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Reversing the Sands of Time: an OU Sand-Room Team

MooseSmuggler

#DeathToFascists
I believe this is my first actual competitive RMT, if not at least the first in a while. I've always enjoyed Trick Room, as has my partner in crime, Lord Fighting, who helped me co-author this team. I decided to add a twist: Sand. Sand is always a viable option, and can help a Trick Room team, given the support.

Teambuilding process:
When building a Sand team, obviously a Sand Streamer is needed. While Hippowdon is slower, I went with Tyranitar, as it's still slow enough to be useful in Trick Room.
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After that, I needed to decide on my Trick Room users. Out of the handful of Trick Room users that resist Sand, Reuniclus and Bronzong were two of the most outstanding.
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That having been done, I needed more Pokemon that can abuse Trick Room. Enter Rhyperior:
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And then Magnezone, to cover at least some of Rhyperior's weaknesses.
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And finally, a Pokemon that can fight with or without Trick Room. This was Lord Fighting's idea, and it's proven effective. Scizor.
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Now, on to the team:

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Tyranitar (F) @ Choice Band
Trait: Sand Stream
IVs: 0 Speed
EVs: 180 HP / 252 Atk / 76 Def
Brave Nature (+Atk, -Spd)
- Stone Edge
- Crunch
- Pursuit
- Superpower

The Sand Streamer. Instead of putting the 76 EVs into Speed, I put them into Defense. Since hitting hard and fast with as little setup as possible is key on Trick Room, I went with the Choice Band set. SE and Crunch are for hard-hitting STAB, Pursuit wrecks anything that tries to flee, and Superpower hits any Steel type that thinks it's safe.


Rankurusu_by_Kikariz.jpg

Reuniclus (M) @ Life Orb
Trait: Magic Guard
EVs: 192 HP / 64 Def / 252 SAtk
IVs: 0 Speed
Quiet Nature (+SAtk, -Spd)
- Trick Room
- Psychic
- Focus Blast
- Shadow Ball

Our first Trick Room setter. Once Trick room is up, it can unleash all hell on the opponents with Life Orb. The attacks given provide nearly perfect coverage, and hit hard.


Bronzong_table_flip-(n1339786371991).png

Bronzong @ Life Orb
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def
IVs: 0 Speed
Brave Nature (+Atk, -Spd)
- Trick Room
- Gyro Ball
- Earthquake
- Toxic

The other Trick Room setter. Bronzong has a decent amount of bulk, and decent offensive capabilities. After setting up (unless Reuniclus already has), it can hit rather hard, especially with Gyro Ball (in fact, Earthquake is only occasionally used). Toxic helps anything that Zong can't hit on its own, and can shut down opponents.


rhyperior-116137.jpg

Rhyperior (M) @ Choice Band
Trait: Solid Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SDef
IVs: 0 Speed
Brave Nature (+Atk, -Spd)
- Stone Edge
- Earthquake
- Megahorn
- Ice Punch

The bulky sweeper. Rhyperior hits like a truck, and is nearly impossible to outrun in Trick Room, save for priority. Like TTar, the set is designed to hit hard and fast, with little setup. The infamous QuakeEdge combo has STAB, which is glorious. Megahorn hits Grass types and Psychics like a truck. Ice Punch gets rid of Gliscor and any Grass/Flying type that happens to be on the field (not that Tropius and Jumpluff are common, but hey).


magnezone.jpg

Magnezone @ Choice Specs
Trait: Magnet Pull
EVs: 148 HP / 252 SAtk / 108 Spd
IVs: 2 Speed
Quiet Nature (+SAtk, -Spd)
- Volt Switch
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Thunderbolt
- Flash Cannon

Magnezone can cover Rhyperior's weakness to Grass and Ice, and though it's hit neutrally, it hits Water types for Super Effective damage. Volt Switch lets it get out of dodge and keeps momentum up, HP roasts Grass, Ice, and other Steel types. Thunderbolt and Flash Cannon are hard hitting STAB.


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Scizor (F) @ Choice Band
Trait: Technician
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SDef
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- U-turn
- Bullet Punch
- Superpower
- Pursuit

Scizor is designed to work with or without Trick Room. Priority BP gives it the ability to hit first in most situations. U-turn allows it to escape, Superpower hits Steel types, and Pursuit hits any Psychic/Ghost types that want to try to escape.

With that, I think I'm done. I'm open to any suggestions, but I'd like to keep the Sand-Room motif if it's at all possible.​
 
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EonDragonFTW

Well-Known Member
This team seems pretty Heatran weak, as it's slow and can use trick room against you. It can take out half your team, and skarmory walls you to the end of time.

