Putting the HURR In HURRicane: VGCS Winter Battle Team Analysis

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Hey all, Nickscor here with an analysis focusing on the team that I used in the recent VGCS Winter Battle. I’m not exactly known for performing well at all during these Wi-Fi tournaments because in the past I usually have ended up with a rating falling somewhere between 1600 through 1700 and called quits. However, with the addition of prizes for placing high in the form of regional byes and Championship Points (CP), I decided to give this one a serious shot and chose only the best of the best from my small pool of Pokémon. I ended up retiring on Saturday at a 1800 rating with 75 battles under my belt (I lost track of my wins, losses, and disconnections after 30 battles or so) since I didn’t want to risk dropping my rating again as well as the fact that I had to study for finals the next day. Without further adieu here’s my team:

Moltres @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Pressure
68 HP / 248 SAtk / 4 SDef / 188 Spd
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
– Hurricane
– Overheat
– HP Grass
– U-Turn

Choice Scarf Moltres, the star of the show. For months I’ve been advocating on how good it is from watching some battle videos of Japanese players using Hurricane Moltres in the Rain but never actually used it that much myself. When putting my team together after registration, I knew I wanted to use something cool so I went with Moltres. Unmissable STAB Hurricane in Rain is truly amazing, and the 30% Confusion rate? Well that’s just gravy. Apart from Rock-, Steel-, and Electric-types (which Landorus-T can threaten apart from Rotom-W, Zapdos, and Thundurus) Hurricane can hit a lot of Pokémon in the metagame really hard. For example, it can easily OHKO standard Hitmontop, most Scrafty and Amoonguss (assuming they’re not running 252/252 +SDef but even then it does 83% – 98% and 82% – 97% respectively, a guaranteed 2HKO), Virizion, and Conkeldurr. I think a lot of people tend to underestimate it so to put into perspective, it has the same raw power as a Zapdos/Thundurus-I Thunder. One of my favorite things about Moltres is that everyone and their dog predicts a Fire-type attack and switches out to something that resists it (ie. Chandelure, Water-types, etc.) only to eat a Hurricane that can usually 2HKO anyways.

I originally had Heat Wave for the sake of having a spread move, but I found it to be unreliable, especially when Rain is up. I swapped to Overheat so I could score some KOs that Hurricane could not achieve, but I usually spammed Hurricane anyway. I gave it HP Grass just for the sake of having more coverage and U-Turn for escaping a bad matchup or to break Air Balloons and Focus Sashes. The speed EVs allow Moltres to clock in at 134, so it can outspeed max speed Crobat and Jolteon with the Choice Scarf.

The biggest thing to keep in mind about Moltres is when not to use it. Most Rock Slides can OHKO, so take caution around Tyranitar. As amazing as Moltres’s Hurricane is, it does have its limitations against common Pokémon seen in the metagame, such as Heatran and Thundurus. When I used it in the first Nugget Bridge Major, I lost to Evan Falco due to my stubbornness to bring it in despite its disadvantage against most of his team. Needless to say, I learned from that and managed to save myself from losses by taking my time to review my opponents’ teams on Team Preview.

Politoed @Water Gem
Trait: Drizzle
204 HP / 44 Def / 248 SAtk / 12 Spd
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
– Hydro Pump
– Icy Wind
– HP Grass
– Protect

Offensive Politoed and Moltres’s partner in crime. Sets up Rain to get rid of a opposing weathers and allows Hurricane to have perfect accuracy. Water Gem Hydro Pump can put dents in the opponent’s team, particularly against Metagross, who is usually OHKO’ed. Icy Wind is a great move that should be used more often and really helps out Hydreigon by slowing down faster Dragons such as Latios, Garchomp, and Salamence so that Hydreigon can one shot them with Draco Meteor afterwards. HP Grass was mainly for me to not get walled by other Water-types/Gastrodon. Protect is Protect. Back when I tried out Politoed with Moltres before BW2 came to the states, I actually used a Calm one with a Wacan Berry and Helping Hand among other things. I had completely forgotten Icy Wind at the time, but I may try that set again in the future with the aforementioned Icy Wind since Politoed does not like eating STAB Thunderbolts, and should mainly be there to support anyways.

Crobat @ Flying Gem
Trait: Inner Focus
4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature (+Spe, -SAtk)
– Acrobatics
– U-Turn
– Tailwind
– Taunt

I’ve been playing around with this Crobat for months now, though I added in Tailwind recently. Crobat’s main purpose was to either grab a quick KO with Acrobatics, set up a Tailwind, or prevent the opponent from setting up Trick Room or a Tailwind of their own with Taunt. Inner Focus was pretty clutch, since I could often do what I needed to do while its partner usually protected the Fake Out. I originally ran Protect over Tailwind, but after some suggestions on IRC I ended up tutoring it before locking my Battle Box for the competition. While having Tailwind and Icy Wind within the same team may seem a bit redundant, there were a good number of battles where I had to bring in Politoed or Crobat so I ended up having some form of Speed control one way or another.

Landorus-Therian @ Yache Berry
Trait: Intimidate
76 HP / 252 Atk / 180 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
– Earthquake
– Rock Slide
– U-Turn
– Protect

Ever since the release of BW2 in Japan, I’ve been excited about using Landorus-T even though I had never used Landorus-I. STAB Earthquake backed by a hefty 145 base Attack stat in addition to its Intimidate makes it a great switch-in for the very common Tyranitar. Rock Slide was thrown in for coverage and would give me some sort of offense against Thundurus, Zapdos, and Rotom-W. U-Turn works great in conjunction with Intimidate, as it allows Landorus to come back later during the match and drop Attack if it needs to. Intimidate support was already a major reason why I used it, since it lightened the blow of common Pokémon such as Hitmontop and Tyranitar, and even though Metagross blocks Intimidate it would be hard-pressed to stay in on an Earthquake.

