 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 we are continuing on with our VGC Series 8 content not got long left obviously being saying all week we've got up until Saturday when the rules will revert to Series 9 and we can say goodbye to all these restricted Pokemon but getting on to today's episode we're going to feature one of my all-time favorite restricted Pokemon it is a new one that we've got access to in Sword and Shield we've featured many times on the channel before but we're approaching it again in a slightly different build today and that is going to be Shadow Rider Calyrex this team's actually from a Chinese player they've been featured on many different YouTube channels before including Aaron, Cybertron, Zeng's YouTube channel what a really cool Zekrom team and they've come up with another really strong team built here again today but this time playing with the Cinderace alongside the Shadow Rider Calyrex and it's kind of like your generic kind of Shadow Rider Calyrex team build with the Whimsicott support the Oshufu there the Indidi and the Regi Alecki he's kind of not seen so much but it's a really nice option it gives you speed control as well with a bounce assurance and then that wild charge with the extreme speed so more of a physical Regi Alecki which I really like and you know you've got very good combination with that and the Shadow Rider Calyrex especially with the assurance where you can la the special defense stats on the opposing Pokemon and then hit them for big damage with Astro Barrage and other things like that so really nice combinations going on throughout the team hopefully we can feature a lot of them in today's build obviously a big shout out to the creator of this team and without further ado friends will have a couple of games with the team and then throw the rental up at the end of the episode so without further ado let's get into our first match of today okay so first up today we have a team of Whimsicott Calyrex Shadow Rider Thunderous Incarnate Oshufu Incinero and Tabulele so a little bit of a mirror match going on here going to be tricky of course they've got double dark on their team and probably a dark type attack on the Thunderous as well to make life a little bit more difficult for Calyrex to perform but we do have the Regi Alecki that can do a lot of work got to be careful around the Incinero of course because that is going to be one Pokemon that can kind of hinder its ability to to function super well but we do have the Cinderous I do feel like Cinderous is really good here you know gotta be careful around the Thunderous of course but I think Cinderous is just incredibly strong I think Cinderous the issue going Regi Alecki and Calyrex is that the problem they could lead Whimsicott Calyrex themselves and then that would be that would be super bad uh okay I think what we're gonna do is lead Cinderous Regi Alecki and then bring Calyrex and Whimmy in the back and then we'll lock in with that it's always tricky approaching these mirrors though as well because you know these teams are so hyper offensive and when you kind of got a similar mode yourself it's kind of like how do you how do you approach it do you approach it like cautiously and if you do that you make one wrong move and then the games over so quickly and and I have a feeling that this is the kind of how this match might turn out you know one one of us is gonna get uh gonna be able to capitalise quite early on and then it makes it very difficult for your opponent to kind of come back with just the offensive nature of these sort of teams okay well we've got Cinderous and Cinderous coming out the Intaminate not helping Regi Alecki the White Herb definitely helping our uh Cinderous here though uh just negating that so we do have the the the option to go for a jump kick turn one into Cinderous the issue doing that is that then the Cinderous can go for an airstream into Cinderous and it's gonna do a lot of damage which is not ideal uh whereas we could potentially go for like a pyro ball into Cinderous and then double up into it with maybe a wild charge um and that probably would be enough to kind of get it to be honest um hmm and not really worry too much about the Incinero yeah let's let's go for that let's go for that let's double in let's try let's max the Cinderous okay Incinero gonna switch out which is good so they're utilizing the Intaminate for later on which is fine they're gonna try and get Wimmy onto the field to utilize speed control the next turn which you know takes up a turn of their their time but it also eats into a turn of our max turns as well I mean if we can remove the thunderous from the field right now I mean that's incredible but you've got to assume that it's defined but it potentially always could be you know a prankster variant as well you can't ever just assume because like it obviously is the defiant variant but at the same time if it was prankster could have the option to go for a thunder wave into something like Cinderous make it very difficult for us to kind of function for the rest of the match but I feel with the Liberero we're not as you don't have as much kind of control over what moves you're going to be able to click because a lot of the time you're going to be either lowering stats on your opponent's side or you're just not going to be able to kind of get the utility with it the moves that you won't because you put yourselves in a little bit of harm's way see how much this does no one near enough but a wild charge will be enough from Regieleki to pick up the knockout the next turn unfortunately we're not going to be able to kind of get the jump there but I think Regieleki in an amazing spot still you know the next