 Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of our Pokemon VGC 2019 Battle Series. I hope you're all well. It is Wednesday and we started the week off this week with the team that you can see on front of you right now, which is based around Sogaleo Zagod. It is a very common kind of build to this team that you've probably seen and played against already so many times in this format. But what I wanted to do with this team was take this initial build and kind of mimic what we did with the Cure and Wide build and really tweak it and put our own twist on things as we got into and finish up with it a week on Friday and doing that, identifying the threats that we struggle with, cause that we struggle against and really making changes to it to put our own twist on it. It's things that you can take away yourself and do in your own teams to kind of help get them tournament ready so you can go in and have a lot of success. Right, we're gonna jump into it today as always though before we get into it. The team is in the description if you want to check it out. Have a look over the move sets, the EV spreads and things like that. It's all down there for you in a raw piss and a proper piss. If you want to try it out, go ahead. Let me know what you think of the team because I love hearing from you and see, no, and we'll just get into it. So let's whack some music on and hop on to the ladder. Hopefully it doesn't take too long to find an opponent. But as always, guys, if you do enjoy this content, make sure you do drop a like on the video. Make sure you do subscribe to the channel so you don't miss any of these battle series when they come out. And also our guide series, streams, a flinch watch circuit stuff. And I have already started work on the ultra series guides for the ultra series when that hits in a couple of weeks time. So if you don't want to miss those, make sure you do subscribe so you get the notifications when they do come out. But we've got our first opponent of the day, so we'll hop straight into team. The first opponent is playing a team of Tapulele, Ludicolo, Dialga, Kayoga, Staka-Taka and Incinero. So a really nice build here for my opponent, especially with that Dialga and Kayoga combination. Then I'm missing so dearly from last week when we played that on the channel, such a good call. But a really nice build here from my opponent, you can see they've got that really fast offensive mode in the Ludicolo, Kayoga there with the fake out support from the Swift Swim ability, activated in the ring. And you've got the two trick room modes between the Dialga and the Staka-Taka. You've got the fake out kind of disruption from the Tapulele with terrain control there and then intimidate and fake out support from that Incinero. So what are we going to do? I feel like Sogaleo with the Phytinium Z here is going to be extremely, extremely good. So I'm kind of tempted to lead off with that and Toxicroak, which is another Pokemon that's going to have a really good time here against this sort of build. You just have to worry a little bit about the Toxicroak, because it is prone to taking big damage from Tapulele. I'm going to bring Tapofini for terrain control. That gives us another option to switch in if the Kayoga is getting a little bit out of control. And I think Zygarde, yeah Zygarde is our last one for sure, because it does really well against Dialga, Staka-Taka, Incinero. And it can do a decent job against the rest of the team. I mean, it won't be doing so much against the Ludicolor, but hopefully we've got enough with the rest of the stuff in the team to deal with that. So let's click in and go in. It's interesting though that we haven't really been bringing the Venusaur. I haven't even really been considering it as a pick in the team. I mean, that's something that I've noticed just in the last two episodes. I mean, in Monday's episode we played two ground-on teams and we didn't bring it at all there. So maybe that's a slot we can look at changing initially. That's a slot that I could think, oh right, well we're not using that. We're not utilizing it. So maybe that is a slot that we can take advantage of and get a bit more out of. So we're going to lead off with Sogalea Toxicroak here, as we're going to see the Ludicolor and Kayoga come out from my opponent. We're going to see this Drizzle Ability activate on the Kayoga. First of all, bring the rain, summon it to the field, activate that Swift Swim Ability on the Ludicolor. And we have to be very careful because there is potentially a fake-out coming out from that slot. And I think what we'll do is just trade fake-outs with the Kayoga here. The Ludicolor decides to fake-out a Sogalea. It possibly does, it might fake-out Toxicroak. But I'm just going to protect Sogalea. It's not normally generally a kind of a play that you would make here by protecting and faking out. But I don't want Toxicroak to get faked-out, and