 Hello friends, welcome back to another episode here on the channel. Firstly, happy New Year, Merry Christmas. Hope you all had a great holiday period. And for those of you who are new to the channel, my name is Lee, also known as Osiris. And we are finally back today with some more VGC 2021 content playing today. As you can see on your screen, a GMAX Charizard team. And we've got lots of fun things going on in this team. So we'll get into that in a minute. But just before we do, I just need to say a big thank you to everyone, not only for all of the kind comments and support throughout the Players Cup 2 that I was commentating in. And it was a great experience with Lou, Adam and Rosemary, but also for all of the kind support and well wishes that I got as the Players Cup 2 was actually finishing the finals on the Saturday, Sunday. I got rushed into the hospital and had an emergency operation to have my appendix out and ever since then. So the last four weeks, I've like literally been just resting up, not done anything. And it's a bit weird coming back today. This is the first week I'm kind of up doing things, normal stuff. So hopefully getting into this week next week, we'll be back into the swing of stuff and content will be coming back onto the channel. Obviously, we've got Players Cup 3 starting this weekend. So we'll be playing in the qualifiers. If I can capture any content from that, I will definitely throw it up next week. But today, obviously, I wanted to kick off with something a little bit more fun, something that I think is very good, that is underlucked and has a lot of potential in the format. And that is why I'm playing the Charizard. I feel like it's a good Pokemon. It's got a good base speed. It has a tough time against a lot of popular stuff. Obviously, thunderous theory and illegal. There's a bunch of things that give it a hard time, but you can support against a lot of those Regi Alecki as well, of course. But yes, I've got measures in the team. And as they say, we'll get into it as we go through the episode. There will be a poker face. There's always down in the description and we'll throw up the rental at the end of the episode. So without further ado, friends, let's jump into our first match of today. So up first, we have Lewis and they're playing a team of Taranitor, Tapu Finney, Cortana, Landeris, Therian, Rotom Heat and Dragopult. What are we looking at? Speed control methods for my opponent. They've got plenty of things that can go Max Airstream, the Dragopult, Landeris, Cortana, and then you've got the kind of the solid Tapu Finney sitting and they're making up a nice Firewater Grass core with the Rotom Heat and the Cortana. I think Charizard does well here. In all honesty, we have to be a bit careful against the Rotom Heat and the Taranitor. But otherwise, it doesn't do too bad. I think, though, we'll probably keep Charizard if we do bring it for maybe a little bit later. I think it might be nice to bring something like Lan like I think Saberlai as a lead is going to be very good and bring Landeris. I think we bring Reggie Steel and I think we bring Charizard if we're going to lock in and not run out of time. Because that would be the worst coming back after four weeks. And the first thing that I would do is time out. But thankfully, we haven't done that yet. So I just feel like I've got so much to catch up with. I do want to stream at some point this week. So we'll put it up on YouTube. We'll do a stream and it'll give me a chance to actually catch up with you all kind of touch base with you, where the format is right now. I've got planned coming up for the next few weeks, which is a lot of stuff obviously being in bed for the majority of the last four weeks. I've had a lot of time to kind of think about things, plan things and have a lot of ideas going forward. And there's a lot of exciting stuff that I've got in the works currently right now, which is going to be good. So do stay tuned for that. It is going to be a lot of fun and more fun for you guys than anything else. Obviously, I'm going to find it fun, but you know, there is that as well. So we've got the Rotom and we've got the Landeris here. I think one of the things that I love about Saberlai, like another Pokemon not really looked at at all is this format is the priority. Willow Wisp and Willow Wisp such a strong, such a strong attack and option. You know, we've seen how well like Spectre does like as a support Pokemon with Willow Wisp and Saberlai's got that priority there. So it really does come in super useful. Now we could just rock slide here. We are minus one. I mean, what are our options to bring in the back? You've got Reggie, Steel and Charizard. Neither are going to be that great. I think we just rock slide here. We have got the Assault Fest on Landeris. We just want to get some damage onto the Rotom here. We do land the Willow Wisp into the opposing Landeris, which is going to help us massively. And we do reveal that as well. I would just see you to come out. So that's fine. Probably see a nasty plot, I'd imagine from the Rotom, but the Rotom is going to be the one thing like if we can remove from my opponent's team, then everything else can kind of function pretty well. And I'm kind of holding off going for the Gigant, like a Dynamax in here because I kind of would like Charizard to be Dynamax or Gigantamax user in this match. But we've got to remove the threat first. We've got to remove the Rotom. We kind of nullified what the Landeris can do