turn they're going to be able to get their their tail wind up for sure they probably go for that this next turn but we do have the option do we go for max god or do we go just for an airstream this next turn and a wild charge because they're not going to pick up the knockout onto Cinderous right and a wild charge will get the thunderous and I like I don't think the thunderous is in a position to get the Regieleki this next turn there's a tail wind which is fine I kind of prefer them setting their own tail wind up now almost max darkness coming out it shouldn't be enough to get there lucky what is it is it is the thunderous left alone okay um the quick I don't know if that matters or not I think it may have may have got us anyway okay this puts us in a little bit of an awkward spot I mean at the same time it doesn't because we speed tie with the thunderous and then we're going to have our own wimmy to come in and get our tail wind up which puts us ahead of the thunderous means we can take a knockout with a pyro ball again and kind of keep that speed control going so we're not in a terrible spot so to speak but what we need to do is remove the whimsicott as soon as possible because once their speed control is gone things get a lot easier for us to kind of win out at least with our calorax and yeah we need to we need to tail wind here the whimsicott on my opponent's side kind of free to go up for a moonblast a fake tears whatever option they've got you know um but they're not in a position to knock out anything on our side of the field at least from this point where we can tail wind get the jump on thunderous because they didn't go for that airstream the last turn it means we kind of just evened everything up especially with access to tail wind on our side of the field um and although we are down a pokemon at the minute we can tie it up here and we're very close to kind of tying up the scores but it always comes down to what my opponent's last pokemon will be uh it's definitely going to be the calorax i would imagine and probably urshifu okay so there's the thunderous gone it's great and whimsicott what are you gonna do moonblast imagine you moonblast you moonblast ah depends if you've got urshifu in the back like do you go for our whimsicott to make it a bit easier okay doesn't mean not really an issue for us um it might have been worth going for the airstream there in all honesty just so our whimsicott has a little bit more um wriggle room against something like the incinero there okay well cinderace is now intimidated and um we are going to be kind of fake out fodder for sure i'd still say we go for a high jump kick onto the opposing incinero and then we go for a moonblast into opposing whimsicott now the whimsicott could potentially go well they've got dazzling gleam right so they've got dazzling gleam they can't knock out either or our pokemon um the high jump kick though will if they huh yeah if they don't fake out oh they're going for an on-court that's not ideal that is not ideal at all locked in high jump kick is it good i don't think minus one will be enough to get the incinero the incinero gonna be able to okay well let's see they locked into tailwind do they get rid do they get rid of the uh no they get rid of cinderace okay that's not too bad because they still got a turn of tailwind left and now you know we are locked into tailwind ourselves but the problem is calyrex probably isn't going to be able to remove the incinero from the field and then it comes down to a speed time with their calyrex and depend on what item they've got as well you know that is the big thing see what item we've got just remind ourselves we've got specs so uh we have to lock ourselves into astro barrage really it's the best option that we've got especially with the calyrex kind of coming in um and we can't do anything but tailwind here which is not ideal we would have been better going help in hand and then we could have help in hand astro barrage we just got to hope that this is this is enough to get the the incinero with the specs i don't know if it is going to be able to locked into that tailwind let's see i mean it's a pretty powerful attack right but incinero is a pretty strong pokemon yeah and i think flablets are probably be probably be enough helping hand flablets can we take it i don't know maybe i doubt it we can okay that's huge okay we just win this now okay this has just been a messy game i hate this mirror their tailwind ends we still got a tailwind in effect but it comes down to whether or not their calyrex is is sashed or not um because if it's sash they just win because we cannot we cannot uh we kind of do anything but tailwind with our own uh with our own whimsy cut which is not ideal um okay let's do that see if we can no we're still locked in we still need a tailwind do nothing on course on something you see too commonly on whimsy cut but a nice option you know kind of going to win my opponent the game if they're sashed here uh but are they sashed i don't know they got urshufu urshufu always feels like the the better pokemon to throw the sash onto these sort of teams and it looks like they're not so we do pick up a win like i say just a very messy kind of game there especially with the mirror but at least we come out on top of that one which is always good uh but it could have went either way um but very good game to my opponent and we'll jump into the next match of today's episode okay next up today we have a zernius incinero garchomp rotum heat uh galerian moltres and metagross team so a tricky one definitely for us to kind of go up against because i think you know you initially think karex is great here because it gets big damage onto something like the