then I don't want to take a water spark to do the face with Sogalea. It's never going to end well, is it? So just to kind of cover things here. We've got the... And also by doing this, we can bait in a big water type attack into the Sogalea, the next turn as we see a fake-out into our Toxicroak and just an Origin Pulse. Whereas the next turn we can switch in a Tapu-Fini quite easily. Now, one of the things I would think maybe the Ludicolor switches out here for the Dialga, and it wouldn't surprise me if that did happen. I'm going to just switch in my Tapu-Fini here. Yeah, Tapu-Fini, and I'm going to go for a... Do I go Poison Jab? Or Drain Punch? Poison Jab into the Ludicolor, I think. I'm a bit hesitant about doing that because I feel like the Dialga probably comes in there, maybe, and denies us the knockout, but we're not likely to see that as you see Ludicolor just staying on the field. If it was going to switch out, it would have switched up before our Sogalea, so we know we're pretty safe getting the attack into that slot this turn as you see a Skulled Into the Tapu-Fini doing a bit of damage and probably another... The Dialga, interestingly, is slower than our Toxicroak, which we should have picked up on from turn one. We do get the knockout onto Ludi with a critical hit there. I'm not sure if that would have made too much difference with an Origin Pulse coming out. It's not going to affect Toxicroak with its dry skin ability. And Tapu-Fini will be able to take this pretty comfortably there. Hmm. It means Tapu-Fini is actually faster than the Dialga. We'll be able to get Nature's Madness onto it. Tapu-Lelia coming in though now for my opponent. I'm going to get that psychic terrain up. Now, the problem is Toxicroak's in a real awkward position here. I think what we can do, which I really want to get both Pokemon off the field now, but I'm not going to be able to get both off the field, unfortunately. Hmm. I'm going to have to try and get some damage onto the Dialga, for sure. And I'm going to switch Toxicroak out to Sogalea. We could have Heal Pulse Sogalea this next turn, but if we can get it in, we can check the Layla before that Dialga can attack us because it's so slow. There's a side shock. It's going to be into, yeah, Sogalea. Okay. It could have been a lot worse with the Origin Pulse. This will do big damage to our Sogalea. Now, I feel like I really want to Heal Pulse Sogalea. One of the things I could potentially do is Wide Guard, but it's just that the Layla goes for the side shock into the finny, which it's likely to do. I just feel like the type of Layla might protect. That's my only thing, and I'd rather Wide Guard. I'm going to just Wide Guard here and hope that the Layla protects from the Sogalea. It withdraws, so we're going to get this Heal Pulse Off into Sogalea, which is super, super huge for us, really big for us. The Wide Guard coming in very useful here, and there's a Heal Pulse. Tasty, tasty Heal Pulse, which is excellent. And then we can just launch the Phytinium Z into that Dialga this next turn. Origin Pulse coming out again from this Dialga. I mean, we could probably go for the Phytinium Z into the Dialga, to be honest, because at this range, we'd probably pick up the knockout. And I'm not really worried about the Dialga KOing anything this next turn. I'm going to go for the all-out pummeling into the Dialga now, because we should surely get it from this range. Let's see, Z-Move activated. Oh, it's obviously a bulky Dialga, that's my only problem, but 50% you would imagine a Z-Move doing more than 50%. It's not the most defensively bulky thing in the world. I know we haven't got the same type of attack bonus, but still, Sogalea is still pretty powerful. Yeah, okay, that's good. And I think one of the things that I really like about the Phytinium Z on the Sogalea over the Sogalea MZ or the Steelium Z is that you can have access to that Phytinium move without dropping any stats, which is quite useful. It's a bit like Overheat, the Phyrinium on the Overheat. We're going to see the Lele come back in now for my opponent. I think we just adjust our board positions a little bit going forward. We don't really need Toxic Rock so much now, whereas the Misty Terrain with the Zygarde is probably the one thing that we can fall back on if things fall apart from this point to win us the game. So we'll preserve that Misty Terrain for later on. We'll bring in Toxic Rock here, and Tapulelea just protecting. Dialga, what are you going to do? Earth Power? Ooh, Thunder. Out of rain as well. Okay, let's get Tapufini back in now and we can get rid of this Tapulele. I wonder if the Dialga's not got Earth Power. I feel like it's a staple on most Dialga sets though. I feel like you just need the Earth Power, because against stuff like Duskman and the Cosmos Solar Lea, you just can't beat them. It's bound to have it. Tapulele gone for the double protecting, getting