 Hello friends, welcome back to another episode here on the channel. I hope you're all doing great and for anyone new to the channel, my name is Lee, also known as Osiris. And in today's episode, as always, we're going to be continuing on with our VGC Series 8 content. But today, taking a break from the rental teams that you've all been submitting into the channel recently and a big thank you and shout out to every single person that has submitted teams. The ones that we've played have been a lot of fun and there are a bunch left to play. So we'll be doing those next week. And if you do have a rental team that you'd like to see featured on this channel, be sure to drop it down in the comment section below and I'll make sure to try and feature it as soon as I can. But today, like I say, I've got a team that I've put together. It's been something I've been playing around with offscreen that I'd like to feature. And it is all around Zekrom. So very cool restricted Pokemon. As always, there will be a poker piece down in the description below. So if you want to check out the details of the team, there is for you. We will be throwing up a rental code at the end of the episode. So if you do want to try this team out for yourselves, stick around till the end and we'll be thrown up after a couple of battles and we'll play the team pilot and show you how it functions. So I hope you enjoyed today's episode. And without further ado, let's get into our first opponent of today. OK, up first today, we've got a dustman, a crossman, a polygon two, a lander, a Syrian form, incineral, Rillaboom and Mimikyu team. So the first thing that jumps out to me is the trick through mods on the team, the Mimikyu and the polygon two, supporting the dustman and the crossman. Also, the Mimikyu having potentially shadow sneak, which will be able to proc the weakness policy on the dustman and the crossman and kind of help it out in that respect. It's going to be difficult. I mean, we've got the opportunity to really utilize nine tails here. The only issue would be fake out support for my opponent. I think incineral is going to be very useful for us in the fact that we can intimidate and intimidate and intimidate the dustman and crossman. It's kind of going to be mitigated a little bit by the weakness policy that you kind of suspect to see on there. The other option as well as that we could bring Suicune, Snow and Skald are quite nice options. Zekrom is not bad. Just a Max Quake on a plus two is going to be doing a heck of a lot of damage. And the Mimikyu threatens us pretty hard as well. I think what we'll do is go nine tails, nine tails incineral. We'll go Zekrom and we'll go. Yeah. No, I'm not going to bring landers. I'm going to bring Suicune to this, even though the Rillabooms there. Which makes it definitely a lot trickier. I think Suicune is just going to be a kind of a better switch because we're going to have to be positioning ourselves super well in this game. The thing is, we get our weakness policy problem with Zekrom. It's not going to be a Pokemon that we can take down in one shot because of the prison armor that it's got there, which makes it very difficult to deal with, of course. OK, we can get our Aurora available. We can parting shot out onto the Nekrosma. So no worries there. The only issue would be if they potentially go for something like protect this turn and just trick room and then we can't get a parting shot off. But I would assume that, well, it depends. The incineral might not be slow parting shot. Do they max here? I would imagine they do. I'd imagine they max and then they go for a Shadow Sneaker. But if they do that, then they're not trick rooming. So, you know, that's that's one positive for us. Yeah, that's a protect. Makes sense. I mean, I don't mind this. We get our Aurora available. It's kind of all right. I mean, got the opportunity to parting shot the next turn. OK. And this is why I said like, Sweet Coons kind of a better switch in almost because it's just going to be able to suck up these attacks a little bit better than maybe landers would be. We could just we'll just go for a Blizzard. I don't. Well, I suppose that, you know, until probably we'll see this turnout. We've got the Sasha anyway. So I mean, if they do attack into us for whatever reason. Interesting enough, not seeing the Shadow Sneaker. And no Maxing from my opponent will bring in Sweet Coon. Just helps us slow down the game. And that's one of the things that we need to do against some of these more threatening, kind of proactive teams that are a difficult, bulky, slow to break down, you know, just gives us a bit of room to kind of maneuver. OK, going after the Ninetales here. Don't mind if Ninetales go down in all honesty. It'd be nice to be able to break the disguise on the Miku. It's it's not weakness policy. OK, it's it's life orb. That's made in the cross map, which is very interesting. So we've got the