zernius before congeal mancy can't be faked out but then you look down the team you see the incinero that's going to cause disruption and also the the moltres as well that causes so much disruption towards the uh the calorex there i think we really need to to have the the kind of support from regealecki here because it definitely helps against the moltres that you could see come out as a lead from my opponent um and then calorex you've got to keep in mind that we probably are then going to need to switch it into something um just because oh it's tricky isn't it it's very tricky very very tricky unless we go calorex is like a late game pokemon and then we have something like cindy race regealecki up top which kind of helps mitigate against the majority of threats that we would see come out from my opponent here and then go wimmy and then calorex or either indeedy calorex which could also be useful um but i think the wimmy with it's a little bit more offensive pressure against something like garchomp and with the moonblast can actually hit stuff rather than the dvd that's going to be walled out by a few things on my opponent's team it's probably a better option in all honesty so let's click in with these see how we get on today in this second one and there hopefully it's not as messy as the first one was i know i say the first one's messy but i just say that because it's so the the margins in those matches are just so fine you know when you've got like it comes down to speed tires a lot of the time or how you manage speed control well and it just it just they always feel awkward to me i don't know if you guys are the same right well we've got maltres and garchomp from my opponent okay it's not the worst it's not the best either um because you don't really have a way to get there the garchomp super quick and it's quite easy for um my opponent to protect the maltres here um i think what we'll do is we'll go airstream into garchomp and bring him with me and play off the fact that the maltres probably is going to protect you because i think you've got to or withdraw it which is fine incidental yeah that makes sense okay because the ideal situation here is that we get rid of the garchomp and then it frees up red you're like you to kind of have a way more freedom going forward in this match the speed control is going to be nice here especially because the intimidates kind of wasted from my opponent when in reality you would think oh i'll get the intimidate onto the onto the bunny and then it's going we're going to be able to handle it a bit better but now it means that you've got to switch out switch back in again or try and get a parting shot this next turn which makes it a bit more tricky for my opponent to to utilize okay garchomp committing to the max and we're going to see a max quake here it'd be nice if we do especially into zindaris but it's more likely going to be into the alecki slot i would imagine maybe not though maybe you just don't attack into that slot thinking well you're probably going to vault switch out potentially um but the airstream going to be very useful in this situation if we do see a quick come out into the big bunny not doing massive damage but it's it's decent h damage isn't it into the garchomp um and the next time what we want to probably do is get rid of oh no they're going into um the win but when we're going to be able to take this pretty well say pretty well still still stings right what we need to do is go help and hand max knuckle into the incineroar and hope that that's enough to actually pick up the knockout we're not intimidated so i think that it probably is going to be able to we've got the speed boost now my opponent i don't know we could lose whimsicott here so we lose our kind of means of tailwind but i don't think it's massively necessary and the plus one is going to be so useful especially if we can avoid a parting shot here and get rid of this incineroar i'm hoping we can but i'm not sure if we need like a life hope to to do that nope okay there we go cinderace my boy you know my little girl they would be loving this right now her favorite pokemon is a score bunny so here we go for those little score bunnies big cinder still doing it okay max when we're coming out makes a lot of sense from the garchomp there's so much damage it does so much damage garchomp is so underrated in this format you know we saw gabriel agati run it in um plays cup global finals with the life orb and it's just it's just nuts how much damage it does even if you intimidated it's still hitting like a truck like you know okay zern coming out all right what have we got what we got to hit zern if we got steel spike i don't know if we have have we uh because we can let's just click this for a minute and just see we have got steel spike okay but it's very risky going for it because we go for the steel spike i mean it's not too bad at all really is it it's not bad at all uh do we need to i don't think we need to help at hand i think we could tailwind here because then we set up kind of a nice end game for ourselves with a leckie and yeah yeah okay yeah we tailwind do we need to tailwind out i don't know if we do we tailwind i really don't think we need to tailwind but we'll go for it anyway just to be extra sure in case geomancy does go up but if they don't protect the zernius here then the knackered yeah and we get a defense boost which is definitely gonna help us but they did they probably max quick into uh although yeah i mean we have to remember as well we're not plus one we're just neutral because of the max worm and it kind of negated that but thankfully is enough to get the zernius here maybe my opponent thought they could maybe take it i don't know but