with the Willow Wisp support there from Saber-Lie and we do some decent damage to it. And we get the flinch. There we go. There we go, starting off like we mean to go on. Now, Landeris is a little bit threatened now by the type of finish of course coming in. It can go for calm mind. And we're not really posing too much of a threat to the Rotom. Now, this is where we may be able to kind of reposition a little bit. I don't really want to bring Reggie Steel onto the field just yet. It doesn't make a lot of sense. The Charizard won't just not do it. The thing is, we're not doing the damage that we need to. We could double up into the Rotom and just go for that and a Rock Slide. But it's likely that we see maybe let's go for U-turn into the type of finish. It's likely that we see maybe the Rotom switch out and just goes for a protect. OK, so I kind of want to just get Landeris out of the Homes way here. We might see. I think it's safe for us to honestly bring Charizard in. Just we've not really got a way to hit the Rotom. Although G-Max Wildfire from this range probably be enough to get the Rotom. I think we bring it in. I think we bring it in. It's like what somebody will are going to do now. They're probably going to calm mind, if anything, I think. Got to worry about the Tyrant. Oh, just a Moon Blast. They're going for the Sableye. So we've got the Roseli Berry there to kind of help against this sort of thing. Which it definitely does. And that's just if we had to help in hand now on the Sableye. That would be that would be huge for us, but we don't. I think we got G-Max Wildfire into the Rotom. Because it could be enough. We either do that or go Max Airstream into this Hapifini. Like I say, I want to get rid of the Rotom. I think once we get rid of the Rotom, we're kind of all right. So let's go for this. Double up into the Rotom. It protected last turn. So I think we've got a kind of a freeze shot into that slot, whatever happens. It may Max. It may Max. We may see that. I don't know. I feel like my opponent's going to kind of hold off a little bit on Maxing. And I'm surprised they didn't go for a calm mind there. It was kind of a nice opportunity with Hapifini. It would have put us under a lot more pressure this turn. I think potentially they're Maxing themselves and going for the Vortex. But we are going to see is this this looks like the Rotom. It's not the best option for us, for sure. Yeah, a little on Rotom. OK, can we take an attack from it? Has a nasty plot boost. So we see the the Wildfire is not going to give us any residual damage against the Rotom. But we do have the solar power boost. We do have the sun behind us. We do have the light bulb. I mean, you know, that is a nice fat amount to something that resists it, you know. So it's just about whether or not we can take the attack from. We will lose Saber Eye here, unfortunately. But it does give us the option to bring in Lanneris this next turn, which is great because that Rotom is now going to be in range for us to pick up the knockout there. So as long as we can take this attack, I'm hoping we can. Yep. It's not ideal because the solar power is going to kind of wear us down a little bit, a little by little. But we can probably do enough now to get rid of the Rotom where we can set up a wincon for Celesteela Reggie Steel. Reggie Steel, Celesteela, what am I talking about? OK, so Lanneris coming in. Like I say, we've got a nice way to pick up the knockout onto Rotom now. And you've got to imagine that my opponent, they're like in an awkward position. So they're probably going to switch up type of finny into Landeris, maybe. But we've got the wildfire kind of gone. We've got the rock slide here. I think we just we just air streamed now. It's pretty safe going into that slot against the finny, at least, should pick up the knockout with the solar power boost. And I think we, yeah, OK, I'm going to see Max God. I think they're going to try and at least get the Lanneris onto the field the next turn. But I don't know if it's really going to help them too much. And with the speed boost that helps us out massively. And we're not like looking at something like Reggie Alecki in the back, which is like such a relief, you know? That's when you're going to need something like. Saberline next to the Charizard. So you've got the quash there to really help you out. And yeah, Charizard going to go down. Unfortunately, the next turn to. The recoil from the life orb. And if not that, it would be the solar power. So the Lanneris coming in, which is fine. Again, it is burned, so it's not really posing too much of a threat. And I still think that our Lanneris is going to be able to. Pick up the knockout with a rock slide onto the Rotom. The only thing here is you think about the risk reward factor here. Rock slide can miss, right? So do we just attack into Rotom? Do we just attack into Rotom with Charizard and then allow Lanneris to go for something like a U-turn? Here into the opposing Lanneris, we go. Yeah, we just go wildfire, I think, just to make sure whatever comes in is going to get blown up then if the Rotom does switch out. But it's not going to. We're not going to see it. I just worry there that the rock slide misses or misses the knockout on minus one. Then the Rotom takes down a Lanneris, the Max Flare, because they don't worry about Charizard in this situation. No way. And then we're in a lot of hot water because the Rotom is then still causing a big amount of pressure against our Registeel. Charizard's