Starter Pokemon Team Report

Hey all, here's all the details on the team I used to go undefeated in swiss and ultimately finish 5th place in the tournament this weekend.

Team export: https://pokepast.es/889e1887e122fa74

I knew I wanted to use 6 starter Pokemon in a tournament, so I set about building. There are some starter Pokemon that are good generally at the moment: specifically Incineroar, Primarina, and Rillaboom, so I tentatively added those. When building a team, it's really important to have speed control - but because I was limited to only starter Pokemon, I couldn't rely on either Trick Room or Tailwind. I decided instead then to focus on setting up the Swamp, by combining water and grass pledges.

Serperior was the starting point, because I needed a fast grass pledge user that could enable the Swamp - after the first pledge move is used, the second one will go off immediately. Because I already suspected I would use Primarina, I knew the grass pledge user had to be fast. I originally thought about Meowscarada, but I thought Serperior would be scarier. This is because it has the combination of leaf storm, which drops the users special attack two stages, and contrary, which turns stat drops into stat boosts. Since I suspected I would have fake out support, it seemed possible that I could use serperior as a set up sweeper as well. I went with the focus sash because I felt I had to fully invest in special attack and speed, and therefore couldn't assume I'd survive long otherwise. I went with Stellar tera because stellar tera tera blast is stronger than regular tera blast, and drops the users attacking stats, which means contrary makes them boost. Since grass is kind of mediocre offensive typing to begin with and stellar hits everything for neutral, this seemed good to me.

Primarina was the next pick to lock in water pledge. I went with a life orb set because the pledges when combined are so powerful, I figured with life orb I could pick up some surprise KOs. Otherwise the moves are standard. Because I intended to be in the swamp as often as I could, I didn't invest many points into Primarinas speed stat. I went with tera poison to resist sneasler, who hits 4/6 of the Pokemon on this team for super-effective damage.

Next I added Rillaboom. I decided to go with an unusual set - maxing out its speed and attack, and using three grass moves and fake out without grassy glide. I wanted to use this fast rillaboom because my team is so lacking in speed support, and with the extra speed I could hopefully use grass pledge before foes expected to help set up the swamp. Drum beating is another form of speed control for when the swamp isn't possible. I chose wood hammer as the last grass move for more burst damage. Tera ghost was chosen as help against sneasler and as fake out discouragement.

I was really worried about Sneasler so I added Skeledirge next. I intended to use Skeledirge as one of my primary threats - with unaware it doesn't care about stat boosts so it can in theory really annoy Kingambit, Dondozo, and Archaludon. Will-O-Wisp is great in such a physical metagame, burning dragonite, sneasler, and kingambit was important. Even though Skeledirge doesn't care about the foes stat boosts, its own still count - so my goal was to use it to weaken the opponents and then gradually set up with torch song. I focused all the EVs in bulk in order to help keep it alive. I originally had tera fairy, but being weak to steel was a problem, so I changed it to grass.

I played a bit without Incineroar, but I had no answer to Porygon2 based teams so I felt I had to add it. I went with a standard set, the only difference being I ran fire pledge in order to enable Primarina and made sure to make Incineroar faster than Primarina.

I had Empoleon in the last slot initially, but Archaludon was basically unbeatable, so I added Blaziken. With the focus sash taken, I went with clear amulet to prevent intimidate from slowing it down, and used its two strongest STAB moves plus fire pledge. Blaziken is great at enabling serperior and primarina because of speed boost allowing it to attack first. Tera ghost felt valuable since Blaziken can OHKO Incineroar and Rillaboom.

And that's the team! I truthfully expected it to be really tough to pull off any wins, but the pledges are really powerful and Serperior and Blaziken both performed really well. It's not the best team but it is fun to use, I hope you enjoy it!