the max quick covers that attack uh pretty well oh they go on a wimmy okay so the tailwind there was really useful because still tricky though the one pokemon that we've got to to deal with is the garchom now you kind of want to bring in um yeah we want to bring in the old calyrex now how many quakes is that garchom got off two so it's plus two special defense are we going to be able to take it because i don't think we'll take them my pyra ball maybe pyra ball plus astro barrage might be able to do it but you've got to worry about you've got to worry so much about the the maltress having sucker punch because it's like that stray fourth move that you see sometimes on these pokemon so things could fall apart quite quickly here i'm going to click the astro barrage button and i'm confident pyra ball will in an astro barrage will get this maltress so i'm not seeing any protect come out here we go neutral still gosh i don't know if i knew uh an astro barrage is going to get either i don't think it is i don't think it is i think we lose now because i don't think we get the garchomp which is what we need to really get i'm so close earthquake we should have bounced we should have bounced yeah and then yeah and then it's like regi alecki but but but no well the life orbs done it for us i was just going to say we have extreme speed so we could get the garchomp with extreme speed and then and then kind of close it up because the maltress shouldn't really be knocking out regi alecki in one hit you know but now it's all good it's all fine because we got well charged to come in and just bop this this bird and take the victory for us my friends so this is another one it feels like it just feels like i don't know it is just a team you know it's always this sort of like it's the team uh the hyper offensive sort of balance of the team um where you have to get returns on like every commitment that you take in it like per turn you've got to get a return you can't like just click a move and think well if it goes this way then it might turn out bad you can't be on that back foot you've got to try and always kind of keep up very good game to my opponent um and we'll uh we'll have one more with this team today because it is a lot of fun a third and final opponent of the episode playing a very interesting team in groudon volcarona roton wash dragapult hitmon top and venus all how can i forget the hitmon top it's like one of my favorite pokemon say that about everything don't i am sorry so what we've got here we've got a kind of a sun team obviously the groudon the venus all can be the probably the most threatening kind of pokemon to the team uh you've got redirection potentially on the volcarona i can kind of disrupt with struggle bug but i don't know if it'd be able to get that off why god gonna be something that we need to consider for sure on the uh and the hitmon top that's definitely something that's going to be uh a little bit tricky to deal with of course i think you know i feel like we could probably just go calorex indeedy here you know and kind of blow through my opponent just max calorex utilize help and handle um redirection just to kind of get around most things on my opponent's team um and i think we'll do that with cinderace in the back and so my opponent really hasn't got any speed control you know they got max airstream potentially on the dragapult but that's literally it they're relying more on on redirection maybe ally switch to kind of get around certain threats but other than that i don't really see why they're doing it and i think maybe ashifu is not a bad last pokemon uh i don't think redirection like he's going to be very useful here uh at all in all honesty um kind of gets walled out by the groudon doing much to the the dragapult i mean we got assurance and stuff like that so could be i just feel ashifu probably provides a little bit more support especially against something like groudon especially in the sun you know you're still going to be able to get this there's big big damaging attacks off against it um but we see him on top and volcarona come up from my opponent now i always want to like in this situation just go help in hand and just kind of go after the volcarona but i do feel like the volcarona is probably the is it going to be sashed it's going to be sashed it's probably sashed right i mean if it's got rage pattern it makes sense to be sashed you get a bit more out of it which makes me want to it feels like i want to go expand and force expand and force but at the same time we could just see why god busted out from my opponent which makes it a little bit more tricky um like sucker punch it isn't an issue from the from the hitman top so we don't need to worry about that because of the the terrain and the redirection we got okay i'm gonna go expand and force and i'm gonna go max mind storm i think max mind storm into the volcarona so let's see how quickly we can blow through this but like i say if the volcarona is sashed it makes it a little bit tricky because then they get the struggle bug onto us put us down a minus one and then we're kind of on a on an uphill climb to get that back okay we're gonna see why god which is fine um um which is what we kind of expected to see it should blow up the volcarona yeah no sash so that's good so that's one grim near boost under our belts and we're sitting in a pretty nice spot uh the expand and force going to be blocked by the wide guard but that's fine um we kind of just covering in case they didn't wind guard you know but it was likely most situation was that it was always going to wind god um okay what comes in next venus all now venus all's likely to be sashed now i would imagine venus all is likely to be sashed