 Hello friends, welcome back to another episode here on the channel. I hope you're all doing great and as always for anyone new to the channel, my name is Lee, also known as Osiris. Today, we are continuing on with our VGC Series 9 content and featuring another rental team from one of the fine viewers. Today, we've got a team from NG who actually provided this team over on our Discord community. He finished, he had a top eight finish with this team in the Asia Star Tournament, which is an amazing finish. It's a very unique team and one that I saw and I thought, well, we have to, we have to play it. I mean, the one thing that sticks out for us straight away is the Obstagoon there, with obviously the choice scarf giving that speed boost to it initially with Switcheroo to kind of shut down a poison threat. You've got Icy Wind for speed control, snarl to shut down a poison special attackers and then the knockoff, which comes in so handy to get rid of those really useful items on your poison side of the field. And then we've got the Thunderous, but the, the theory in form here, it matches up super well against things like Regi Alecki, a poison Thunderous and Zapdos. And to name a few with Dark Pulse Electro Web for that speed control again. And then the really interesting Taranitar build here with that weakness policy and Dragon Dance to give you the ability to kind of set yourself up in those situations. Get that weakness policy proct and then start just absolutely ripping through the opponent's team. Taranitar, one of my favorite Pokemon, if not probably my favorite Pokemon of all time. So really like to see that there. Then you've got the Sandrush, Dracovish on here as well with the Substitute, the Fishes Wren, the Psychic Fangs helps against the screen support and takes advantage of the Sandstream that the Taranitar be able to put up on the field. Got the Togo Kiss there with a bit of redirection support, especially helping out things like the Taranitar to set up and then the Carton with the Assault Vest gives a little bit of stability to the team. I'm very excited about playing this one and big shout out to Nicholas for providing the rental for the team. We'll have a couple of games of the team now. Hopefully pilot a short how it can operate and see how good it can do in the on the ladder and then we'll wrap up with the rental at the end of the episode. So thanks so much for tuning in, friends. Hope you enjoyed today's games and without further ado, we'll get into our first matchup today. First up today, we have a team of scissor, Tornadus, Zaptos, Intelion, Metagross and Landeris theory in form. So what is going on here? We've obviously got speed control with the Tornadus. I'd imagine there's maybe a Sulk combination going on with the Zaptos, maybe Disquick combination between that and the Landeris. Potentially, I don't know. But there's obviously the Brutal Swing combination, Tailwind with that Metagross and then the Double Steel with that Metagross and scissor giving different options and giving primarily Taranitar a pretty hard time if we do decide to bring it here, even though it is good against some of the opposing Pokemon on my opponent's team, namely the Tornadus and the Zaptos. Got to watch out for that intimidate from the Landeris. Going to make things a little bit difficult, but obviously going in a nice position where it can take advantage of potentially the scarf with that defined ability to take advantage of the intimidate. If we do see it come out, this is tricky, very tricky. I mean, Landeris is a nice option as well as a lead here. It kind of helps against pretty much most things on the opposing team. I think we've got Obstagoon, Thunderous, Taranitar feels like it's going to be good in this match and then maybe Dracovish to kind of round things off because if we can get in that Sandstream, stall out the Tailwind from my opponent, it feels like the fish's rend will be able to kind of cut through and kind of be the cleanup crew that we need at the end of the match, which would be really good. And the Countdown is on, friends, really, because we've not got long left of Series 9, which is, you know, a lot of people are kind of thankful for that. A lot of people like the format as well. You know, I don't mind it. I think it's an interesting format. But we're in this weird stage at the minute, aren't we, where we're getting new formats like every three months. So it feels like when we don't get one and we go back to an old one, it doesn't quite feel right. You know what I mean? I'm just hoping Series 10, we do get a new rule set and a new bunch of things to kind of give Sunshield a lease of life before we get Diamond Pearl remakes in November. Okay, so my opponent leading off with Tornados scissor. Tailwind is likely to come out the Obstaclean in a little bit of a tricky spot. But is the scissor going to be able to outspeed the Obstaclean even in a tailwind? And we could ElectroWeb as well, which I feel like ElectroWeb's quite a nice option, you