can get out of hand rather fast if you let it. Im running wild charge to cover opposing gyarados and flying types. I know roar is an odd choice but it gives another answer to TR if i don't want it going up and theres a mental herb mimkyu/oranguru on the opposing team, also helps weed out evoboost and set up abusers I cant seem to break. also adjusted Arcanine's speed to fit my needs with a speed of 116 it ties with kartana still outspeedingpheromosa with tailwind up.

Mandibuzz @ Psychic Seed
Ability: Overcoat
Level: 50
EVs: 236 HP / 4 Atk / 60 Def / 196 SpD / 12 Spe
Impish Nature
- Pluck
- Foul Play
- Tailwind
- Roost

I decided to change mandibuzz's nature to impish and give it a little bit more health sustain. Pluck is still incredibly viable in my opinion with all the 50% berries running around most people running Arcanine or Snorlax don't see it coming, lose their Berry, then before they know what's what and im set up for another Tailwind. Mandibuzz offers alot to this team and really brings pressure after they know it has pluck. Would you wanna hard swap into your arcanine after your snorlax just got its berry jacked? No bc i basically just did 50% damage to your mon and you might wanna save that berry for once my gyara comes out to play or to eat up a few foul plays from mandibuzz. The rest of it is mostly a regular mandibuzz set with Foul Play tailwind and Roost.

Mimikyu @ Mental Herb
Ability: Disguise
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Brave Nature
- Trick Room
- Play Rough
- Shadow Claw
- Destiny Bond

Mimikyu brings a solid hard swap to neutralize fighting and normal type attacks, Alongside some extra tapu lele insurance with shadow claw. Play rough could be changed for more coverage but honestly the chance of a free attack drop is good enough for me to have kept it around. Although mimikyu may be a trick room Setter and a destiny bond Trap that doesn't mean his attack is nothing to scoff at with a brave nature max Atk and a lot of pent-up aggression towards A Pikachu he will probably never get to take it out on...

Tapu Lele @ Iapapa Berry
Ability: Psychic Surge
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Psychic
- Moonblast
- Protect
- Taunt

Tapu lele is my one of my biggest damage dealers and imo one of the best tapu's still. Psychic hits alot with gusto under psy terrain and has a chance to do more with a SpDef drop chance. Im running moonblast over dazzling gleam to pressure garchomp with more damage. I have taunt on lele so if someone tries to trick room while I Tailwind I can taunt them or put a stop to any other shenanigans before they get out of hand.

All in all this team works great for me and I'm pretty satisfied with the product I have so far. The reason why I tweaked some of the Pokemon speed tiers was to work under TR or Tailwind. Also to fit better with Kartana. Example: lele speed is 115 while kartanas is 116 so under TR lele goes first with a powerful atk to break them down while kartana picks up the kill with a boost.

Another thing you can do with this team is alternate speed controls. Bringing mimikyu and mandibuzz to games sometimes isn't a bad idea due to the way it can play out. An example would be if mandibuzz's Tailwind only has one turn left and mimikyu has been brought in, mimikyu can now trick room before Tailwind ends and maintain the speed control, then pressure with Playrough/Shadow claw/ and Destiny Bond.

I can undoubtedly feel the team Synergy when I play with this team it just takes good predictions and keeping a close eye on your Tailwind or trick room turns. I've also played a few games without setting up trick room or Tailwind first turn but food for thought eight out of 10 times i lead Tapu Lele and Mandibuzz, or Tapu Lele and Mimikyu. Other leads are entirely possible if needed too.

I did a few showdown matches for you guys.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7vgc2017-612216258



http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7vgc2017-612247689



http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7vgc2017-612233011



http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7vgc2017-612221637

Thank you
 
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Change Pluck on Mandibuzz to either Knock Off, Snarl or Taunt

I say Knock Off because in terms of disruption it is better than Pluck, Pluck only works on Berries which are only common on a select few Pokemon like Arcanine, Tapu Fini and Alola Muk
Knock Off can eliminate all items (with the exception of Z Crystals) and Mandibuzz gets it as an Egg Move so it's the better choice

Definitely not happy about that Kartana, Sassy just doesn't seem like an option to me, I prefer running a Sash set, it will better your matchup against Pheramosa, A-Ninetales, Tapu Koko and generally faster threats that threaten it with a 1HKO Special Attack or Fire type attack

Perhaps change Lele's item to Life Orb and change the EVs to be 164 HP and 92 Defense

It just gives it that little bit of help defensively

EDIT:

Also I recommend giving Arcanine 164 Speed EVs, with that investment it will outspeed Adamant 252 Gyarados by 3 points and has about a 4/5 chance of OHKOing Gyarados even at -1 with Wildcharge
 
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