Espathra Baton Pass Gimmick in Doubles
Summary
In Pokémon Champions | VGC Battles & Tournaments this announcement discusses an Espathra Baton Pass gimmick in Doubles play. It covers Gen 9 context with Gholdengo absent, problematic threats like Floette, possible BP recipients such as Milotic and Primarina, team support strategies, and matchup notes including lack of Roar/Snarl answers and practical counterplay suggestions.
https://pokepast.es/3dfa2c99e912cdf6
For context, I’m not a VGC player. I mainly play Smogon Doubles formats, and in Gen 9 Doubles OU Espathra was recently banned because of its ability to pass boosts to Gholdengo, making it faster than the entire metagame and immune to any attempts to slow it down between Good as Gold and its Ghost typing. Much to my delight, Gholdengo is not in the game right now, but there is also a noticeable lack of good Roar and Snarl users, in addition to possibly the most broken special attacker of all time with Floette.
Obviously this is more of a gimmick, and Espathra is noticeably worse in 4v4 because you cannot bring two supports AND more than one Baton Pass recipient (hence the offensive Sinistcha), but I’m still getting a ton of wins I absolutely should NOT be getting.
(Lumina Crash is likely better on Espathra I just like the nuke)
Ive been considering a Coil + Hypnosis Milotic as a BP recipient rather than Primarina because of the lack of sleep counterplay (put fini in the game i beg) but I havent tried it yet
so the team works but my opponents never say gg back, its almost like they're mad at me for some reason... i can't figure it out
Ive seen a few esparatha teams, most annoyingly a cotton guard mega altaria with the calm mind boosts
I would have lost against it if my mega kanghaskan didnt crit twice lol
i feel like i need haze now
yeah probably
stamina arch too
I mean this is how espathra teams usually look
https://pokepast.es/18bbf5a7e544d798 mockup of the dou version for reference
You just pair it with a shitton of support and then have 1-2 baton pass recipients
You can go even harder into the support aspect of it, some people ran turbo cloak taunt incin and fast encore wellspring
In champions you cant really do that though because you can only bring 4
Espartha?
Espathra!
btw i tried the coil hypnosis variant
the sleep nerf makes it lowk not worth it
still funny though
A non-batton pass team?
Its really weak to ttar, meowscarada, and dragapult so you need something that hits ghost and dark types well
maybe mega Gardevoir?
protean tho might be a problem
they might switch types then kill
(actaully tbf then other megas wont work either)
In the nicest way possible
Meganium isnt worth it here put the floette in the bag
Honestly i would also drop orthworm
Orthworm is lowk dead weight outside of shed tail in most games
It hits floette super effectively but like
It has losing matchups into basically everything else
I actually did built a floette team with orthworm and i brought it like twice out of 50 games
And immediately regretted it both times
If you want a steel that beats floette you might be better off with aegi
With iron head wide guard king’s shield +1
Either sacred sword for incin and other steels or ghost stab
With wide guard its still an eq partner for chomp as well
So you dont even lose that synergy
Wide guard blocks ALL spread moves
Even your own
So if you use eq next to a wide guard partner it will hit both opponents but not your partner
One small quirk is wide guard counts as a protecting move
So if you wide guard and then click protect it will have a 1/3 chance to fail
I’d go lefties instead of sitrus but yeah