know? We could I see wind in ElectroWeb but just get rid of the tailwind advantage from my opponent straight off the bat. It does lock us into, I feel like maybe actually, let's go knock off into scissor, get rid of its item and go ElectroWeb. Lock in just to speed a bit because you can imagine tailwind coming out. Ooh, no tailwind, no tailwind at all. Something's maxing. Is it going to be the scissor? Is it going straight into the Obstaclean to try and pick up a knockout potentially? Max Flutterby could be the option there. Let's see, let's see, let's see. I'm like, I'm totally guessing at the minute because it's not a combination that we really see too much. Oh dear, the knockoff going to do zip. All right, because there's going to be a lumbary there. So swagger, okay, I didn't see that coming. Makes things a little bit more tricky for sure. Do get the knockoff, doesn't really do very much because of that, because the lumbary's gone. ElectroWeb doing super nice damage to the tornadoes. Gets a crit on scissor as well, which is really useful. And we'll see where the scissor attacks into. I would say maybe the Obstaclean. It frees up the landerist to kind of come in as well a little bit. Can it be that Max Flutterby? Yep, reduce the special attack on our thunderous and removing the Obstaclean from the field, which is not ideal. I don't think the crit mattered there. I really don't. But my opponent now in that position with, well, plus two scissor. That's kind of scary. We don't want to bring Tyranitarine because we can't protect and a Max Steel Spike's going to do a horrible, horrendous amount of damage. Drake of Fish feels like a good option right now. I think a nice idea could be protecting, protecting. And then get the Electro-Web again. Or do we... Do we Max Fish's rend and go Electro-Web? Because they're going to Tailwind, like, regardless. But we should be able to get... I mean, we could double into the scissor here, to be honest. It's just... It might be better even switching out. I don't think you go after the scissor though, to be honest. I think you go after the Drake of Fish, which if we're Maxed, we should be able to take an attack plus two. Should be. Am I underestimating the plus two scissor here? Getting caught out turn one by this combination. And this is a good thing. This is a real positive about this series, you know? You can come into the ladder and you can come across these really unique kind of strategies that players are kind of going forward with. And it's really nice to see, you know? I still think Thunderous probably gets the... Yeah, it gets the jump. Remove the tornadoes from the field. And we are going to get this Fish's rend, which is useful because we'll be able to hit first, obviously, and then potentially the next turn we can get the sound up, get that sound rush ability. It does conflict with our Max move, you know? If we do go for the Max with Drake of Fish, but it's going to be in a position to get knocked out the next turn. We'll just have to see what the scissor kind of decides to go for. Max flutter by again plus two, where we go on this time into the Drake of Fish. Okay, we do take that. It does... It does a ridiculous horrible amount of damage. Now we might be in a little bit of a bind because I think the next turn we've got to really prioritize getting rid of the scissor regardless of what comes in because if it goes back to its normal form, it's going to have access to bullet punching. It's going to be doable just to pick things off at plus two, which makes things very difficult for us. So we can try and maybe... Maybe protect Drake of Fish and attack with scissor. Oh, if something comes up, it's Zaptos. Okay. An ElectroWeb will be really... Yeah, an ElectroWeb is all... Or do we guarantee? I think we max guard. And it's a pity we haven't got Vault Absorb here, but I don't think we necessarily need it. The plus two isn't helping us out a bunch, but the Thunder is not really threatened at all. We just Thunderbolt the scissor. The issue would be if the scissor goes max guard here. But a Thunderbolt... Okay, Hurricane, yep. And Thunderbolt should take the scissor down. Yeah. Even minus two. And now what we can do potentially next turn is... It might be even worth. Like, one of the options is obviously switching Thunderous out, resetting those drops, getting Titor onto the field. But the problem is with the tailwind up at the minute, my opponent's got the option where... They're still going to have the speed jump on everything. So it might be worth... Protecting Thunderous, switching Dracovish out to Titor. And then the next turn we switch... It's just really... It's just really awkward. It's just really awkward, because we kind of want an end game where we've got the Dracovish in the sand to deal with the landerous. But we also at the same time want to reset the drops on Thunderous. But do we necessarily need to reset the drops on Thunderous? Maybe not. I know we're kind of foregoing our max turns, but it's likely we see