 With the release of Sword and Shield on the 15th of November, I've jumped onto my sketchpad, put together three new designs for you to represent your Team Starter, Team Skull Bunny, Grookey Gang or Team Sobble. Hop over to the Teespring Store now, you can grab a 10% discount with the discount code Starter. Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of our Pokemon VGC 2020 Battle Series. My name is Leigh Olsononos Osiris and today we're going to be playing with this Zern Dawn team that we kicked off with at the start of the week, courtesy of Yuki. You can see the team report down in the description below. Check out the team, take it, try it out. And if you do try it out for yourself, do let me know. I'm really interested to know how other players have been getting on with this team. I'm obviously repping the Skull Bunny shirt. If any of you lovely people have bought yourselves one of the Team Starter shirts, make sure to tag me in on Twitter or Instagram and let me know that you've got one or even just drop a comment down here. Let me know. And even if you don't want to buy one, even if you don't want to rep a squad, I would still love to know what Starter squad you are in. Are you Team Skull Bunny, Team Sobble, are you in that Grookey Gang? I don't know about Grookey. Grookey might turn out to be an awesome end evolution. Like its end evolution might be amazing. So I might change my mind again. I doubt it though, but the only one I'm really considering if Sobble is like this badass water dragon, I'm gonna be sad that I betrayed it. But it'll be fine because I'll just go between Skull Bunny and Sobble. I don't need to stick with one. Anyway, let's kick into it today. I hope you're having a great day whatever you're up to. As always remember to drop a like on the video. If you do enjoy this sort of content, please remember to subscribe to the channel because we have a boatload of Pokemon content planned for when Sword and Shield does drop. And as always leave your comments down below. I do love hearing from you all and I will make sure to try and reply to as many of you as possible. Sometimes just because of life, I don't have the time to go through each and every one of the comments and reply to each one, but I will always leave a like and I will always leave a little heart. It means I love your comment and I love the fact that you've commented. So explaining that. Okay, let's get into it today. We've got our first opponent of the episode. We've got a Japanese player rated 16-14 and running a team of will hop straight in the team preview and find out. Okay, they are running a team of Smiggle, requires a Xerneas, Cartana, Crobat and Rotom Heat. This team looks lit. Literally, I love the look of it. I really do. We've got the Smiggle there. It's got the fake out support, redirection support, threatens with spoil support as well. And you've got the restricted combination, the Requires of the Xerneas. We know all about these two. The Xerneas, it wants to set up. It's got the Smiggle support next. So probably one of the better supporters in the format. And then the Requires are just a big powerhouse there. Potentially could be a salt vest, but you never know what variant it could be. Cartana there offers speed control and a steel type on the team, which you desperately needs to help against things like Nileiga that otherwise would cause this team a lot of issues. You've got the Crobat there, sets up speed control as well with Tailwind. And then the Rotom Heat gives that ground immunity and fire typing as well to the team and Electric, which is very nice. So it can potentially burn a lot of things. Pod from ground on, but we can't really hit the Rotom because we don't have a way to hit it. So thinking about this, Gengar is going to be good because it can trap in things like Xerneas, things like Smiggle, taunted, shut it down, stop it doing things. I'm not bringing Koma to this one. We'll go ground on. I think we'll go Xerneas for sure and Crobat because I think it's the most, it makes the most sense. I'm hoping I've got my mic set up really good so it cuts out all background noise because at the moment there's having a field day. We've started giving our food the last two weeks. It's hilarious. Some of the food like natural yoghurt. She really likes and then pulls this mad face because it's so sour. But she's had a pear this morning and literally just chomping down on it. It's the best thing in the world. I do like a pear, but I mean, I guess when you haven't ever had very many things to eat and you have a pear and it's like, what is this? I don't know what I'm talking about pears either. But anyway, let's get into this one. We've got ground on what it was mean and was. She's really happy and making lots of gurgly noises and stuff so you might hear that in the background. But hopefully, like I say, mic should be set up where it cut that out. We've got Rotom Heat. We've got Rayquaza anyway. Okay, the Rotom Heat is a bit of an issue for us for sure. It's not the best lead for us at all because we've not really got a way to damage the Rotom Heat. The Rayquaza threatens both the Gengar and the ground