[PCL] PCL Team-Building Competition

Hello all! Welcome to our next exciting off-season PCL competition! This time we will be taking a break from standard tournaments and venturing into the world of team-building. As up and coming battlers, it is important to gain a better understanding of the first and most important step of competitive play, building a viable team. In this competition, clans as a whole will select a Pokemon and build a team around it. The goal is obviously to make the most viable team possible that can have success in the OU metagame. After all of the teams are submitted, they will go through a series of test battles and Anti will judge the teams based on viability, creativity, synergy, and overall functionality. The team that comes in first place will earn 100 exp. for that clan, the second place team will earn 50 exp. and the 3rd place team will earn 25 exp.

Information:

• As a clan, decide on a Pokemon to build a team around.
• Use your clan threads!
• Work together! This is not an individual competition. The goal of this exercise is to construct a team as a clan. Compile ideas and create the best team possible.
• Don't be afraid to break-the-meta! Don't build a generic cookie cutter team. A Landorus, Keldeo, Serperior, Clefable core is boring! Take a risk and build something interesting.
• Test these teams before you submit them. I recommend doing at least 10-20 ladder battles before submitting your final team. You will be amazed at the glaring weaknesses you might miss.
• Each clan head should PM me the finalized teams in the proper format(importable Showdown text). A breakdown of each team is preferred but not required.
• Have fun!

This competition will run from February 19th until March 19th. This should be more than enough for each clan to build a good team. Team testing and judging will take place shortly after. Good luck to everyone!

Hey guys! Just a reminder that this ends in ~3 days so start finalizing your team ideas and send them to me when ready!

Teams have been sent to Anti and results will be posted soon!

i will be done with this in 3-4 days

Oops, just kidding. Sorry for the delay--I'm finishing the culmination of my academic career. :x

Anyway, I have the submissions listed below as I received them. I haven't had any time to test these teams, so this is all theorymon. I am hesitant to make any final rulings, so if anyone wants to contradict what I'm saying with a replay or two, go ahead. Even so, I am pretty confident in a lot of my guesses, but again, feel free to protest. Anyway, let's get to it:

Team A:



Commentary: Intriguing team. The concept is nice and Mega Aerodactyl + Serperior has superior synergy and, while not earth-shattering, is pretty unique! My main critique is that the main form of Speed control, Aerodactyl, is too easily worn down and requires pretty careful play to properly execute the trap. Aqua Tail feels very expendable here since Mega Aerodactyl has pretty phenomenal team support against Grounds: Gliscor, Starmie, and Serperior all significantly punish their presence. Roost in its place would especially help with the pretty glaring weakness to Charizard Y, which can at least be Pursuit trapped. The other change I might consider is Giga Drain on Serperior over one of the coverage moves to make it more reliable in stall match-ups since Leaf Storm has PP issues. Since it's pretty much the team's only stall-break, it seems a worthwhile consideration, especially with Pursuit to potentially remove Talonflame. Anyway, while I am unsure how good the team is as I've never used it, in theory it looks reasonably cool. My verdict:

Effectiveness: 8/10
Creativity: 8/10
Score: 16/20

Team B:



Commentary: This team is decently standard, at least in terms of its individual parts, and it seems perfectly serviceable. I noticed two issues immediately: Both Mega Charizards are a huge problem since they can easily run over their very soft checks, especially Charizard X, and the team lacks Speed control outside of the very shaky Sucker Punch. It also has a poor match-up with Skarmory Spikes teams. That said, this doesn't seem to be a bad team, and it has interesting wrinkles like Fire Blast Slowbro and offensive Garchomp. While I don't think this team has the capability to break stall very effectively, it looks fairly decent overall. My verdict:

Effectiveness: 6/10
Creativity: 7/10
Score: 13/20

Team C:



Commentary: Definite points for creativity, but man, Mega Absol is just trash. It's just walled by everything. As for the rest of the team, I just don't love the synergy. I actually think Toxicroak is pretty interesting and at least gives a token presence against stall cores along with Talonflame, but it needed support from a stronger and better mega evolution. Furthermore, I couldn't get past the glaring weakness to the ubiquitous Latios, which is a pretty big red flag in team building. It is not without other problems, including Mega Gyarados, Calm Mind Slowbro (especially Mega), Mega Diancie, and a few others. This just doesn't feel rigorously tested to me. My main piece of advice is to remove Absol or at least support it more. A team with such Clefable bait should be able to pressure Clefable more without fearing Thunder Wave, for example. Finally, ScarfChomp is pretty mediocre and it pairs poorly with Landorus-T (Scarf Lando + TankChomp makes a lot more sense) and I think the team would benefit from some role compression there. The main point though is just...Absol is not good: I've literally *never* seen a good Absol team. Admirable effort, but this isn't bucking the trend. My verdict:

Effectiveness: 4/10
Creativity: 8/10
Score: 12/20

Team D:



Commentary: This team gets mutilated by hazards. It's very fast with plenty of priority and respectable strength, but I struggle to see how this is anything but an uphill battle the second the opponent uses Stealth Rock. Scizor is not a reliable Defogger, made worse by its lack of Roost. Using Choice Band Talonflame is like playing down a Pokemon because it is only going to be coming in once. I really wish this one had come with descriptions, as the synergy is not really apparent to me. I'm not sold on Mega Houndoom but am intrigued by the choice, but a Houndoom team shouldn't be so weak to fast revenge killers. My verdict:

Effectiveness: 4/10
Creativity: 7/10
Score: 11/20

I am happy to provide further commentary or suggestions, though I won't be very time-responsive until next Friday.

Yeah, Mega Absol is trash and I had anything but fun building a team with it. But hey, the clan decided to build around it, except they all wandered off after voting for Absol as our Mega, letting me do all the work. Well, to be fair, Nah at least changed the TFlame set and added Starmie, so I suppose he contributed in some way.

It's not a particularly well thought out team, partly because of not enough work put into it, partly my own still present inexperience, especially with lesser used mons and partly because I stopped caring at some point and just randomly slapped some mons on the team.

I also didn't test the team, as you might imagine, simply because I felt like having already done enough and I wanted the others to still have some way to contribute, which didn't happen.

If there's a next time, I'll probably just go rogue and do my own thing, including putting effectiveness over creativity. After all, I like having a team that's actually usable. <_<

This was a fun competition! For anyone wondering which teams belonged to which clans, here are the results:

1st place: Ghosts of Perdition
2nd place: Team Orb
3rd place: Black Magic
4th place: Majestic Milotics

The points will be updated soon!