opportunity now to. Start going after the mimic you, I guess, get the incident or in that does mean across those minus three. So we're kind of almost forcing it out. It's a bit of a shame to lose Ninetales, how we have. But I mean, discovering item choices on my opponent's Pokemon. It makes sense why they went for those players, I guess. Doubling in. I'm kind of more tempted just to snarl. Snarl break the disguise and then go for a. Yeah, if we snarl and then I want to scald into the cross map, just in case it stays in and we can get a burn on it. But yeah, they do withdraw it and P2 maybe coming in. No lander is OK. Well, that's still fine. I mean, hitting landers with a scald here is super useful and breaking that disguise. We are breaking the disguise. OK, it's the one thing that I did want to hit because otherwise we could have just flablets, you know what I mean? But, you know, covering for a potentially like a P2 switch in there makes sense because it doesn't mean across my minus three going to take a lot of damage landers coming in. It's kind of pinned here. Curse mimic you, huh? Nice. OK, that's a nice tech. Who did it curse, though? Was it in Cinneroar or Suicune? Yeah, we've got a kind of a safe with you. OK, it's going to be. Yeah, we need to keep in Cinneroar kind of safe this match because it's going to be a one good thing. It's slowing down than across my one. It decides to come back onto the field. I can't see my opponent going for. An earthquake here. I think if anything, they switched the landers out. So I think we've got a safe enough switch into Zekrom. We just need to cover for the potential play rough. The landers are so threatened here. Like this is why you would think, yeah, it switches out. And then we can get. Yeah, there's the areas. There's the P2 download coming in and getting a special attack boost, not ideal. Shadow Sneak. OK, final last bit of damage. She isn't actually too bad because of the crit there. So paying off for my opponent and we returned with a crit of our own, but we would have got it anyway in the hill. And now the dustman in the cross probably comes back onto the field. But do they suspect that? I mean, the one option we've got kind of needs to get into all in, but it's pretty obvious, you know, if we switch in Cinerot in, how many turns of trick room have we got left? Just the one. Okay. Could tailwind, but I don't know if it's really going to do us any real use. Okay, we'll bring in Cinerot in anyway. I think we're probably going to need to keep Suicune for the landers. The P2 is going to be the hardest thing to take down, I think, especially because we're more of a special variant with Zekrom than we are physical, which has his pluses and his minuses, of course. You kind of get around intimidate abuse, which is so prevalent in this format. But at the same time, it's going to hire a base attack stat than it has a special attack stat. It has some decent options in both variants, you know, on both sides of the spectrum. So like I say, there's pluses and minuses to both. I kind of prefer the special side, because you got access to things like Earth Power, get access to things like Draco-Meter, which definitely help against, like, indifference scenarios. Okay, it looks like it is going to be the dustman in the cosmos, it is going to be Max in here. It's down to minus one. And imagine it goes after the cosmos here, you know? Not the cosmos, the Zekrom. That's where we'd see it targeting. Potentially, but maybe not as well. Maybe it goes after Suicune. And predicts the Incinero switch. Maybe Max Quake comes out and try attack and into the protect. Max Mindstorm. Okay, that would have been good into the old Incinero there. It doesn't want to proc a weakness policy, although I do suspect a weakness policy at this stage. I don't know. We know that Nacrosma is faster than our Incinero, because we went before in a trick room. So to be a bit careful there, but I think, you know, our Auroraville wearing off is not ideal. We're pretty free to actually go for, might be better getting rid of the psychic train in all honesty, because we cannot, we can't fake out right now, which is the problem for us. Or we just max and go for that and then go potting shot into P2. Yeah, let's do that. Oh, good. Let's try, let's see. I'd imagine a P2 goes trick room again and you might go after Incinero. It would make sense. We're getting the psychic train up there for my opponent's pretty key at this stage in the match to kind of allow them to be able to get that trick room back up. Ally switch. Ally switch. How dare you. Do not condone this one little bit. But okay, well, get a bit of chip into the P2. We'll get a potting shot off into the, the cross mode which is always going to be useful. We've got to be careful about when we hit our, we needed to get rid of the terrain, didn't we? I mean, we take it pretty well, but you know, at the same time, we want to