gone and I don't think we can win this match. So I think we need to guarantee taking out the Rotom there rather than the Lanneris that is going to be potentially on minus one when we bring Lanneris back onto the field and it's burnt as well. So I don't think we have too much to worry about. There's a rock slide here. And we have no worries either bringing in Registeel here because we had two flying types out in the field. There's no way that Lanneris is locking into Earthquake in that position. We've still got the wildfire kind of kicking off. So we're in a decent spot and it'll be interesting to see what my opponent's last Pokemon is because they've got one left. What's a Tapu-Fini, isn't it? It's a Tapu-Fini. I'm pretty sure. Is it? Tapu-Fini? Sure. We haven't taken Fini down yet. I'm pretty sure it's switched out. Pretty sure. No, we're not really worried too much about. Oh, no, it's Tyranitar. OK, did we get rid of the Fini? I'm like losing my mind. I'm losing my mind here. Have they still got the Tapu-Fini? I need to see. Let's see these Pokeballs. Come on. Where are they? OK, so we lose the Sun. I'm surprised the T-Tar didn't come in sooner, honestly. Would have made it a lot harder. No, so we must have taken the Fini down at some point. OK, we airstreamed it, I think. OK. Like I said, I'm losing my mind. Now the T-Tar coming in, that's super fine because we can just body press it. And we can just rock slide as well. We don't really need to worry about the T-Tar at all. It's going to go down to a body press and then we can just flash cannon the lander is with everything. And, man, I've just got to say now, I love Registeel so much. I'm so happy it's one of those Pokemon that is kind of made an appearance in the format and it's doing a lot of really good work. The only thing that I would like, I'll probably repeat this in later videos, but the one thing that I do worry about slightly is with Registeel is because it's doing such a good job that it'll probably promote more use of things like Farathon that can one-on-one, 100 percent beat it. If you can keep up with the there's a lash out coming out. Double damage, not so much stuff. And we do flinch, which is not ideal, but the wildfire doing it, doing its work like it does. And I think we're going to be all right. We just need to be flinched like not one time. But yeah, I think Farathon could be something that comes back in to popularity, I think, because it has such a good match up against stuff like Glastria as well. And it just performs so well in Trick Room. And again, it's a bit like what we've done here in a kind of a roundabout way where we're creating a wind condition by getting rid of the Rotom Heat, which was the one thing that really threatened Registeel can come in at the end of the match and kind of clean up. So we do land the rock slide into landers. They miss our Registeel, which is nice because we don't have to like worry about flinch flinches here. Another lasher coming up from the Tarana top, not going to really be enough to pick up the knockout onto our landers and the body pressure should be enough to close this first one up, which is nice. A nice way for us to kick off with today. And we get to see pretty much all of the really big Pokemon that we've got on the team. I mean, we still got to feature Alolan Ninetales, which I'm hoping that we can feature in our next match. So without further ado, friends, good game to Lewis and we'll jump straight into game two. And next opponent we have got, Gabras. They're running team of the G. Max Colossal, Zoomarill, Rillaboom, Incineroar, Regi Alecchi and Galarian Zapdos. So I've been hearing good things about Galarian Zapdos as well. So I'm interested to see what it does in this match here. Obviously, it gets access to a bunch of really strong attacks and good support options as well. The one thing that we've got to really highlight here is that the Zoomarill Colossal combination, obviously with the Aqua Jet there, can really do some work against us if they're able to proc this steam engine on the Colossal, which isn't ideal. I do think that Saberlight Charizard is a really good lead here for us and we'll get into that as we get into the match. So I do think that can work pretty well against most things that my opponent's going to bring. So we just need to make the right calls. I think what we're going to have in the back because I think we're going to need really a boom. It'll help us against stuff like Regi Alecchi, the Zoomarill for sure. If we can get damage onto the Colossal as well, that's going to help us out. No trouble at all. I think Landerous is going to be our last one. It's a bit unfortunate that we're not featuring the Ninetales today, but we really need the right conditions for bringing it. I think it's one of those Pokemon where I think Charizard G-Max doesn't necessarily need the Sun to operate as just a humongous powerhouse that we know it is. But obviously things like Thunderous, things like Landerous, Corse Charizard, all sorts of problems, things like Zapdos. And excluding Thunderous from that pool that I've just mentioned, Ninetales does that speed and it can support with the Rorovill, which is extremely useful and it can hit most things with its super effective ice stabs. It also outspeeds stuff like Urshifu, so you can really deal with that without having too many worries as well, which is a nice option. And you've got the icy wind support there, which is also just something that really helps out speed