on. What do we do? We could mega evolve, protect. But what are we going to get from protecting really? Nothing. We could mega evolve icy winds. That might be a play. We could protect ground on. I don't really want ground on taking an earth power. And if we lose Gengar then that's fine. We've still got Crobat to fall back on with Azernius. Just having that speed kind of boost would help the ground on, get maybe an eruption off, doubling up with a sludge bomb potentially into that Rayquaza or the Rotom, whichever one we kind of feel that we can go after best. This might be the best play for us. We might potentially use Gengar, but like I say, we've got Crobat to kind of fall back on as well. So it's not the end of the world where the Rotom does threaten our Crobat. But as long as the Delta Stream is up, we've got that little bit of extra protection. So you've got to keep that in mind. Protect the ground on and we're going to see an Arlats, which ooh sneaky, sneaky little toaster. It's an oven really, isn't it? We get the icy wind off. It is dampened by the Delta Stream. It's not going to do as much damage, but the main thing, wow, is that a crit? It's not a crit. That does a lot of damage in Delta Stream. With lots of speed, that's the main thing. Earth Par. It's into the Gengar, unfortunately. But Gengar, you did all right. You did all right, my friend, because now we get the Zernius onto the field. It's life orb Rayquaza. It's got to feel threatened as well this next turn. So I think what we could potentially do is Geomanti and go for an eruption. Because I think what my opponent might try and do is switch the Rayquaza out because it's so threatened now, like a Moonblast will pick up the knockout. And maybe try and get something like Crobat in. And if we can catch the Crobat with an eruption, then it's going to be in range for a Dazzle or a Moonblast. And that is my thinking. Zernius should take a life orb Dragon Ascent if my opponent's ballsy enough to keep that Rayquaza in, which I don't know if they will be. Because I'd feel like, oh, they have. Oh, we should have just went Moonblast or the Dazzle. Oh no. Because the life orb Dragon Ascent is going to do a lot of damage. I'm hoping Yuki has EV'd this thing well enough to take Dragon Ascent and whatever the Rotom decides to chuck out at us. But actually we get the eruption off. Is this going to be enough? I don't think it will. No, it does some decent damage. Okay, Earth Par. That's better actually. Okay, I don't mind this too much. Groddon hangs on with a sliver of health and the Rotom going for a... What is it this week with Psycho Pokemon? Okay. Right, we'll have to go Dazzle. Extreme Speed is definitely a thing. And Overheat is definitely a thing as well. Do I protect Zernius? Although, no, we don't protect Zernius. We could just Moonblast the Rotom. It's just a bit annoying because we've got to kind of go... We've got to commit to an Overheat really. That's what we've got to do. Dazzling Gleam, we need to get rid of the ray. And let's bring in... Let's bring in Crobat because there's no way you go for a Thunderbolt into the Groddon slot. Psycho... Psycho Brotom. Come on. Extreme Speed. Yeah, you're going after there. Oh, you're going after the Zernius. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. That's gonna take it down. Okay, we may have been better going for a... What is it with this week on the channel? Psycho Brotom. I mean, it's a great Zernius check. I did say it in a comment from Monday's episode. Like, all the best techs, in my opinion, always come at the very end of the format. Geez, man, that is just ridiculous. We're done for. We can't... There's no way we can outspeed this Rotom now. We've been properly best of wanted. If that even is a sentence, which it's not. Wanted. Right, well, we've got Groddon to bring in. And a good old Smigo hitting the field. I mean, we can try a haze. I don't... I don't suspect we'll be able to get haze off. Like, no way. And I think what my opponent probably will do, even though we have any focus, is go for it to break a potential slash on the Crobat. We'll go for an overheat into the Smigo. We'll try a tailwind, I guess. No, we haven't even got haze. Yeah, this is just done. We're done for. A haze-less Crobat is no good to us right now. Yeah, break a potential slash. Volt switch plus two. Yeah, we're done. We're done for. I mean, the Volt switch, it's gone out, and then we're going to see Zernius come onto the field. It doesn't even matter that you're losing the boost at this point. It's a really nice strategy. I'm going to take this to a PC. I definitely am. So whoever you are, mystery trainer, thank you very much for the idea. I do like it though. It's a really good inventive idea, especially in a format full of Zern Dawn teams. Rotom Heat, it's a really good pick because it just does so much work. You know what? I'm just going to, I have to, I can't, I can't do it. I'm just going to, I'm going to press the forfeit button here. We're going to have it. I'm pleased we got to, like I'm sad about the results, but I'm pleased we got to feature this team and massive props to my opponent. Really