kind of be reducing that damage more than anything. I think we do get rid of the terrain at this turn and just go max lightning into the dust main across my, and go snarl. And we still got till when we can take advantage of if the landeress decides to come in. But out of everything I don't see you switching out than across my, I could see maybe the P2 going out for landeress here, but I don't know, it doesn't look likely. Okay, well, the big thing here is we, we changed the terrain so that max psychic, you know, max mine storm isn't going to be hitting this as hard. And the snarl will help slow down that P2 and it does decent enough damage to the, the no-cross mode as well. So we'll see what my opponent decides to go for. I know they're getting the psychic train back up here, but that's, it's kind of all right. You can see the damage difference here. It's so big. And once it's P2 going to do trick room or try attack, trick room, that makes more sense. Doesn't it P2? Well, I think at this point we could probably, the Zekrom, the likelihood of Zekrom goes down here. I mean, we on, hmm, do we go down? Maybe not actually, maybe we can actually take a double up. Let's have a look what the minus two, minus two, minus one, neutral, two. I think we probably, we probably take an attack with Zekrom, you know. Okay, we're going to snarl and just go for the P2. Try attack. Yeah, I reckon we do. Span force. Yeah, we do. There we go. We like that's what we like to see. Okay. And yeah, more special based. Doesn't mean it caused my which is interesting. And now we're in a, yeah, we're in a good spot. The P2 is still going to be difficult to deal with, but we got it weakened. Oh, we are weakening it to the point where it's not going to be able to really do too much other than kind of control the field conditions. So Zekrom, a little bit more expendable now. I think, yeah, the switch into, is zero in the previous term would have been amazing, but never mind. We'll go for another snarl here. P2 is probably likely to recover. And the lander is kind of pinned. If it decides to come in at this point, you know, it's in trick room. Sweet room is going to deal with it pretty well. And it's going to be forced in the next turn anyway, because the Nukrosma will go down to a snarl and it cannot expand and force at this point. So P2, like I say, is forced to have to recover at this point. So that's going to be the pain to deal with for sure, but an expanded force to pick the right target. Dang. I mean, Suikun's pretty low health, right? But at the same time, we just have fake out. And if that lander is a salt vest, like you would imagine it would be, it's going to go, is it salt vest though? It took a pretty big chunk of damage from that scald when it came in, so it might have protect. May do. But I think our best option still is fake out the P2 and scald the lander. Because the P2 is like, got to be minus two by now. Got to be, got to be. There's a fake out, no protect from the lander. This means we'll be able to take it down. And then it's kind of a three on one, although we've got three quite weak Pokemon versus one with unlimited recovery options. So we need to just stall these. How many turns of trickery we got left one? Okay. Now Suikun goes down here. It's not the end of the world. I think what we'll do is parting shot out onto the P2, get Zekrom onto the field and we'll go for a scald just to get some big damage onto it. Because then rise in voltage with the electric terrain, boost might be enough to allow us to do with it. We take that pretty, oh, the burn. That's not what we want to see. Can we return with a burn? Can we? That's what we want to be able to do. That's really frustrating. But it happens. It happens. Zekrom with your four HP and your weakness policy intact. Let's see what we can do here. How much is a scald going to do? We need it to do it. Please go down. Ah, you didn't go down. We need it. We need it in Cineworld to come in. Because now I don't think a rising voltage, in fact, rising voltage might, you know, rising voltage scald might be enough to take the P2 down. It might be. Let's see. Come on, Zekrom. Shawaii the boss. Easy. There we go. And the scald is going to be more than enough. There we go. And that's where we play rise and voltage. Okay. Okay, excellent. Very good game to my opponent. Nice way for us to kick off today. And yeah, getting to see Zekrom and a big bunch of action there, which is always good because sometimes when you play these kind of odd restricted Pokemon, you don't see too often. It's hard to get them functioning in games, but we managed to do it pretty well there. And like I said, good game to my opponent. And we'll jump straight into game two of today's episode. Okay, up next today, we've got a Lugia, a Raichu, a Mamaswine, Mimikyu, Metagross and Incinero. Mimikyu's 100% like flavor of the week at the minute, isn't it? It's like everywhere at the