it. Huh. Can only protect so many times though. Ooh, what's this? It's the Isinium Z, I think. Is that the right Z move? I'm pretty sure it is. Makes it more difficult to bring in. Yeah, it makes it way more difficult to bring in the Zygod. This shouldn't take us down though. No, just Procoberry. That's ideal. Okay, and now we can just go Shwaga. We'll take this turn to go into the Tapulele and after the Swaga we'll be able to get the Dialga. There's a Moonblast Lestisjitemt. Okay, into the Sogaleo. Not gonna be doing enough though. I wonder what ice moves the Dialga's got then. Must be Blizzard, it's a Blizzard Thunder. It hasn't pulled the Trick Room. So I wonder if it's just all elemental attacks. Maybe Flamethrower. Thunder. You're not hitting these times. Waga though is hitting and now we can deal with this Dialga pretty easily. Plus two Super Power will be enough to take it down. And we can be really cheeky and switch out the type of Finney if we'd like to, but nah, we'll go for another Swaga just in case we see a Protect here. Just for the overkill of it all. But Dialga, is that a shiny Dialga as well? I'm pretty sure it is. It looks nice shiny. Like the Greeny Flex. It's the first time I'm looking at like green coloration on a Pokemon. It's shiny and thinking, it's not so bad. Okay, game to my opponent. That's our first one today. So hopefully it doesn't take us too long to hop into the next one. Interesting scene that Isinium Z on the Dialga though. A very interesting choice there for my opponent. Really good against Zygarde as well. Especially if it adds speed Zygarde. Cause I think it was pretty pasty from the speed tiering from our Pokemon. What have I done? Switch teams, we don't want to do that. We don't want to come back to this screen. We'll back it. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode. We're not gonna do it again. I promise we've had it at once enough. The other thing is as well on the weekend I actually was playing on my other card. So my rating got reset. So we're starting off again. I mean, we're back up to 1580 already. So we shouldn't take us too long to get to the 1600s and then we can push on to the 1700s and hopefully find some higher rated opponents as we go into these next two weeks. But we've got David up next from Spain. So we'll hop into team preview. David is playing a team of Zernius Lunala, Incineroar and Mungus. Him on top and Tapococo. So an interesting build here with some interesting choices. You've got the Zernius Lunala there. It's a little bit tricky for us. Like we've already mentioned, the Lunala gives Sogaleo a real hard time but we do have Incineroar and the Sucker Punch on Toxocroc to help with that a little bit. You've got the Mungus there for the rear direction, which is a huge part of support. It's a bit tricky to get around as well. But Sogaleo doesn't do too bad job against it. We just need to make sure that we have brought our terrain and we're making use of it. The Hitman top's an interesting choice, especially because it does do a lot of work against Iron Incineroar in particular. But aside from that, it's not really doing too much and I do think everyone's eye-guarded this game. Definitely. Just for the Tapococo, the Incineroar does well against the Mungus, even the Hitman top. We have to watch out for wide guard, obviously. That's something that we need to be a little bit aware of. I think what we'll do is lead off with Incineroar, Sogaleo and yes, eye-guard and Tapofini here. Is that gonna be all right? Do we need Toxocroc? Hmm, Toxocroc's handy for the Lunala, for sure. But aside from that, it's not really doing too much. I mean, it's got a poison jab for the Zonius. Now, we'll leave it out. Okay, let's get into our next one. It's gonna be a good one. I can feel it. And what we'll do probably is play this team all of this week. And then any changes that we do decide to make we'll go into next week. Like I was saying, a little bit earlier on, the Venusaur's something that we're not really considering too much or bringing at all, even in the Groudon matchup. So that's definitely a slot up for grabs. So if you've got any suggestions for what could go over that slot, we'd like to see there maybe. Let me know in the comment section. Definitely consider that going forward. We're gonna see the Lunala and the hitmantop come up from my opponent. I feel like this isn't a bad time to just pull a double switch, to be honest, and get Tapufinni in, and Zygarde. I'm gonna go for Zygarde on the Incinero, and then Tapufinni for Sogaleo, because there's any moves coming out from that Lunala on any spot. It's coming into that Sogaleo, I imagine. So let's see what my opponent does. And also, I haven't even mentioned that I've got the green screen now. I've moved rooms, so I hope aesthetically it looks a lot better, and the lighting's good, and the sound's all right, and stuff like that. I am trying to