Optimizing Your VGC Trick Room Team: 6th Slot Strategy
Summary
The Pokémon Champions | VGC Battles & Tournaments community is actively debating the optimal 6th slot for a Trick Room team. This discussion explores replacing Kangaskhan with Life Orb Incineroar or offensive Grimmsnarl to better handle threats like Kingambit and Archaludon. Members share strategic insights on move sets, positioning, and synergy with Mawile to improve performance in competitive VGC matches.
Ive playe till now with kang last reaort variant and it's been working well so far but it feels at times 1 dimensional and getting stuck on the field with nothing to do against some mons (i.e gambit and bridge) thinking about changing to life orb incin as to not lose dmg potential and be able to switch him easily if needed.
It will also enable my mawile to run rock slide for a better sun matchup(mainly so I have a better match up against Charizard y floette teams as mawile will be better into either).
The thing is I find the scrappy fake out be very useful tool to stop both basc from huge dmg and sini from reversing TR.
Other than that more ideas would be welcome.
You can use a normal kanga set
Fake out
Double edge
Hammer arm
Ice Punch
Itll clear gambit and do a fair bit of damage to arch.
Otherwise yeah bring a different mon like incin works
Ive been looking at offensive Grimmsnarl and he could do a big chunck to arch with drain punch
Grimmsnarl @ Life Orb
Ability: Prankster
Level: 50
EVs: 32 HP / 32 Atk / 2 Def
Adamant Nature
- Spirit Break
- Fake Out
- Drain Punch
- Parting Shot/Crunch
Only other TR fake out user would be tinterton.. but no point if you have mawile 🤣
Honestly I reckon incin is the better bet unless you go with Grimmsnarl and make him like a fairy incin 😂
Its also worth noting that you should be trying to position to bring torkoal out to clear arch anyways hes your best bet.
As for the actual team though who us your swampert/rain check?
I get torkoal but I dont like relying on solarbeam torkoal for swampert and he kinda runs through this team
Arch is not really a problem for this as I have 3 mons that can consistently kill him the problem is more kang being stationary and me not having a good bulky pivot mon like incin to position other mons well
As for matchups so far mega pyroar has been a problem as he Ohko farig under sun and this why I run rain dance now
The few times I've ran into perish trap has been a problem with no pivot moves but most of my losses been me running into stuff I'm unfamiliar with and misplaying in general
also zard y floette teams feels like a gamble on which mega to bring so hopefully rockslide mawile would solve it
Yeah I was using arch as an example of damage compared to kanga.
How is your dragon match up on the Blastoise side?
Would ice beam be better then aura Sphere?
Although aura would do good damage ofc.
The rain dance is also a general good idea because it will lower fire damage to mawile and boost Blastoises water spout.
You could use taunt Grimmsnarl to counter things like perish trap too but you would have to drop parting shot to keep him doing a similar role to incin it would also prevent people trying to stall tr on you
For zard teams I would try and make the mawile side work to iron head the flo and like you said rockslide the zard.
Blasty can't really do much if they bring flo and the Blastoise side doesn't really have a flo counter option
Otherwise the knowledge gap is just a skill issue. You will get better at that with experience 
the only common dragon type he cant hit for super eff is garchomp and garchomp does not threaten him that much so i dont have much problems with him
Yeah chomp isnt a big deal.
Honestly id say the team is pretty tight
Just keep incin and consider grimm if you want a taunter
Either way they both have typings that you already cover its just a fakeout support mon over all