moment. Everyone's decided to finally pick up on Mimikyu, which is a good thing I'm happy about, but it is everywhere. Lugia probably going to be weakness policy. You've got to think that that's the way. There's a lot of things here that can proc that. Maybe the Metagross is weakness policy. Who knows? But you know, the Lugia with its multi-scale makes a lot of sense as well. You've got Aishad from Mamaswine. You've got Raichu with Voltwitch. And you've got Mimikyu with Shadow Sneak anyway. I think, yeah, I like Ninetales, Zekrom here, you know? And the thing with Zekrom is it ignores the lightning rodability, which is always really nice. For our last two Pokemon. I like Suikun here. Just for the speed control aspect of things. Pressures the Incinero, did decent enough work against the Metagross. It's all right against Mimikyu. And I think probably Incinero or Landerous. Landerous is probably better. Yeah, Landerous, I reckon. It's definitely an argument for Rillaboom. We're going to have to be very careful around the Mamaswine though. So Rilla would have been probably a nicer option, but it doesn't really help us kind of patch the matches against the other things as well. The Lugia threatens us pretty hard. Metagross potentially has Ice Punch. So it's a little bit more difficult and we don't have the attacking options, obviously, to combat against the Metagross. So, you know, when you weigh things up, there we go. All right, well, we're going to see Mimikyu and Incinero come up for my opponent. It's going to make things a little bit tough for us to get the Auroraville support up for sure. The fake out support from the Incinero makes that a little bit more tricky. Mimikyu definitely pressuring our Zekrom. So we need to be very, very careful around that. But we can protect Term 1 if we want with Zekrom. I think we need to switch nine tails out. I'd prefer to kind of keep the Sash intact, if I'm honest. Going to be better to get Landerous onto the field. Or Sweet Goon. Because Sweet Goon can provide us tailwind support, but in front of a Mimikyu, probably not the most practical thing to do, because it could just switch the dimensions and set the trick room up in front of us tailwind in. Not ideal. And with Sweet Goon in the back, it does give us a switch into something that Mimikyu or Incinero could throw out this next turn. At least the Intimidate kind of helps support things a little bit better. So we'll just protect. What's that, Grom? Mimikyu with protect? That is interesting. And fake out and protect play. Okay, well, there we go. Seen it all, folks. Seen it all. I mean, I think a Rock Slide here isn't a bad play just to break the disguise. We could even Max, you know. We could Max Rock Slide and go like Max Lightning. Into Mimikyu. The thing that I worry about a little bit is kind of pulling the trigger before my opponent. But I would like to get rid of the Mimikyu if we possibly can. And just because it's just protected, gives us a really good opportunity to do that. Can imagine the Incinero gone for a parting shot, but there's always the opportunity first to flinch it, you know? And let's trigger. Let's go trigger happy in this one. Might not work out as well as what we're kind of planning, but I do feel like we could potentially get the Mimikyu if we, especially if they play rough into us, you know? We'll take that, then we'll get the weakness policy boost. That puts us in a really good spot. But there's the Rock Slide. Decent damage to that Incinero. Break the disguise on the Mimikyu. And if it's gone for trick room here, you never know. Okay, well it looks like it is gonna go for the trick room. Ah, it just misses out. Just misses. Not ideal, not ideal. Just needed that little bit of power, little bit extra power. Okay, well at worst, that's fine. We'll take that all day long, all day, because we aren't physical. And that's fine. That's not bad at all. Okay. We've got electric terrain up now, so that's good. Mimikyu will go down to a Rock Slide. Metagross likely to come in here though, I think. Ah, it's Mamo Swine. Mamo, big old Mamo Swine. All right, well, I don't think they worry too much about the Zekrom here. I think, did you do your ice shard? Because Mimikyu's gonna go down this next turn, regardless, right? Do you ice shard or do you icicle crash? Because we could potentially go fly, and we could go Max Wormwind. Yeah, let's do that, let's do that. Okay, Mimikyu's switching out. Incineroar gonna come in, that's fine. Thinks it's putting us right down. This is why I don't think they're gonna care too much about the Zekrom, I think they're assuming that we're the physical variant. And that assumption might come, ah, they go on ice shard. Okay, not ideal, we lose Landerous. Okay, well, there's a risk worth taking, but they do target the Landerous, but we are gonna be able to get rid of this Mamo Swine now, and the game's pretty much done. Because plus one, no, what