like Hurricane Rock Slide here. So Titor can potentially get in for free, almost for free. You know, it's not going to take a massive amount unless we see like Earthquake, which I don't necessarily see us having to deal with. There's a hurricane, Tarenator avoids in Rock Slide, yeah. Okay. I don't know if Titor will be able to take an Earthquake. Not from the Life Orb. Not from the Life Orb. And how many turns... How many turns we've got? We've got one turn at a tailwind left. I mean, the issue is for my opponent, what do you do? You have to Earthquake, right? So it means that potentially Thunderous has a turn to get an attack off. Because if you Rock Slide here, then Titor gets its Rock Slide off, okay? So I think we Electro Web... We could Dark Pulse. Nah, we Electro Web. We Electro Web. Yeah, we Electro Web, I think. I think probably the best just to reduce the speed and that's up to us. It goes for the Heat Wave, Tarenator avoids. Thunderous will take a chunk, but it's not a huge chunk in Earthquake to guarantee that knockout onto the Tarenator. I wonder if we do survive, I doubt it. No, not with that Life Orb. Not with the Life Orb, but this opens it on now for us to get DracoVision. Go for that Fishes Rend into the Landerous, pick up the knockout, and then Thunderous can kind of deal with the Zapdos. It's unlikely. Wow, is that a crit? Yeah, that's a bit lucky on our end. It makes it a bit more manageable. It's unlikely that Landerous has Protect, but Thunderous should be able to get the knockout onto Zapdos and exit anywhere with Thunderbolt. You would imagine. So it's a very, very, very close margins here, but at the same time, a win is a win, a win is a win, and we try to eke out a board position where we can kind of do this. So Fishes Rend should be enough, like I say, and then the Thunderbolt should get the Zapdos. Should, should. And that's Zapdos minus one with the Tailwind gone now. So we're in the driving seat with DracoVision. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully it can pick up the knockout onto Landerous. Like if it misses, then we're kind of lost, but I'm confident. I'm confident in our, and our weird mutated looking fish. Right, Fishes Rend coming out. Here we go. It is enough. It is enough. You know, when you're just like, is it going to be enough or can we see this Landerous just hanging on there and the Thunderbolt enough as well. So that life will boost there. Just giving us the edge. Critical Hit definitely helping out though, that we got from that ElectraWeb, but a very good game to our first opponent and the team comes out on top. So that is great news for us. You know, we always like to see that. Sometimes it doesn't always go that way, but it has for us today. So we will move swiftly on to our next opponent of the episode. And next today, we have a Galerian Zapdos of Raichu, the Cantonian variant, Porygon 2, Venusaur, Tapu Fini and Incinero. Pretty solid looking team overall. You've got nice options of trick room in there or preventing trick room if you want with that Porygon 2. Disruption methods as well. Potentially there with Eevee Impulse on either the P2 or that Raichu. Both get access to that. The Lightning Rod going to be a little bit awkward to get Thunderous kind of operating in this one because you do rely on it to deal with something like that Galerian Zapdos. But it doesn't really have the matchup like the Incarnate version against things like the Venusaur, but I think Thunderous as a late game. Pokemon can be phenomenal, you know? I wonder, I wonder, I wonder what our best approach to this is going to be. Taranaton not really in a great spot. I mean the Obstagoon as well. I mean the Obstagoon is not bad for the Scarf because we can knock off items which is always good, especially onto that P2 which might be quite useful. The Intimidate from the Incinero, we get to punish that. It's just the fact that if we see like Tapu Fini lead, then we're in a little bit of an awkward spot. But we could bring something like Katana to this match which I think does do a decent job. We've just got a lot of fighting weakness, haven't we in the team? Okay, so I think what we're going to do is go with Thunderous, Togokis and Katana and lock in before the time runs out and I hope that this combination will be enough to get us through this second game today. It's always difficult and tricky when I'm talking a lot about the opposing options and then we look at our options and then we look at the timer and we see we've got like 10 seconds left and I've been doing well recently of not timing out. So I want to kind of keep that trend going and maybe if we had a little bit longer to analyse the and articulate the team options and what options we've got available to us might work out a little bit better but we'll deal with what we've got right now. P2 coming out and the Galarian Zapdos. So what we could potentially do? Like I do expect to see maybe something like the Raichu coming here but we could kind of cover bases with a