Other than how to handle those threats, this team seems good
 

loco1234

BEEDOOBEEDOOBEEDOO
skarmory walls you to the end of time.

Show me what Skarmory can do to Magnezone besides Whirlwind it out... And Magnezone 2HKOs with Thunderbolt. And Skarmory can't do squat about it besides Whirlwind and hope it predicts every other Zone switch-in perfectly. Because messing up once is getting KOed.

This team seems pretty Heatran weak, as it's slow and can use trick room against you.

Heatran isn't out-slowing Rhyperior, Reuniclus, Tyranitar, Scizor or Bronzong. Every one has a lower Base Spe. Any of the first 4 can do a ton to it with Superpower, Earthquake or Focus Miss, and the only one Heatran has a chance against is Scizor. Actually, for that matter, Heatran loses to Bronzong too in TR. I wouldn't say it's a problem if he gets TR up, Heatran won't be using it against him at all.

What I see being a problem: Well, I can't actually see any glaring weaknesses, but Rain seems like it can be problematic if you lose the weather war. Not a huge problem though, I can't see any one Pokemon that completely destroys you. You've got something for every Rainmon I can find, except maybe Rotom-W. Not sure how TR Reuniclus does, I usually use a CM sweeper, but it's the only thing I can see that can really do much besides Toxic it.

One little nitpick on your descriptions: Reuniclus actually gets perfect neutral coverage on all 649 Pokemon with Focus Miss and Shadow Ball. Normal/Ghost is the only thing that resists that and it doesn't yet exist.

Just one question: Why's Magnezone got 2 Spe IVs, but 108 Spe EVs? If you want it to be as slow as possible, as indicated by the IVs and Nature, drop those EVs and put 'em in bulk.

Overall, this team seems really solid and original too.
 
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MooseSmuggler

#DeathToFascists
I think Spd is Special Defense. Unless I accidentally put them into Speed. I'll check next time I'm on my computer.

Thanks for the reviews so far!

Edit: oh, it is speed. Whoops, not sure how that happened :/ I'm open to suggestions on Zone's spread.
 
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Rosez66

Ace trainer
I love SS Trick Room. I have tried to make an effective team myself actually. But with your rain team weakness. If you lose the weather war that is you might want to use storm drain cradily. Nobody will expect it and it actually can sweep rain teams with ease if they lack ferrothron and tentacruel for cradily I would replace rhyperior as his double 4X weakness could be a problem. Also on tyranitar I would replace pursuit with fire punch seeing as you have pursuit already with scizor. Lastly I love the use of magnezone and I might use it myself. And one last small nitpick is that you have no stealth rocks I would replace toxic on bronzong with stealth rocks, or you could just use the classic hippowdon set instead of tyranitar as its actually better in trick room being slower and depending on evs it could sort out your scizor problem if magnezone goes down, depending on your ev spread.
 

Jazz™

Not exactly Orthodox
This team looks fairly solid, but if Reuniclus and Bronzong get taken out, your team seems too heavily reliant on TR to win. I would reccomend adding a sort of late game cleaner Poke, like Mamoswine.

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Mamoswine (M) @ Life Orb
Trait: Thick Fat
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Icicle Crash
- Ice Shard
- Earthquake
- Superpower

This could help you out a lot, taking out any dragons threatening your team, while providing much needed fighting atttack power aside from Focus Miss. It's also immune to Sandstorm and can take on otherwise threatening sun teams very well.
 

Caluminousdugtrio

class on my back
You also have no walls or tanks that can actually take a hit, so I suggest giving up one of your pokes for something like Jellicent, who can help cover your 3x Fire weakness and can also abuse TR.

Jellicent@Leftovers
EVS: 252 Atk; 252 SpD; 4 Hp
Trait: Water Absorb
Nature: Calm
- Will-o-Wisp/Toxic
- Scald
- Recover
- Taunt/Ice Beam/Shadow Ball/Protect

Standard set. WoW shuts down physical attackers who think they can KO Jellicent but Toxic can be used if you want to stall with Protect. Scald for a STAB and some more burns, Recover to just make Jelli survive longer and is generally a great move. The last slot has so many choices, but it depends on what you want to do. Ice Beam severely dents the likes of Salamence and Dragonite, Shadow Ball to hit Psychic Types, Taunt to stop Ferrothorn in his tracks, and Protect is a great move alongside Toxic.
 