are plus one, are we? We haven't got our weakness policy progged yet. What am I talking about? What am I talking about? But we are gonna be able to get Suikunin in Tailwind here, and that puts us in a phenomenal spot because, yeah, well, it just does. Why am I thinking I got the weakness policy prog? That's hilarious, that is hilarious. Thing is with Suikunin as well, it's got the inner focus ability, so we can't be faked out. And I don't think Mamo's gonna be in a position to be able to take us down. So we'll just max guard here. Because Suikunin's gonna be slower than Mamo, with the Mimikyu off the field out the way, and even when it comes in, it's gonna go down to Hill, whereas the dual damage are kind of all right. So Mamo's minus one, Cineros minus one. And Suikunin in Tailwind pretty much cleans up anywhere by itself. I really love the combination, Zekrom with Suikun. I think they complement each other so well with the tools that Suikun's got available to it. And what Zekrom can bring on a kind of physical, physicality side, you know. Okay, my opponent not realizing inner focus blocks fake out, and we are able, and you wouldn't believe as well how many times players constantly do this, you know, with fake out into Suikun. It's pretty nuts, pretty nuts. Right, well, we're all right, I think. We are all right. Yeah, like you say, I think Suikunji kind of cleans this one up for us really. The horizon voltage, I kind of want to get rid of the incineral more than anything else, you know. I'm not really too worried about the Mammal because I feel like the Mammal probably, how do we go after the Mammal? Just the minus one from the incineral makes things a little more annoying for us. Whereas if we rise in voltage and scald into it, we can guarantee a KO there. Yeah, Mammal's starting protecting. See what this does in electric terrain. It should do enough to put, oh yeah, more than enough. And now the scald will be more than enough to pick up the knockout there, which is ideal. Yeah, and like you say, like the Mimikyu comes in but goes down to the hail damage, which ends now, right? Yeah, but we could switch in. Yeah, we switch Zekrom out to nine tails and we scald into the Mammal swine and then we win and then we win. And Zekrom hasn't been knocked out in two matches and that two matches did it all. Oh no, they've got Metagross as well. I forgot about the Metagross. Oh good, that complicates things slightly because they've still got their max. What am I talking about? I'm chatting all this, chatting all this and they've still got Metagross kicking around in the back. Right, well, we still have a chance. We still have a chance because they need to, I think, I don't think they double in on Zekrom this turn. That's the only problem. Like I really want them to, I think we just protect. Let's just, no, let's scald. Can I switch? I don't think I can. I think we're just going to protect. We're protecting either way, it's fine. I would have been better to get nine tails in, get the hail on, get the roar available up the next turn, have Zekrom in the back to come in, reset the drops that we've had and then we can kind of maybe utilize it a little bit later on in this match. But we'll see, if they proc our weakness policy now, forget about the Metagross. That's why it's been so easy so far. Did they, I shard, I'd imagine they probably do. Yeah. But the next two turns, like this turn and the next turn, Suicune's kind of tied up because we have to deal with the Mimikyu because if the Mimikyu comes in and gets a trick room off, we can't kind of, yeah. Max quick, not ideal. But does proc our weakness policy. So we do get that activated. And a critical hit, that's not ideal at all. Rising voltage probably going to be the better option here because then we get the Mimikyu and then we can skull the Metagross. And if we can, no, okay. Because if you can burn the Metagross, that's kind of the win, the winning in. It's just, is the Shadowsneak going to be enough to get Zekrom, which it potentially could be, which is why it might be better to scald. Now, like I said, I think we need to, I think we need to, they're just going to Shadowsneak. I think they Shadowsneak the Metagross here. I think they Shadowsneak there on Metagross. Just a bad thing, yeah. So I still think just in case trick room goes up, just in case we scald the Mimikyu, we switch into nine tails. Prevent the trick room. Hope they don't Shadowsneak and double tap into that nine tails slot. That wouldn't be ideal. We do lose our weakness policy boost, but okay, Mimikyu protecting, she's not bad. So at least the Metagross isn't getting this weakness policy boost. Not for free anyway. Lacksquake coming up and it's going to be into nine tails. Yeah. Now we can get our Aurora Villa, which helps Suikku now way more than anything else. Metagross plus two, special defense, which is fine. Okay, right. Well, let's see what we can do now