good, good, good inventive call, and one I will look forward to trying out. In other news, before I forget, tomorrow, tomorrow night, it is Halloween. Well, tomorrow is Halloween. So tomorrow evening, over on Twitch, I will be doing a special Halloween BattleSpot themed stream. So if you'd like to come across, the link to my Twitch channel is down below. It's going to be the begin of my stream schedule starting up again. I want to get in some time this week. We'll be doing a lot of streaming next week and the week after and then following into Sword and Shield. I want to get back on the Twitch train. So if you're around tomorrow evening, if you're not out partying or trick-or-treating, do come over. It would be lovely to see all of you. We've got Gaiachi, VGC, up next. So I'll get into team preview. Okay. So they've got a team of Groudon, Bronzon, Kangaskhan, Incineroar, Katana, and Vezernius. Okay. I feel like this one might be one where we could sneak in, come at all, potentially. If we can deal with Vezernius, I do feel like it's one that we could potentially do some work with. Okay. We have to bring Gengar. And we'll bring KomaOle. We'll definitely bring Groudon and we'll definitely bring Zernius and we're locked in. And we are ready to go. We are ready to go, my friends. So let's see how we get on in this one. Let's hope we can bust out some KomaOle action and big shout out to Teddy as well. Let's comment on the video yesterday saying that we should run double team KomaOle. So we may give that a go by the end of the week. If not, we'll be streaming a lot next week and I'm sure I will feature this team at some point next week. So I will definitely feature it then if not this week. But my opponent, just taking our time, just thinking it through, thinking what they're going to do, how they can deal with this KomaOle because they're scared of it. Super scared of it. They're not at all. They're like, Zern will just one shot it. If we can deal with the Zern, I think the KomaOle matchup gets way, way better, which is the logic of anyone that would be playing KomaOle. I do like the pink shades and the pink shade though. I'm excited for customization in Sword and Shield. It looks amazing. What we've seen of it so far looks so good. Right, we've got, I think the Incineroar is probably Zemoos, I think. But we can taunt the Bronzong and go for our Zemoos. I feel like that's a good way for us to start this show. So let's go for the Clangorous Soul Blaze. Let's hope we can get it off. There's no Racer sitting in front of us. There's no Zern sitting in front of us. So it feels like it's going to be good. We want to shut down the Trick Room option on the Bronzong. We might see Z Trick Room. It could be an option there. But we'll try and get the taunt into it. Regardless, it might be Mental Heard. But I don't know. Let's see. Might be super buried. Z Trick Room. Okay. All right. Well, it's not the worst thing in the world because, like, at least we can, like, waste a turn of my opponent's Trick Room by just double protecting the next turn because they cannot switch out. And if we double protect them, they cannot U-turn out. So that's exactly what we'll do. Because that turn might come in quite valuable at the end of this game. You've got to imagine that my opponent's going to bring in the Groudon on that Incinero slot. They'll try and pivot out. I think one thing that we could potentially do as well is bring our own Groudon in on our Gengar the next turn. Just in case we do see a Dark-type move there. And I'm going to go for the Clangor of Soulblades 100% with the Cormor. Because we can catch Groudon with that. We'll do a decent amount of damage and the boost will be nice. And we can maybe stall out the rest of the Trick Room turns until we get into a position where we can bring stuff back in and start beating down on stuff. So there's Protect from Cormor and Gengar. And imagine we see a U-turn. Jerobo and Roar. No, we need Cormor all in. But I mean Groudon's not the worst thing either because an eruption now will do some fat damage to that Bronzong. Okay, we'll get this desolate land up. Yeah, and I mean if we can take down the Bronzong now which is that would be really nice. It does mean that we can we can prevent any more speed control for the rest of the game. So I'll bring I'll switch Gengar out to Cormor to take a potential Dark-type or Fire-type attack. Just protect Gengar because I would like to keep it for the late game when Zonius probably will pop up and I'm just going to go for a big old fat eruption. And that should take care of the Bronzong. Do some decent damage to the Incinero. So there's a gyro ball. Bulletproof. Excellent. Yes, the best ability. I didn't realize it got gyro ball as well. That was just such a fluke that I just did that. Okay, there's the eruption. The problem is dealing with the Groudon. The opposing Groudon when it comes in because it will be probably set up to to operate in Trick Room. So a lot slower than ours. And I think we've got one turn of double protecting. But can we get around two turns with our own Groudon? Like that's what we've got to do. We've got to try and get around two