put a lot more effort into the just production of the videos, so they're a lot better for you and more enjoyable as we go through these episodes and just content in general. So we're gonna get the double switch, there's the Y-Garde coming out, plus the move, little hitmantop, pulling that out of the bag straight away, as we see the Z-Move activated from this Lunala. It's gonna be into our Tapa Fini. Tapa Fini should take this though and just proc a berry, hopefully. They haven't went, for some reason, into Incinero. I guess they were probably into the Tapa Fini there, and like I say, we should take this. Yeah, and they should proc a berry, which it has done pretty comfortably actually. And what we can now do is, I think, start setting up with the Y-Garde. I'm gonna coil, and I'm gonna nature's madness into the Lunala. Because the Himantop isn't threatening us at all right now. Probably wants to switch out this next turn. You probably wanna get the Zernius onto the field as soon as possible, to be honest. But I really wanna get this power pun struck activated. Ooh, helping hand. Helping hand, you see? Lunala, you needed that Z-Move. Ooh, Sci-Shock. Okay, you're going into the Tapa Fini, you're gonna try and nuke that. There's madness coming out. You get the coil. We need to keep the Fini around for later because it's so important that we do this. I'm gonna go 1,000 arrows now. We might see a Y-Garde come out, and I'm gonna switch Tapa Fini to Incineral. So we've got the Misty Terrain for later on in the game because you gotta remember my opponent has that Amungus, so we need to try and keep the Misty Terrain around so we're not affected so heavily by the potential spores that it can throw out and really disrupt us. Y-Garde incoming. Okay, that's fine. Amungus Beam, where are you this time? Intizai-Garde? Intizai-Garde. No, Intin-Incineral? Hmm, I got 1,000 arrows. Okay, should we call the bluff and say that you're not gonna Y-Garde again? I think that's pretty safe to say. I'm gonna 1,000 arrows, and I'm gonna knock off into the Lunala. I think the top switch is out here. Ooh, Lunala switch is out. Hopefully we don't say Y-Garde. Oh, this is perfect. Because we can knock off that. Yeah, we can just knock off. And Y-Garde, I mean, I do not mind that at all. Get rid of the Power Herb here. It's a good time to bring Sogaleo back into this scene, to be honest. Yep, bye-bye. Ha-ha. It's almost dangerous doing that. I'm just gonna protect Zygarde this turn and bring in Sogaleo now. As long as that Lunala's staying away, then we've got a free time bringing it in. And one of the things that we need to keep in mind is that we probably need Incineral to deal with that Lunala late game. So just keep in mind that it's still lurking in the back. So we don't wanna just let Incineral take, say, a close combat here from the Hitmon type. Even though it was minus two, it's still gonna take unnecessary damage. Ooh, no Y-Garde here. We're gonna see a helping hand from the Xerneus. Gonna be a moon blast into the Zygarde, I think, this turn. Oh, no, it's into Sogaleo. Huh, leaving us alone, are you? Hmm, that's strange. The Misty Turin does disappear now. Um, hmm. A thousand arrows, then we'll go for the Sunsteel Strike into the Xerneus. And that should take it down from this range, I'd imagine, depending on its build, of course. But it's gotta feel threatened. Now, we're not worried about doing damage to the Zygarde at all. Having that moon blast probably does take us down. Now Xerneus is just protecting here. Where's the Hitmon top gonna go? Is it gonna go close combat into Sogaleo? We'll do some nice damage there to it though, don't we? What's that? A jack button, excellent. So we don't take any damages to it, which is ideal. And Lunala gonna hit the field once again. Yeah, let's just protect. Bring in Incineroar. Cause without the help enhanceable, the Xerneus doesn't have as good a chance to take down the Zygarde, even though we've got the plus one there. So getting Incineroar in is a protect. Just to get around this potential moon blast, yeah. And I don't think my opponent goes for the Geomancy right now. There's a lot of pressure on it. Ooh, doubling in on that slot, which makes a lot of sense. And that's got 1000 arrows. I feel like the Xerneus protects here. I'm gonna just knock off 1000 arrows to the Lunala. Okay, that's really good. Hitmon top gonna come back in, I think. Yeah, get that timid air off. I wonder if the Xerneus does protect? Probably does, yeah. Makes sense too. We'll be able to get rid of the Hitmon top now. 1000 arrows, and then even though knockoff's not gonna be doing too much damage, it should be enough to pick up the knockout onto it, I would imagine. So yeah, yeah. Doing enough. Taking away that option of fake out support as well. Ooh, actually not quite enough. Not quite. We have to be a bit careful around the potential helping out here, of course. And also