knockoff. The only issue is with the knockoff, right? Is it's not going to get... It's not going to pick up the knockout and if they get the trick room up becomes a little bit more difficult for us although they don't really have a huge trick room abuser in their team, which is a plus for us. So you would think that something like P2 is in there to kind of mitigate trick room rather than set it up. So we're locking with a knockoff. Get rid of that. You're like, doesn't do too much damage either which I'm surprised about. No Raichu switch, which is really useful. Do a big fat chunk to that and Zapdos and we do activate that defiant ability unfortunately which is not the big draw that we want to be doing here, you know? It's going to be hitting a lot harder. Close combat. Yeah, we do lose Obstagoon and we'll see what this P2 does. They'll go just for an ice beam maybe. Ice room. Potentially. I wonder if they brought Raichu though. That's the big thing, you know? Or do they just go for trick room? Trick room. That's not so. That's not ideal. Okay, especially with Katana in the back. Togokis feels like the best option right now. We can dazzle. We can protect but what's likely to come in for my opponent, you know? I think the big thing for us is to... You could follow me. I don't really worry about what the Zapdos is going to do and the dazzle feels like it can do a good sizeable amount. Protect here can stall out a little bit of the trick room turn so my opponent's not got a real solid way to utilize them. The Electro Web kind of biting us a little bit. Ally switch coming out, which is fine. Don't mind that. Don't mind seeing that one little bit. Let's see the dazzling gleam. We are under-speed and the Zapdos anyway so that is useful so we'll be able to remove it from the field. Medigate that slot and do a nice bit of damage to the Porygon too. Kind of put it in a situation where it really has to recover the next turn to just prolong that time on the field and taboo finny. There we go. That's what we like to see. That's what we like to see, especially if there's no Raichu there. Now we could Max. I mean we could just follow me as well. But maybe Max and Thunderous isn't a bad play and just going for a follow me. I just worry then if the Raichu is in the back. But is it? Is the Raichu in the back? I don't know. Might be worth getting rid of the P2 before anything else. The only thing I worry about here is like Ice Beam and Moon Blast from my opponent. I think we follow me. I think we take the opportunity, pull the trigger, go Max Lightning into this finny. Because Cortana can deal with the P2 like all day long, you know? They are Max and the finny as well. So I wonder if it's going to be Max Geyser. I imagine that's what we'll probably see. Like Cortana feels like a good Max Pokemon as well. It's less risky as well because then you're not worrying about the Raichu. But I think in all honesty, if they had the Raichu, it would have been on the field by now in front of the Thunderous. You know? And the nice thing about the finny Max and as well, follow me is like complete protection for us because it gets rid of that spread attack that potentially is coming out from the type of finny. And gives us a little bit of time to stall out these last few trick room turns before we can get like the Cortana on the field, ideally next to the Thunderous and then we can just kind of have that cleanup crew going on. So we'll get the follow me off. It'll redirect all attacks. Namely, that e-reimpulse that potentially could come out. Ooh, the discharge. We love to see the discharge though. You keep doing that, P2. You're going to damage your own finny at the same time. The Wackenberry coming in quite useful there for the toggle kiss. Just reduce a little bit of that damage output. Is that a weakness policy? It is. Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear. Let's see how much a Max Lightning can do. Oof. We don't like to see that. Oh, it's Max Hillstone as well. Oh, weakness policy finny. Wiping out our tokens. We're getting all the tricks today. This one feels like it's just got incredibly harder straight away. At least it's not buried there to protect it. Maybe a help in hand would have been the option, but then we probably would have taken a Max Hillstone with our Thunderous anyway. Not quite enough. Not quite enough. We do get rid of that terrain. Okay. Well, our only option is Cortana here. You know, we need Cortana to come in and get rid of the finny. And then it's happy days. But is Cortana with the Assault Vest not Maxed going to be able to take a combination of attacks with the Assault Vest? You've got to hope it's going to be able to. Feels tough. So let's go for the Leafblade. It seems like so straightforward, but like the finny is so threatening right now. And if it Max guards this turn on our Max guard, we are done for. But we don't really, we can't risk it. We can't risk it with so we're kind of far behind at this point. We're not miles behind, but we are