um did we go after the him i i don't really care about the him on top you see at this point it doesn't really it's not really causing us any issues at all um i don't see the venus all being able to knock out the calerex either in one hit not even helping hand so makes me want to just go i think we've got mystic or fire just to get around another wide guard because it could potentially whack out the wide guard again but not gonna uh ground on coming in the big issue of course is sleep powder from this venus all uh it's going to come out probably now into calerex no it is going to max okay we get away with that one a little bit because the sleep powder there would have probably shut the skin down for us made a very difficult for us to kind of get anywhere mentioned to come back uh which is why the redirection probably would have been the more sensible player there and all honestly being a little bit greedy thinking about a sash and there may not even be a sash there and venus all like venus all is commonly okay max guarding well okay i think i know what we're gonna we need to yeah because calerex becomes way less useful when it's not maxed because the him on top is definitely more of an issue for us um i think we just got the venus all again do we just double up into it or do we go redirect and it means calerex no i think we go i think we go exactly the same play again because once we remove the venus all then this match gets so much easier do you max vial ash coming out yep i mean we take that pretty comfortably it's going to start the residual damage of course but if this if there's no sash no there's not huh huh yeah so this play isn't the worst it just you know means we get a bit of damage onto the ground on i guess because we can't redirect precipice blades it does a nice chunk of damage um citrus berry kicking in for indeedy but again we're kind of we're gonna struggle to hit the ground on with what we've got in the field now i mean we you know the big thing is we're not locked into a move just yet with with calerex and we can't be faked out and we can probably take the ground on down with what we've got we've got we do have a grass type attack so we can just help behind grass type attack and then it's him on top versus world and him on top all the greatest respect in the world as much as i love him on top it's not the kind of pokemon you want to be clearing things up at the end of the game that would be your ground on so yeah we're gonna see why god we have to see why god from the top i think here yeah leaf storm very nice option not one you see too common um yeah let's just help in hand let's go ham let's go all in with the help in hand leaf storm and that will get rid of the ground on and then we're going to be able to get rid of the him on top pretty easily after that um we still got esrafu and send the rest in the back so yeah it's gonna be fine it's gonna be fine super fine as long as this leaf storm hits of course because that's the big thing in you know you always know i'm gonna touch a bit of wood here just to make sure we do but you know when you go hard into it sometimes like this these lot accuracy moves is so risky because if it misses that's a whole turn just gone but i think we're so far ahead at this point it doesn't really matter too much um what's this top gonna do triple axel it's gonna is it gonna be able to knock us yeah easy yeah it's a nice option i love triple axel as a move as well it's a really unique move i do love it um i love my opponent just not gone for the white god they're not caring knowing that we weren't gonna lock into anything uh let's just bring in cindy rays and we'll take advantage of this sun and go for a pyro ball and that will be enough more than enough to get rid of all toppy top it's got pyro ball and let's go the last turn of the psychic train let's go expanding force so we can punish if they don't go for um the white god which is probably what we should have done the last turn we didn't need the help in hand but you know yeah this match could have been over ooh top actually survives that in the sun you know that shows how good top is honestly we get the burn um but indeedy taking that like a champ honestly um as we do get the expanding force and pick up the knockout and we only take that well because of the burn of course gotta gotta remember that gotta remember that but good game to my opponent um yeah i mean calyrex just in those situations where you just don't have a way to kind of get around the calyrex maxing turn one it makes it very difficult to kind of catch up after that so yeah we will hop over now three really good games today i hope you've enjoyed them we'll hop over and remind you all of the rental right friends here is the rental club for today's team if you do try it out i hope you enjoy it make sure you do go and check out the the blog post about this team it's got a massive breakdown of how the team functions what it's going to do all the different interactions between uh or some of the sets on these pokemon really interesting article so definitely go recommend it is down in the description like i said and if you do try the team out let me know down in the comment section below what your thoughts are on it the choice specs on the calyrex is just nasty just nasty in there we've seen it perform really well in today's episode which is always which is always like the plan and perfect and nice to see and stuff like that so hope at the end of the day again you've enjoyed today's episode thank you so much for all the support and we'll wrap it up there have a great rest of your day take care of yourselves and i'll see you all for another episode on the channel very soon sent a line to get and bye bye