the close combat as well. What do we do? What do we do? Sogaleo can come back in. 100% Sogaleo can come back in. What am I talking about? There's no need to worry too much. Let's see a fake out, I would imagine. Faint could be bad for us. I'm blessed. Just not worried about this Zygod at all. It's weird. Close combat, yeah. Okay, to the Sogaleo. This makes it really difficult for us to actually deal with the, okay. I'm gonna 1000 arrows. No, I'm not. I'm actually gonna extreme. I mean, what are we on? Plus what? And now we've got no plus attack. I'm really scared of the helping hand, Moonblast. But if, I mean, if that comes out, we get rid of the Xerneus. So I'm gonna 1000 arrows. If they go for the helping hand, Moonblast, then Zygod goes down. Okay, we're not gonna see that. Tap of Coco, hit the field. Okay. Xerneus attacks here, I mean, we get good damage onto it with 1000 arrows, which is always very nice. Yeah, it's gonna go for the Moonblast into Sogaleo, gotta be, yeah. We'll pick up the knockout. My point is play it well to get around and get rid of the Sogaleo, kind of just constantly ignoring the Zygod, though. Which I don't know if that's the best idea. Don't take down the tap of Coco, but we are now able to get our tap of Finny back in of all right, this electric terrain. I mean, just get another 1000 hours onto this Xerneus. One of the things we could potentially do is get Swagger, potentially Swagger. 1000 hours into Swagger, Zygod. It's gone for the Vault Switch, okay. We just need this 1000 hours, because if the Kim on top comes in now, it goes down. It gets an Intimidator off. Oh, it's Lunala, we'll take this, maybe, hmm, I don't think we take this down, Moonblast. We're not gonna, we're like, it's probably activate our power constructor. Geez, that does so much damage. Does so much damage, doesn't it? It's crazy strong. I don't know if a extreme speed's gonna be enough to pick up the knockout onto Xerneus, though. But we will get Incineroid. I feel like we need to probably coil. We definitely need to fake out the Xerneus. Do we just, do we just 1000 hours, I think? Probably that, and just fake out the Xerneus. I can see the Lunala staying in and protecting, yeah. It gives the Kim on top a free switch in. Side shock. Okay, this won't be doing that much. So that's, I don't think the wrong choice there. Because we will be able to pick up the knockout onto the Lunala now. Cocoa's an extreme speed range. Kim on top's an extreme speed range. The Xerneus, if we can get, okay, the Flair Blitz onto it, we'll be able to pick up the knockout. The thing is that we need Zygod around to deal with the hit on top. Maybe we take it, maybe we do, maybe. Let's go extreme speed into Cocoa and Flair Blitz into the Xerneus. I think we missed the knockout on Xerneus, to be honest. Okay, that's even better. Because we get the Cocoa now, unless it protects. Unless it protects, yeah. But we definitely get the Cocoa and we definitely get the hit on top. And then we definitely win. And claim another victory for this team. Cocoa does protect. That's fine, because we get it the next turn and there's no way the Xerneus takes down, incinero. From this range, the only thing my opponent could potentially do is double protect the Cocoa. But getting that knockoff onto the Xerneus earlier really has kind of made all the difference. But my opponent did so well getting rid, I mean, getting rid of the Sogaleo was kind of their main, their main thing to do. And once that was gone, it really opened the game up for them to utilize the Xerneus. But because we got that knockoff earlier on, it made it a lot easier for us to kind of move around. Extreme speed onto Cocoa, not going for that double protect. Does pick up the knockout here. You probably go for the knockout into the Zygod. Yeah, which it will pick up. The Zygod put in so much work here for us, though. So we cannot, we cannot be sad that it's taken down. I mean, I'm sad that it's gone, but I mean, Xerneu are going to be able to claim the victory here with the Flair Blitz. Is more than enough to pick up the knockout. And good game to David and a really good game for us to finish off with today, guys. So that is it. It's been a really good one. I hope you've enjoyed it. Let me know in the comments down below what your thoughts are on today's games, how the team's performance so well and what your ideas are around that Venusaur. If we do switch it up for something else and what your thoughts would be around that. And we'll just end it up there, guys. So have a absolutely amazing rest of your day, whatever time of day it is. It's evening, have a great evening. Afternoon, have a great afternoon and evening. And if it's a morning, have a great day. And whatever you're up to, just make sure you join yourselves, take care of yourselves. And I'll see you for the next episode of AbbeyGC 2019 Battle Series. So until then, take care and bye-bye.