Rosez66

Ace trainer
With that momo set jazz hands try icicle spear over crash. For a few reasons. Firstly the actual damage output is hardly noticeable with spear potentially causing more damage. Also in the rare case this team comes up against sub protect toxic heal gliscor, the spear being a multi hit move can easily KO even with sub up.

Also jelicent can actually use the move trick room. Little known fact but something to consider.
 

Lord Fighting

Bank Ball Collector
Hey Moose, nice to see the team list. I have to say though, In my opinion I would make the odd move change here and there and If you read the pm I sent you then I was thinking of replacing Magnezone with Metagross.

Metagross
Brave (+ Atk - Spd)/ Adamant
252/252 Atk/Def 4 HP
Rocky Helmet/ Air Balloon
Meteor Mash
Earthquake
Thunderpunch
Zen Headbutt/ Hammer arm

Metagross's typing gives useful resistances and allows it to hit with a stab Meteor Mash with the chance to raise it's atk even higher. Earthquake provides coverage and hits other steel types hard. Thunderpunch is great at taking out any kind of flying or water creature that can get in the way of Metagross by resisting it's other attacks. Then the final move is toss up between the two because zen headbutt gets stab, has a decent power and provides further type coverage taking out poison types which may have earthquake. But hammer arm covers more types, has better accuracy and can severley hurt any strong pokemon which resist earthquake. Also the drawback of speed is too much of a worry if combined with TR which can help it sweep through teams.

Just a suggestion.
 

MooseSmuggler

#DeathToFascists
Hey Moose, nice to see the team list. I have to say though, In my opinion I would make the odd move change here and there and If you read the pm I sent you then I was thinking of replacing Magnezone with Metagross.

Metagross
Brave (+ Atk - Spd)/ Adamant
252/252 Atk/Def 4 HP
Rocky Helmet/ Air Balloon
Meteor Mash
Earthquake
Thunderpunch
Zen Headbutt/ Hammer arm

Metagross's typing gives useful resistances and allows it to hit with a stab Meteor Mash with the chance to raise it's atk even higher. Earthquake provides coverage and hits other steel types hard. Thunderpunch is great at taking out any kind of flying or water creature that can get in the way of Metagross by resisting it's other attacks. Then the final move is toss up between the two because zen headbutt gets stab, has a decent power and provides further type coverage taking out poison types which may have earthquake. But hammer arm covers more types, has better accuracy and can severley hurt any strong pokemon which resist earthquake. Also the drawback of speed is too much of a worry if combined with TR which can help it sweep through teams.

Just a suggestion.

My biggest concern with that is that we lose our best Skarmory counter. Without Zone, the team gets walled to Oblivion and back. Our best shot would be Focus Miss...and considering its nickname, I would hardly call that useful.

This team looks fairly solid, but if Reuniclus and Bronzong get taken out, your team seems too heavily reliant on TR to win. I would reccomend adding a sort of late game cleaner Poke, like Mamoswine.

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Mamoswine (M) @ Life Orb
Trait: Thick Fat
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Icicle Crash
- Ice Shard
- Earthquake
- Superpower

This could help you out a lot, taking out any dragons threatening your team, while providing much needed fighting atttack power aside from Focus Miss. It's also immune to Sandstorm and can take on otherwise threatening sun teams very well.

I'm kinda liking that idea, actually. Perhaps in place of Scizor?

You also have no walls or tanks that can actually take a hit, so I suggest giving up one of your pokes for something like Jellicent, who can help cover your 3x Fire weakness and can also abuse TR.

Jellicent@Leftovers
EVS: 252 Atk; 252 SpD; 4 Hp
Trait: Water Absorb
Nature: Calm
- Will-o-Wisp/Toxic
- Scald
- Recover
- Taunt/Ice Beam/Shadow Ball/Protect

Standard set. WoW shuts down physical attackers who think they can KO Jellicent but Toxic can be used if you want to stall with Protect. Scald for a STAB and some more burns, Recover to just make Jelli survive longer and is generally a great move. The last slot has so many choices, but it depends on what you want to do. Ice Beam severely dents the likes of Salamence and Dragonite, Shadow Ball to hit Psychic Types, Taunt to stop Ferrothorn in his tracks, and Protect is a great move alongside Toxic.

I'm thinking using Jelli over Bronzong as a TR setter might be a good idea. Gets rid of our Fire weakness and gives us a good TR user.
 

Lord Fighting

Bank Ball Collector
My biggest concern with that is that we lose our best Skarmory counter. Without Zone, the team gets walled to Oblivion and back. Our best shot would be Focus Miss...and considering its nickname, I would hardly call that useful.



