Hey there, I’m Gavin Michaels (aka kingofmars, @komvgc) and I recently got 1st at the first North American regionals in San Jose using the SpiderZone, which is a zone both made up of and for spiders.

Videos

ROUND4 vs Demitrios Kaguras

Final vs Enosh Shachar

How the team was built

I built this team predominately with Harrison Saylor (@CrowVGC) after seeing a replay on PokemonShowdown featuring a team with Hariyama, Porygon2, Magnezone, Palossand, Shiinotic and Wishiwashi. I personally thought that there wasn’t anything here and that the team was hot garbage, but Harrison was confident that there was something there, and given that he had a great track record of coming up with meta calls I decided to trust him.

The first thing we noticed was that Shiinotic was a terrible pokemon that was never useful in any situation ever. While it should’ve been capable of handing fighting types and dealing with rain, it always, ALWAYS fell short. The lack of useable redirection and Poison Jab becoming a viable coverage move really put a nail in Shiinotic’s coffin. With the removal of Shiinotic, we were left with a 5 mon team. Of those five pokemon 90% of the time you would end up using the same four – Hariyama, Porygon2, Magnezone, Palossand. Wishiwashi would contribute sometimes, but often just didn’t do enough to merit bringing.

After playing far too long with a five mon team (and getting bodied by various Tapu Lele a few too many times) we settled on using Mimikyu over Shiinotic. It provided the Fairy coverage Shiinotic did, while also providing the ability out outspeed and OHKO Tapu Lele. Sure it was a little odd to have a max speed pokemon on what can only be described as a hard trick room team, but Mimikyu fit the position very well. It even let us have a backup trick room pokemon should Porygon2 not be a desirable choice. The original set was very bad, but Harrison later refined it to be the hard Tapu Lele counter it finally became.

With the Tapu Lele fix given the “good enough” seal of approval, I decided to test another water pokemon over Wishiwashi. I didn’t like how it excelled at doing exactly enough damage to not get the knockouts I wanted. Harrison gave me the option to try either Araquanid or Milotic. I decided to test Araquanid; the change was immediately noticeable, as I skyrocketed to the top of the PokemonShowdown ladder, leading Hariyama/Porygon2 with Magnezone and Araquanid in back basically every game. The only exception to this was if the team had a Tapu Lele or an effective counter to trick room, in which case Mimikyu would be brought.

With Palossand now being left behind almost every game, we tested pretty much anything you could think of to take the 6th slot. It really wasn’t clear what we wanted from it. This was where we started looking at Tapu Lele, Trick Room Nihilego, and Gengar, but none of them had an effective niche. Eventually we realized that we needed to answer gastrodon more effectively, as it made it very difficult for Araquanid to do anything. We went with the obvious answer of Tapu Bulu, which is the version that was used with moderate success at London Internationals by Eugenio Discalzi.

While watching the stream, we realized that Tapu Bulu wouldn’t be effective against the well supported Gastrodon teams we were seeing as it was simply too fast, we needed a Gastrodon answer that was effective inside of Trick Room. We looked at every grass pokemon imaginable, and I thought we would end up using Exeggutor. However, a couple days before the event, Harrison looked through what Pokemon were slower than Gastrodon and realized that Drampa got Energy Ball. We both immediately knew that it was exactly what the team needed and locked it in.
 

Team Details

Magnezone @ Choice Specs
Ability: Magnet Pull
Level: 50
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpA / 8 SpD
Modest Nature
IVs: 30 HP / 0 Atk / 30 Def / 30 SpD / 30 Spe
– Thunderbolt
– Flash Cannon
– Volt Switch
– Hidden Power [Ground]
 

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