 Hello friends, welcome back to another episode here on the channel for anyone new to the channel. My name is Lee, also known as Osiris. And in today's episode, we are going to be continuing on with our VGC 2021 content. Now, the team that we're going to be featuring today is based all around Zapdos and that needed King at the top of the team sheet here. As always, there will be a poker face down in the description below. And if you stick around till the end of this episode, I'll be throwing up a rental code for this team if you'd like to try it out for yourselves. Now, before we get into a couple of games, I'll just briefly go over the team and the concepts behind what we'll be doing with the build. And you can see there are a number of Pokemon in that middling speed tier bracket. So they're going to require a lot of speed control support. We've got that in a bunch here and we've tried to fit in as much as possible. So we've got the Max Airstream on the Zapdos. So that's an option there for you decide to Max Zapdos and take advantage of that base 100 speed. We've also got Tailwind on Suicune. It's got the inner focus to avoid being actually faked out. So it's got that kind of seamless turn one tailwind setup if we need it. It's also got icy wind and snarl to help disrupt and support the rest of the team that way. And then we've got the Mimikyu tagged on the end there. It gives us an option for Trick Room if it's a more favorable mode for us and also taunt there. It's quite a fast Pokemon in itself to help us shut down opposing Trick Room threats. Then we've got obviously the big hitters of the team going to be that Taranitar help us with weather support. And pretty much gives us a better answer to things like Dragapult and Galarian Moltres that otherwise do cause the team quite a few issues. And then we've got the Metagross. It's quite self-explanatory. That plays in nicely with the Mimikyu here. We've got the Shadow Sneak on the Mimikyu to help us activate the weakness policy there. And then the Nidoking is the other Pokemon of the team that we'll mention with that Shear Force ability. Boosting attacks that have any secondary effects to them like Earth Power with a special defense drop. Then you've got Sludge Bomb with a Poison and Ice Beam with a Freeze. All those secondary effects are then negated and you get a Power buff to those attacks. And then you add on the Life Orb that were put on the Nidoking there for an even bigger damage output. That wraps up the team. Hopefully you're going to enjoy today's episode. I'm really looking forward to it. I mean, we've got a real bunch of my favorites within this team. So hopefully it's a good one and you enjoy it. And without further ado, we'll get into this first one today. So first up today, we've got a Galarian Maltres and Mamaswine, a Mungus, Rotom Heat, Incineroar and Urshifu. Right, what is going on? It looks very centered around the Galarian Maltres. Probably has weakness policy, you would imagine, to be procced from an Ice Shard from the Mamaswine. That's what I would imagine. And the Mamaswine definitely pressures us as aptos. So that's something that we need to be very, very mindful of and very careful around. If we can remove the Mamaswine, then Tito has a great game here. Obviously, the Urshifu is a little bit awkward, but Zaptos kind of provides support for the Taranator from the Urshifu, which threatens it most and the Galarian Maltres. So it's not the worst thing in the world. I think maybe Suikun here isn't a bad call either. It helps pressure and get tailwind support against my opponent's team. We definitely need Taranator. And I think, hmm, is Nidoking all right here? So actually Nidoking's, if we've got speed control, which we desperately need, then Nidoking's decent. But if we have, if we're missing a little bit of speed control, it could get a bit tricky. So we'll see what we can do against this one. It's going to be tough forever, but I mean every game is tough when you're on the ladder. And the mix of Pokemon that you kind of commonly seen at the moment, the Urshifu, the Galarian Maltres, the Glastriers and things like that, there's not really an easy game. Opposing Metagross and stuff like that makes it all very difficult. So we have got Galarian Maltres and Amungus. Okay, well, we've got the option to go Max Airstream straight into the Amungus if we want to. Hmm, it's a little awkward because they've probably got the Cobra Berry. So we could go Max Flare and Icy Wind. I think we'd better go on Airstream and Icy Wind in all honesty. And hope that's enough to take the Amungus down. We could have Max Flared, but I think the Airstream's stronger. We've got the star behind it as well. If the Amungus protects here, then complicating things a little bit. We'll probably see a nasty plot from the Maltres here as well, I'd imagine. We need to remove the Amungus from the field because