turns of Trick Room and preserve our Groudon. It might mean sacrificing Gengar. But then again, like I said, I think keeping in mind that we want to keep Gengar for the Zonius at the end of the match probably makes a bit more sense. Let's go for Protect. And I mean we can double protect here. It's just the only thing is like does the Groudon's sword stance, that would be a little bit of a worry for me. And why I might want to go Clangorous Soul Blades right now. And just protect our Groudon. Because I don't want to get punished for allowing them a free turn. That's the one thing. It just goes for the Precious Blades. Okay. I don't think Cormor takes this unfortunately. Not on just straight up. Nah. Okay. We'll go down. Critical hit. It doesn't really matter anyway. And it goes for the U-turn. Out on its own Gengar. So it's going to bring the Zonius in. We're going to try and Geo. Geo on the last turn of Trick Room. Smart. It's smart. It is smart. I mean we could do the same to be honest. And hope we take... And literally hope we take the Precious Blades. Which I'm hoping Groudon should be able to take the Precious Blades. At least one and then fire off an Earth Power in return. So we'll go for the Geomancy. We'll go for an Earth Power. It's all about whether we take the Precious Blades or not. And it does hit. It does connect, unfortunately. We do take it. Okay. There's the Geo from my opponent. I think our hand's a bit forced here where we had to bring in our own Zonius and match the Geomancy. There was nothing else we could have really done here. So I think we're doing the right thing. Knowing that we can take the Precious Blades. The only problem is that we've taken so much damage from the Precious Blades from the opposing Groudon. It's made it very difficult for us. We do get the Earth Power into the opposing Groudon, take it down. And maybe thinking about it in hindsight, the previous turn would have been the turn to go for the Earth Power. Get rid of the Groudon before we bring our Zonius in. And then by doing that as well, well, we wouldn't have denied the U-turn because the U-turn would have went before our Earth Power. But at least we would have had a... As Zonius would have been in a lot better shape. Although we would have had to contend then with the Incineroar and the Zonius on the field at the same time. So they cover in bases really well. So it was a nice play all around. The Incineroar going to come back onto the field now. It's definitely a moon blast range. So I mean, if we can get a moon blast into the Incineroar, I feel confident that Gengar could potentially deal with the Zonius one-on-one. But we'll see. I'm going to go for Protect just to bend the fake out. And I'm going to try and overheat into that Zonius. If we can get another heat off, it will probably match kind of damage with what's already been done. So fake out into Zon. I'm going to just see a Dazzle. Dazzle, Dazzle, Dazzle, yeah. And then this will take our ground on down unfortunately. Okay. So the Sun like fades away. Gengar. So I think what we could probably do is just moon blast into the Incineroar, sludge bomb the Zonius. And hope that maybe they make a bit of a mistake. And hope the two sludge bombs is enough to get the Zon. I just don't know. I'm just not too, I'm not that familiar with these calcs from Gengar. I've not used Gengar enough. You do have to speed the opposing Zonius. So that's good. That's good news for us. We do get the Incineroar. Moon blast. Is it into our Zonius? It is. This should take us down I'd imagine. Yeah. But if we get a poison as well, that's huge for us. Like that really is huge. Free sludge bomb. Poison. No poison. We're not going to. I mean, we're going to get another sludge bomb off. Depend how much like we need a poison now because if we get a poison now, we can probably stall this out and win. Sludge bomb. Come on. Come on, Gengar. Be strong. No poison. Come on. Every time, every time. We do it. We don't get it. Anyway, good game to my opponent. They position themselves really well. We can't really make too many complaints. You know, the one thing that we could have said we could have done differently, I think, is that Earth Pirate just a turn earlier and I think it might have turned the game a little bit and made it a bit easier for us. But it would have made things a little bit harder in the long run where we had the Zonius and the Incineroar would have been difficult. My opponent played it very well. So props to my opponent and definitely big props to my opponent in game one with that Rotom star of the show, I think today. I hope you've enjoyed today's episode. I've had a lot of fun. We've had another couple of really good games with the team, although the results aren't really what I would have liked, but we can't always get everything we want, can we? We still haven't got the coma all working either, so hopefully we've got two days left with this team. We can try and do that. I'm going to cut off here. Have a great day, my friends. Morning, afternoon, night, whatever time your day is, whatever you are, and I will see you all for the next one. So take care and until then, bye-bye.