then. We need to just keep scalding this Metagross and hope we can't out-damage us. Scald and Aurora Villa. That is the key to our success. Let's see what we can do. I don't really get why the Mimikyu protected there though. It really didn't really get, the Mimikyu wasn't very, well, I mean it was annoying, but it didn't really do as much support. Come on, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, no burn. There's no damage either. But we see the nine tails go down. That's fine, okay. Plus three, special defense. It's going to make taking this Metagross down extremely difficult. So Zekron coming in. I think what we'll do is we'll scald, protect, and then we'll Earth Power scald. Okay, well, let's see if we can beat this Metagross. It is the lowly Metagross that we forgot about. The forgotten Metagross that came in and surprised us. Like, nothing else has surprised me more on the channel than that Metagross coming in. And me realizing my opponent still had oh, that does nothing, it does nothing. We really need to burn. We really need to burn. The hail damage definitely is helping. Now Zekron, we can cope with going down this turn. The problem is I don't want to proc the weakness policy, though that's it. So I don't want to, I don't want to Earth Power it. I want to rise and voltage it. I think that's the play. Because if we Earth Power it, it makes it way more difficult to deal with. Yeah, no damage. Come on, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn, burn. We've got to get a burn at some point. There we go, here we are. It's going to happen at some point. This is going to be, if this isn't Suikun, I think it would have been better because, wow. We actually take that. Okay. That's, yeah, the Aurora Veil and the burn obviously stuck in there. Now, can we out-damage the Metagross? I don't know, with Skull. Well, I think we probably can. The burns in the hill, yeah, definitely help us out there. It's a massive swing. It's a massive swing for us getting the burn. But like I say, getting the burn was inevitably going to happen. It's 30% chance and we've hit it with how many Skulls now. So, yeah. Oh, that changes things. But the walking berry definitely helps us out a little bit. That definitely helps us out a bunch because that does like nothing. The hill does stop, but the burn is going to chip away. Thunder Punch Metagross. It's a nice tech. It's, you know, it is way more common now. You see, played on Metagross a lot more. So, see how much the, and there's a crit. Okay. Well, we just close it up. I think we would have been able to eek it out. I think we would have been able to eek it out. We still had a raw, raw veil up for at least this turn. The burn as well. So, little unfortunate on my opponent with the crit there, but probably sped things up for us all. Let's be honest here. So, a nice win for the team. Two wins for us today. Little bit of RNG on our side for that last one, but Zekron performed super well. So, let's hop over and get you guys this rental code for today's team. Okay, friends. Here is the rental code for today's team. If you do try it out, I hope you have a lot of fun with it. Obviously, we've got the Zekrom, Ninetales, Incineroar, Landerous, Rillaboom, and Suicune combination. We got to see a lot of the team today in today's episodes and see how it can function. Zekrom, I feel, did an amazing job as I always do with the restrictors. Normally on these teams, but it was nice to be able to joke on the side. It was nice to be able to actually see it functioning, actually do some work for a change. Sometimes the restricted doesn't quite live up to what its expectancies are in the matches that we play. So, it was quite nice to see that today. A lot of Ninetales as well, incredible support Pokemon, really showed how useful it can be. Suicune as well, probably the MVP of today's episode, I mean, and it's definitely an overlooked Pokemon for sure in this format and something that I think probably needs a little more score upon from a lot of players. So, hopefully it has inspired some ideas for you all at home and some ideas from teams going forward and stuff like that. But like I say, if you do try this out, have a lot of fun with it, but please let me know down in the comment section below. I love hearing your comments, hearing from you about the teams that we've been featuring and we'll wrap it up there. Remember on, if you've got a rental team you would like to see featured on the channel, please drop it down below in the comments and I'll make sure to feature it either next week or the week after. I am really enjoying the rental codes from all of you at the minute. And it is really making series eight very enjoyable for me to kind of continue playing at the moment. So, do that friends, have a great weekend, whatever you're up to and I will see you all for another episode very soon. So, until then, take care of yourselves as always and bye-bye.