as long as it's on the field, it is providing the ideal support for that Maltres. We're not going to see the Maltres go for a nasty plot, which is good information for us. What is that Pokeball as well? It had like a Pokeball stamp on the Pokeball. Never seen that before. If anyone knows, down in the comment section below, let me know. Fill me in. Inform me. I'm totally oblivious to that. It's kind of cool. No Cobra Berry, which is perfect. What are we going to see? Max Darkness? They're going to go Airstream as well. They have to. They have to go Airstream. The Icy Wind support will really help us out a bunch. There's the Icy Wind. This is bad because this is going to proc a weakness policy probably. We should have thought about this and went for a tailwind rather than the Icy Wind. Okay, well, this is coming out. This is going to match us speed, but it's sweet and bulky enough to take that, which is also very good. That's excellent. Excellent, true shers, but still got to take down this Maltres, which is the thing. One of the things I see a lot of players worried about is actually attacking into a Maltres as well, because you don't want to activate the weakness policy. Now we've done this already. We're kind of safe to go for another Airstream if we want to. I think we're probably better off going for another Airstream and I think going for another Icy Wind. Just to keep, actually, no. I think we need to go for an Icy Wind because potentially that Urshifu has a sash there, but we could go tailwind as well, which would set Tyrannotarp really well to come in in the back. Yeah, we'll do that. We'll go for the tailwind. Kind of gets around a sucker punch as well from the Urshifu, which could be a little bit problematic. We're not going to see that though. Is it sashed? It is not, so we don't need to worry about it. And we'll just make sure that we are keeping the speed advantage with our tailwind with Suicune, which is what we should have really done. Term one, you know, kind of give my opponent the free boost there with their weakness policy. But we do get the tailwind. It might mean we lose Suicune here. And a max darkness coming out, and it's going to be into Zapdos, actually. So we should take this pretty comfortably. That'll just proc our Citrus Berry. And it lowers our special defense, which isn't brilliant, but at the same time, we're still alive and kicking, and my opponent has lost a lot of resource in the process. So Suicune's still on the field doing its job. We've got Snarl as well. We could maybe take advantage of the next turn, which would just weaken that Moltres and take away one of its boosters, it's got through the weakness policy. Might not be a bad idea, as Mama Swine makes its way onto the field. Okay. Now, I think we could potentially just remove the Mama from the field. It's going to protect. That's where the sash is. That is where the sash is. And we could airstream. We could max lightning. We could just get damage onto the Moltres and break a potential sash on the Mama Swine. Actually, what we'll do is we'll go max lightning, get some damage off onto the bird, and we'll get a Skulled off into the Mama Swine. Mama Swine might protect here, but I don't know. Yeah. Okay. We're just going to get damage off into the bird. And we're only going to lose one thing here. So that's not too bad. And that probably puts Moltres in range for Tito Rock Slide when it's not maxed anymore. So that will help us a bunch. And there's that Berserk activating, plus three. Might have been worth going for the snarl, but I don't feel like we're in the desperate need to go for it right now. Max darkness into Suikun maybe? No, into the Zapdos once rid of that. Okay. That's fine. That's Suikun going to have the opportunity with Tyrannotar this next turn just to go Rock Slide, Skulled, and we should be able to remove the Mama Swine and the Moltres this way. And worse comes to worse. You know, Tyrannotar's got the sash, so we're kind of alright. I'm kind of okay. And we still got Needed King in the back. We should have brought Needed King in really, but I need Tito right now to help us with this Moltres and take advantage of the tailwind while we've got it, because otherwise, it starts to get very difficult without SB control. Like we mentioned in Team Preview, this team relies heavily on some sort of speed control. So this is why we've got so many mods within the team, because it's always useful taking advantage of these things, and some of the Pokemon do rely on them a lot more than others. So we'll go for that Skulled. We'll go for the Rock Slide. That should, like I say, be enough to take down the Galarian Moltres, and also do enough to the Mama Swine as well. Combination of the Skulled there from Suicune. But we'll see. Never quite can tell until a game is actually over, whether or not it's going to be enough. So the Skulled doing a decent