IB's pokemon playbook

My experience with vgc started during the scarlet and violet era. I began watching vgc in 2024 and only began competiting in 2025 using showdown given that I never bought scarlet and violet. I have reached averages in the 1500s in the main two regulations where I honed my skills in (Reg I and Reg MA). While being fairly new to vgc compared to most of my peers, I have gotten fairly experienced by a large amount of practice and teambuilding.

There are 3 main aims I keep in mind when I teambuild:-
- Roles and role compression: Each pokemon should have a seperate role on the team, in order to maximise their effectiveness against a variety of opponents. These roles can overlap in some ways, like having 2 tr setters but should have some differences between them (like an offensive tr setter and a defensive one)

• Types: Typing is incredibly important to making powerful teams. The larger the overlap in weaknesses between pokemon on a team the more likely that team is to struggle against certain opposing pokemon or coverage moves. On the other hand, having a lack of type coverage can make it incredibly difficult to effectively deal with threats on the opponents team.

• Independence: It should not be the case that a pokemon is unable to contribute in any way aside from supporting 1 or more pokemon. Support pokemon are incredibly useful but if they are unable to do any damage then they are just sitting ducks if the rest of the team is wiped off.

When teambuilding the most important aspect is direction. Teams need a direction to be built in, I can't tell you how many people have asked for "a good team" when looking for help teambuilding. Good teams have specific ideas upon which they are built, such as building around a favourite pokemon or archetype.

In the reg m-a format, their are 6 main teams which I think where quintecential at defining the format.

• Sun-floette: With the reintroduction of yard and new arrival of AZ's 2nd weapon of mass destruction, players quickly began using them both together as answers to each others counters. Teams with pokemon like scissor who would usually do insane into floette would get ohko'd my a heatwave from the yard and vice versa.

• Sun-aero: However, as the format progressed and yard became wayyyyy to common. Yard teams started using mega aero in their teams in order to deal with other yards. These teams ended up subbing in sylveon as pseudo floette who would become meta.

• Sun-glimm: Rlising that sun-aero was becoming meta. new sun teams began using glimmora and whims to deal with opposing yard teams more effectively. This lead was rly rly rly good as it turns out, and it took a while for the format to adjust and begin countering this team.

• Rain-Sabeleye: Why cybertron just why? rain, is obv the easiest sun counter but up until now while there where a lot of rain teams, they weren't very consolidated. Cybertron Zhang, a rly influencial player in champions made a sabeleye team which quickly became the most popular team on the ladder for a weak. Sableye as it turns out was incredibly difficult to deal with at the time and made arch a raid boss, making unprepared teams watch as arch got stronger and stronger till even xerneas would fear it.

• Defend the queen floette/delphox: Cybertron (yet again) showcased a team from a former world champion in ma and it once again became rly popular for a bit. The team has 3 redirectors, incin and both floette and delphox. Yet again this ladder cheese was rly difficult to beat for teams that didn't have a way to get through and kill the queen.

• Italian ice - In turin, a team with frosslass, lycanroc and scovillain got like 4 of the top 16. Incredibly well balanced, italian ice has numerous counters to most archetypes.

was running out of characters XD

The most important teams in this roster in my opinion are italian ice, sun-aero and sun-floette. All of the other 3 teams where rly important in influencing the metagame but they did not survive as long as those 3. What do these 3 teams have in common? they check all 3 of my criteria and are incredibly balanced meaning that it was difficult to have a good team which can also have a basically gauranteed win against them

The new regulation hasn't completely changed the meta. Garchomp and basc have started running life orb to become insanely terrifying.

In terms of megas, metagross, mawile, pyroar and staraptor are the best. Metagross and mawile function similarily as bulky steel megas who are usually hard to ko, mega pyroar is like miraidon in that its rly offensive with the huge number of multipliers that are added on it and staraptor is rly dangerous bcause it is a setup sweeper who doesn't need to waste turns not doing damage

I personally run balance without weather since I hate playing weather wars and balance is my favourite archetype, however that is a personal preferance and every single one of the archetypes has its advantages and disadvantages