controllers or something that's really useful. Okay, well, we've got Rillaboom and we've got Incineroar coming out for my opponent. I mean, the Rillaboom's in a horrible position right now. I mean, what's my opponent gonna bring in to kind of resist that? Maybe something like Regilecky. Maybe something like Zapdos. Potentially Colossal, I guess. But I think the thing is we just go for the Airstream into the Rillaboom. I probably don't want to set Sun here, to be honest. There's not really too much I can do to, mainly, the other option is burn the Rillaboom, but I risk Colossal coming in and burning that and activating Steam Engine that way, which wouldn't be ideal. And I don't want to set the Sun because it'll give Incineroar more chance of picking up the knockout onto Sableye here. And I don't think we need the Sun to get the Rillaboom unless they G-Max themselves. And then we would have, but let's see. It's not the lead I kind of expected, especially when we've got Sableye on our team because, you know, you're leading double fake out. You haven't really got many options. I mean, they probably think that we're not gonna leave the Charizard against them because of the Colossal, but it's not the case. So we do see, okay, we're gonna lose Sableye, which is not ideal. But I mean, it's still not the worst because really for my opponent to, unless we see a parting shot here, and then we get to keep Sableye, so all things are rosy, but they need to get Colossal in the field with the Azumarill to support it because if they don't have that board position, then things get very difficult for them. Get the file playing, we are faster than Incineroar. We get a little bit of damage. That's all we want to do here. That's the game of the game, and it's hot. No, that's the worst thing that we could have seen. But again, it's not the worst thing in the world because we really aren't gonna see the next turn, Colossal and Azumarill next to each other. So that's why we're not worrying too much. If Colossal comes in, we've still got Scorch and Sands. We need to obviously adjust our board position, and it's Reggie Alecki. This is the other bad thing, of course. Cause if it specs, it can 100% pick up the knockout onto Charizard. So we're gonna have to reposition our board here. 100%, I need to bring in Landerous. We have to do it, we have to do it. And with the grassy terrain being up now, it makes it more difficult for Landerous to deal with things like Reggie Alecki and Incineroar with Earthquake. We'll see what opponent goes for here. We do get the max guard off. I don't think we can risk losing Charizard. It just feels so careless to just not protect here. And there's a clever that's coming out into Landerous. Okay, well, it's not ideal, but it's not the end of the world. Okay, I think we might have to... The other option there would have been bring in Rillaboom, but that Flair Blitz is what I worry about, because if we take the Flair Blitz there, we lose Rillaboom, we don't have access to fake out support, which we kind of need against the Reggie Alecki. I think what we'll do is we'll bring in Rillaboom for Charizard. We're gonna have to sacrifice our G-Max here. We're gonna have to play around. Like, I don't want to be in this position, but unfortunately that is the position we are in right now. I can't really go for an earthquake, so I think we'll probably better off going for a rock slide. We may get a cheeky flinch onto the Incinero, and we're just gonna get decent damage onto the Reggie Alecki, and they're gonna go for the Thunderbolt, or whatever it was they went for that last turn. I didn't, I completely missed what it was. I don't think it was Electro-Web, but I'm guessing it's gonna be Specs. Yeah, it's Thunderbolt. We'll soon find out from this damage. Yeah, yeah, that's Specs, 100%. Now a rock slide here. Incinero's gonna be very close to going down this next turn. The Reggie Alecki's gonna be in, unless they've targeted that slot. Okay, they haven't. That's good. Okay, so we're in. Yeah, now a rock slide definitely in range. Maybe not with the grassy terrain recovery there. Grassy Glide's gonna pick up the knockout onto the Reggie Alecki here, which is ideal. I don't think an earthquake's gonna be enough to get Incinero, but do they keep Reggie Alecki? The thing is, if Reggie Alecki goes down, a single target rock slide will be enough to get the Incinero. So we just gotta hope that they stay in. Okay, not gonna be enough. Not gonna be enough, because it protected. But again, you've always got a chance of a flinch if you are throwing rock slides out like this. And it is actually enough to pick up the knockout, which is huge for us, because the grassy terrain's still sticking around, I think one more, one more, one more turn. I think one more turn. So we've got the chance to grassy glide, pick up the knockout on Reggie Alecki, which is good. And then we've got probably the Colossal as the last Pokemon to deal with. Zabdos, okay. Which is fine, which is super fine. So we just grassy glide into Reggie Alecki. We go for fly with, yeah, because the thing is like switching landers out at this point, it makes no sense that we don't want to proc the defined ability on the Zabdos, so we wanna just try and get a fly into it if we can and go from there. But they still got their Dynamax kind of ability. They can utilize, so the match is not over by any means. What are they maxing? Is it gonna be the Zabdos? It is, okay. Just gotta hope that the grassy glides enough. It