far behind, you know, the weakness policy finny. I love it. I do love it. And again, it's like just highlighting some really unique kind of innovative ideas in series nine, you know. So it's not, it's not a stale. It's not as stale, but there are still lots of, lots of shenanigans going around. No, we don't want to see the ally switch. That's the one thing I didn't really, I should have been thinking about, you know, hail storm into the thunderous. Obviously going to, yep, yep, yep. We are going to get a beast boost. The problem is if the last Pokemon is the incineral, which I would imagine it probably is, which is not going to help us out one little bit, especially with these trick room turns. We need a double protect, don't we? I've never had two Max Guards in a row. Never, never in my life have I had two Max Guards. And I think that's what we're going to need to see out this trick room. Is it NC? Oh, it's right. Right. What? Why is it? Why? Why? Why have you, why have you taken so long to, to, to appear? We're going to get faked out into Cortana. Um, hmm, yeah, trick room. We need, we need this Max Guard. I've never seen a double Max Guard. So I don't even know if it's possible. We get it. We get it. Come on. Let's go. Let's go. Okay. Well, where's the Finny going now though? After the thunderous. Yeah, come on. We love to see it. We love to see it. We love to see it. Now we've got it. I love the celebration. I'm so happy just forgetting like the jankiest RNG, but you got to go for it. If you want these, these W's, like I say, I've never had it before. So I'm clicking it just hoping that we would get it, but it's just, it's just happened, which is phenomenal. So I think what we need to do is dark pulse and then leaf blade, leaf blade. Um, what's the right you're going to do to, let's just double up into the Finny. I don't want to electrowebb because I don't want to boost the right use attack. My dog pus definitely going to be enough. There's like a just a whiff of HP there. Speed swap. Oh God. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. I don't matter. Whatever's left will be able to. Oh geez. I say whatever's left. Cortana left. Good job. We are. No, it's not. That is, it is. It's fine because that right. She's like slaws. The slowest thing in the world now. What an exciting game though. What an exciting game. What amazing texts my opponent's got. My opponent's team is amazing. I love this team. This is a team that we're facing that I would love to pilot on the channel. Um, and maybe take some inspiration from to put something together ourselves. So let's wrap this up with the leaf blade and then we can breathe a little bit of a sigh of relief. But what a game to kind of kick us off today, which has been amazing. And we've had two great opponents with amazing innovative teams which is always very exciting. And I feel very lucky to have been on the ladder at this precise time where we can kind of get and capture these games and also feature this amazing team from NG. So it's all been good. So hopefully you've enjoyed it friends. Good game to my opponents and we'll jump over now and we'll just have a reminder of today's rental. Right friends. Here is today's rental team. I hope you have enjoyed today's battles. They've been really fire like just unbelievable. It's a shame you didn't get to really see the T-Tar do much work. We brought in that first one and it kind of did serve the purpose but we didn't really get to see the weakness policy variant kind of going. But I'd say the start of the show has definitely been that thunderous all around thunderous theory and is an amazing Pokemon. I've had a lot of very good success experiences with it in the past. Obviously got to a final of Sheffield regionals was the last time I piloted in a competitive environment and it was phenomenal that day, you know, and back in even 2013. I got third place that you can ask that year to get my world's invite to Vancouver that year. So yeah, thunderous theory and it's definitely got a special place in my heart because it's always something I've relied on at times in competitive scene and it's always done well. It hits like an absolute truck. The vault absorbs really nice and it's just one of those Pokemon that does very well with that 101 speed stat which gets to jump on a lot of big threats and even in this format, you know, so big shout out to Nicholas. Once again, Angie, their handle over on the discord. If you are over there, do give them a shout out and we'll wrap things up there. Friends will be back later in a week with more teams to feature. Thank you to everyone once again for providing the rental teams that were playing at the minute. They are a lot of fun. So do keep them coming if you've got them and we'll get through them over the next couple of weeks while we say goodbye to series nine. But on that note, friends, take care of yourselves. Have a great rest of your day and I will see you all for another episode very soon. Until then, take care and bye bye.