I'm kinda liking that idea, actually. Perhaps in place of Scizor?



I'm thinking using Jelli over Bronzong as a TR setter might be a good idea. Gets rid of our Fire weakness and gives us a good TR user.

Bear in mind that it's one pokemon that would resist us. 1 pokemon out of the whole metagame and skamory mainly just sets up hazards and whirlwinds anyway. It's not a major threat in my opinion. Also, I don't like the idea of choice band on 3 of our pokemon so in my team I altered that and changed quite a few of the moves. Jellicent would be a bad idea, but I must say that Bronzor's gyro ball absolutely destroys pokemon. Well, at least when I tried the team out. It is vulnerable to sandstorm though so it's going to need leftovers defiantly. Also if you use Mamoswine over Scizor then the only way to go is:

Mamoswine
Brave
252/252 Atk + HP 4 Def
Focus Sash
Earthquake
Stone Edge
Endeavour
Ice Shard

It's so much more useful that way and also provides a good counter to anything providing they also don't have a priority move. Icicle crash is completely pointless.
 

joej m

Club Double Trouble
i have said this once before to someone on their RMT. but people did not think it was a good idea. i would know people. still confused if this is singles or doubles though... because in singles i dont think people use trick room.
anyway i play doubles VGC rule (flat rule doubles), and i am a highly polished player.
on a trick room team, you should try and have at least one pokemon that is fairly speed. if you dont get trick room up, you are screwed. i dont know what the OU metagame is like at all, but that is my one suggestion.
if someone has a problem with my comment, ill battle you VGC rule. ill show you how to play trick room in doubles ;)
i say that because a lot of people thought i was dumb as a rock for saying that in another trick room team ._.

EDIT: do all of the pokemon have to not be hurt by sand? i dont see why they all need to. when i build a sand team (which got me 15th place in a tourney with 4000 people almost), i only have 2-3 pokemon that get sand resists.
 
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Extroph

Gaijin Shogun
Hey guys! Nice team, but as others before me have suggested, Skarmory is a pretty tough Pokemon to take down, especially since your only threat against it is Magnezone, making it easy for your opponent to double switch into an anti Zone and use Skarmory as bait. My answer for a Skarmory is Victini, especially this set:

th_victini.gif

Victini @ Fire Gem
Trait: Victory Star
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SDef
Brave Nature (+Atk, -Spd)
- Trick Room
- V-create
- U-Turn
- Fusion Bolt

Another usual partner of Skarmory is big boy Hippowdon, which Reuniclus can take down, but maybe Reuniclus only (especially Defense Hippos). Mamoswine is a great replacement for Scizor, because the Technician Scizor is a bit outdated now in my opinion (Landorus-T, Tentacruel, Keldeo, etc) though his U-Turn ability is good for scouting. But, Mamoswine is also weak to Scarf Keldeo, which can possibly wreck your team outside of Trick Room.

Overall, I truly suggest Victini for your Skarmory problems, but the Mamoswine isn't too big of a deal to replace Scizor :]
 

Lord Fighting

Bank Ball Collector
Hey guys! Nice team, but as others before me have suggested, Skarmory is a pretty tough Pokemon to take down, especially since your only threat against it is Magnezone, making it easy for your opponent to double switch into an anti Zone and use Skarmory as bait. My answer for a Skarmory is Victini, especially this set:

th_victini.gif

Victini @ Fire Gem
Trait: Victory Star
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SDef
Brave Nature (+Atk, -Spd)
- Trick Room
- V-create
- U-Turn
- Fusion Bolt

Another usual partner of Skarmory is big boy Hippowdon, which Reuniclus can take down, but maybe Reuniclus only (especially Defense Hippos). Mamoswine is a great replacement for Scizor, because the Technician Scizor is a bit outdated now in my opinion (Landorus-T, Tentacruel, Keldeo, etc) though his U-Turn ability is good for scouting. But, Mamoswine is also weak to Scarf Keldeo, which can possibly wreck your team outside of Trick Room.

Overall, I truly suggest Victini for your Skarmory problems, but the Mamoswine isn't too big of a deal to replace Scizor :]

I'm still struggling to see how Skamory is a major threat. I've played loads of OU battles on PS and hardly ever comes up. Besides, in my version I have a T.Punch Metagross anyway. In the other hand, I do like the Idea of adding some serious fire power to the team to replace Scizor as I don't really need 3 steel types. I'll give this set ago and give you some feedback after a few tries. Thx for the suggestion bro :)
 
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