should be enough to get the Reggie Alecki. It should be enough. And then we fly with landers, hopefully they talk at the Rillaboom. They go for the Double Protective, does fail, unfortunately for my opponent. I think that's pretty much what all they could kind of hope for there, yeah, we did pick up the knockout. Okay, and we're not gonna see the Colossal, which is better, better for us for sure. Okay, now they do attack into the landers, which is probably the better decision in all honesty, because then they're contending with having to the fly and things like that, which isn't ideal. But we do have Sableye to come in. Do have cheeky old Sableye to come in, and we do have Willowesp that we can utilize. Let's do this, yeah. And then we got Charizard to come in, potentially. And it comes down to Speedties. Well, not now, because they got the Airstream. Do we go for Woodhammer or Grassy Glide? I think, is the terrain actually left the field yet? Yeah, it has, so we go for Woodhammer. Is it better to switch out to Charizard? No, no, no, no, no, no, not now. Not now. I think we Woodhammer, I think we just go for a Willowesp. Hope that we can get a Woodhammer off. I mean, we could've quashed here, but it's probably better to get the Willowesp off now to kind of weaken Zaptos while we've got the opportunity to. We've just gone for another Airstream. It's gonna be into Rillet. Oh, it's gonna be into Sableye. So, Rillaboom gets to live another day, which is ideal. And then we've gotta get through one more turn of the dynamics. How much is this doing? I mean, it's a decent amount, right? It's a decent amount. It is a decent amount. And then burn. So it's gonna come down to Charizard, Rillaboom here. And Charizard's pretty healthy, to be honest. So, I think we might be all right. It depends what the Zaptos has got, you know? I'm not really too familiar. It's because I don't really play against too many, like, Galarian Zaptos. So I'm not really too familiar with their sets. Like, what's their third attack? They're gonna have Protect. They've got Airstream. Yeah, where you going? Into Zard, which is ideal, because we get another Woodhammer. They're just ignoring Rillaboom here. Don't care. But Rillaboom is like, ignore me all you want because these Woodhammers are gonna be the end of you bore. Yeah, and I mean, another Woodhammer's gonna take down. So now, technically, we're in like, a really good winning position, you know? It's hard for my opponent as well, because they're gonna make a 50-50 call there. You know, they attack into the Rillaboom, we waste Protecting. But fortunately for us, we kind of got the call right and we can just Air Slash. And go for a Woodhammer. And whatever my opponent decides, I mean, the best thing they can probably do is go after the Rillaboom here. Hope they didn't Air Slash misses from our Charizard, because that's like the best case. But Brave Bird gonna be probably enough recall now with the residual burn damage to actually pick up the knockout anyway, which it is. So yeah, we do take it on default, but very good game to my opponent, very entertaining. And I think the team's done very well today. We got two wins. So yeah, I really enjoyed that one. It was nice to feature and we'll jump over now and get you guys the rental card. Okay friends, here it is. Here's the rental card for today's team. If you would like to try out the Zard Sableye, we didn't get to feature the Alolan Ninetales, which is a little sad because I think it's a really good Pokemon in general. That icy wind slot as well was originally Hypnosis, but I thought the extra additional speed control would probably be beneficial and a bit more reliable there. But if you wanna be a bit more risky and play some sleep in the team, you've got the option there with Hypnosis. I don't think Ninetales really needs protect so you can kind of run without it. Obviously Moonblast is an option there over Dazzling Glee. I just prefer the spread damage there in case of things like redirection, follow me, rage powder, stuff like that. That you see commonly run with things like Urshifu. And then yeah, that is it. We didn't really get to see much of the regi-steel although it did kind of win out the game for us in that first one today. But I hope if you do try out the team, you do enjoy it and if you do try it out, leave a comment down below, let me know. And I just hope you've enjoyed today's episode. It's been a blast being back finally after all this time. And again, just a big thank you to you all for all of the amazing support that we had, not only for like 2020, which was like one of the toughest years, I think like a lot of us will ever experience, but just for just being an amazing community. I never got to say this over the New Year and Christmas, obviously being resting up and things like that and just all the support you give me, especially when I was in hospital and back at home resting up. So I just wanna say I appreciate each and every one of you. Like I say, I've got a lot planned for the next few weeks, so do stay tuned. I've got some goodies coming and you will not be disappointed. Like I say, I hopefully will be streaming at some point this week. I will let you know, post in the community section of the channel. So do keep an eye on that for when we'll be doing that. And with that, I will leave you all to enjoy the rest of your day, whatever time of day it is, wherever you are in the world, take care of yourselves and I'll catch you all for another one very soon.