The EVs allow it to hit 134 like Moltres so it can outspeed max speed base 80s and +max speed base 70s, but to be honest it was originally EVed to use a Scarf. One important thing to note with Landorus is that you should really make sure at the very least half your teammates are immune to your Earthquake if you’re using it. I could count the number of times I’ve accidentally U-Turned my Crobat out when my Landorus was about to Earthquake, only to see that Politoed or Metagross were sitting in the back. The number of times was too many.

Hydreigon @ Chople Berry
Trait: Levitate
4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Modest Nature (+SAtk, -Atk)
– Draco Meteor
– Dark Pulse
– Earth Power
– Protect

A somewhat standard Hydreigon. There’s nothing really noteworthy here. Draco Meteor puts dents on the opponent’s team and could do something to Rotom-W, Zapdos and Thundurus (beware of the Calm variants though), while Dark Pulse was my more reliable STAB and answer to Cresselia. Earth Power was kinda there for Heatran and Steel-types and I didn’t feel like throwing away the 10 Blue Shards it took to tutor it just to teach it Focus Blast. I think there was a good amount of times where only he and Landorus were left while the opponents were at an advantage, and they were both capable to pulling off close victories due to Earthquake spam + whatever other move I felt like using. As for the item, I gave it Chople Berry so that it could survive most Fighting-type attacks such as Hitmontop’s Gem Close Combat at -1 and Guts boosted Conkeldurr’s Drain Punch. Great team player, would use again.

Metagross @ Lum Berry
Trait: Clear Body
220 HP / 140 Atk / 20 Def / 124 SDef / 4 Spd
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
– Meteor Mash
– Zen Headbutt
– Ice Punch
– Protect

If you plan on copying my team, do yourself a favor and use a Scizor or Ferrothorn instead of Metagross. Don’t get me wrong, Metagross is a great Pokémon — but from my experiences, it doesn’t work well with the team. The EV spread was shamelessly stolen from Scott’s Nationals team, but since I didn’t pack Swagger, it didn’t work out the way it was intended to. Lum Berry was at least a nice way to brush off the occasional burn, freeze, and paralysis. But still, you could use Scizor since it has Feint, or Ferrothorn since it counters Rotom-W hard which my team is weak to. Rotom-C would also be a viable choice, but then you wouldn’t have a safe switch-in to the myriad of Draco Meteors…

Threats and How I Dealt With Them

Electric-types — Particularly Rotom-W, Thundurus and Zapdos

Where to begin… Super Effective STAB Thunderbolts can make short work of Politoed, Crobat and Moltres. The only real answers I had to them were Landorus’ Rock Slides and Hydreigon’s Draco Meteors, but if those didn’t work I would end up in a very tight spot.

Rain teams

I didn’t really run into bog standard teams as much as I thought I would since I wasn’t actually prepared to face them. I did pull off a risky move one game where I set up Tailwind with Crobat and pretty much swept with Hurricane Moltres when it got switched in. Teams like these makes me wish I had used Ferrothorn instead of Metagross even more though.

Sand teams

I would usually bring in Politoed to cancel out Tyranitar’s Sand and Hydro Pump everything while Landorus-T Intimidated. Moltres would be benched due to its glaring double Rock weakness.

Hail teams

I think I only ran into one Hail team during the tournament, but I was pretty unnerved about it since half of my team was weak to Ice. However, if I could get up Rain to lower Blizzard’s accuracy back to 70%, I was usually at the advantage. Metagross proved its competence against Hail, at the very least.

Trick Room teams

Since my team was primarily focused on Speed, I would not get excited to see Trick Room teams during Team Preview. However I did manage to pull off close games with well-timed switches and Protects and would usually be able to pull off the win after the opponent’s Trick Room wore off. For some reason or another many of my opponents ran Dusclops as their Trick Room setter, as opposed to the more popular Cresselia.

‘Standard’ teams

Whenever I saw Hitmontop on Team Preview, I would bring in Crobat solely to set up, since it usually tried to Fake Out whatever else I had out. Every team should be prepared for the wall that is known for Cresselia, and I could usually handle it with Hydreigon’s Dark Pulses, Landorus’s U-Turns and Moltres’s Hurricanes. But still, if my heavy hitters were out it was a problem. Latios was a big threat for my team thanks to his Dragon Gem Draco Meteors, but using Icy Wind was probably the safest way so I could outspeed it the next turn.

Closing Thoughts

Overall, I felt my team was relatively balanced with the exception of Metagross who didn’t contribute a whole lot as well as my weakness to Electric- and Ice-type attacks. As for the tournament experience, I consider myself extremely lucky as only two of my opponents intentionally disconnected on me after I defeated them, a very small number compared to those who played the entire weekend. However, I did not get the opportunity to run into any fellow Nugget Bridge players during the tournament with the exception of ryuzaki. 75 battles may seem like a lot at first, but I felt like I could’ve played more. However, I didn’t want to risk dropping my ranking once I hit 1801, and I had finals, unlike many of my friends who were already done for the semester.