amount of damage there, and there's the Rock Slide, Tito not letting us down, not missing, picking up a double knockout, and there we go. Very good game to my opponent. And we'll move swiftly into our next game, my friends. So that is a nice game for us to at least showcase Turn 1. Turn 1. Game 1 of how the team can function against some of the more common things in the format. Okay, next up we have Austin playing a team of Incinero, Tapu-Fini, Rillaboom, Porygon-2, Metagross, and Alolan Mirowax. What we're going to do in this one, we've got Speed Control in the form of Porygon-2. The trick room there is something that we need to be very careful of. It feels like Mimikyu's quite a good lead here to shut down that option there. It also gives us nice options against the Metagross as well as the Alolan Mirowax just for stab attacks there. I feel like, probably, what do we want to lead next to Mimikyu? Rillaboom kind of scares us a little bit. I feel like Zapdos is probably a very good option here. We need to be careful against the Metagross, of course, but everything else doesn't really threaten us too hard. If we can shut down the trick room options, we're in a good place. The only thing that puts me off of Zapdos is the Alolan Mirowax, which is really awkward to face down against. I think Suikun. Suikun, maybe Tita, even. Probably Nidoking, because we can hit the Incineroar, the type of Finny, the Rillaboom, the Mirowax, and the Metagross for really good damage with Nidoking. So we can get in good position with that, and that helps us out a bunch. If we go around Metagross, really, because we need enough to deal with things like Rillaboom and Incineroar, and if we're faster than both of those and we have resistance above those, it really does help. And supporting our Zapdos as well is super important in this sort of match. So we'll go with these four for this one, and we'll see if we can get the result, because that's the big important thing. Okay, we've got Incineroar and we've got P2. Now, I don't know if I want to max Zapdos here. It might be worth getting Nidoking onto the field, and then we can really pressure that Incineroar, although we do get a little bit prone to potentially Ice Beams from the P2, but if we can shut that down now with a Torrent, that really does help us out a bunch. Metagross is probably the Pokemon to bring in here, just because I could probably see if they do attack. They're going to go for an Ice Beam or anything else. I don't think they're going to have Thunderbolt with a lot of Mawak in the team either. It doesn't really make sense. You normally see something like Tri Attack. We're not going to see a fake out from the Incineroar here, so that's interesting. Just a potting shot. It's going to be in Metagross's clear body, so it's not going to affect us and pin in the Incineroar here, which is nice. So the next turn, we're in a good position. Even though we have got the P2 revealing the Shadowbolt, we're in a good position to proc our weakness policy here. Max and Metagross can go for a Max Quake into Incineroar. That's not a bad option here to start us off with. Yeah, we can take a Shadowbolt from the P2, but I think because it's so hard pinned, it has to switch out in all honesty. They're going to see the Metagross from my opponent come in, which is fine. I don't really see them having a way to proc there or activate their own weakness policy, so that kind of puts us a little bit ahead of the game here. And as long as our Mimikyu's on the field, you know, we've got a way to shut down the P2, so that's something else we've got to keep in mind going forward in these matches. If we don't see the Mimikyu come onto the field after the Incineroar goes down, then we need to try and be mindful to probably preserve Mimikyu for later on in the game to come in against the P2 and have access to that taunt to stop it recovering, stop it setting up speed control for my opponent, et cetera, et cetera. So that's the big play here because now we're facing down against the Metagross with Iron Head or Max Steel Spike. They could potentially do a lot of damage to us, which is not ideal, but we do take the Incineroar down. Very useful. Now, the other thing I always think about on Mimikyu as well, do we run Willowisp? It's always an option. It's just fitting it in into the team, which is always the difficult part. Okay, a lot of Maruak coming onto the field now. Now, I think what we'll do is we'll shut us... My opponent's making an attempt in for me to keep the Mimikyu out on the field, but the thing I've got to remember is that potentially we're going to take Max Steel Spike. Probably better to have something like I kind of want to get Nidoking onto the field, or honesty. What I think I'm going to do is bring Nidoking onto the field and I'm going to go for a quick into Maruak. That should take it down, unless it Maxes, and then it could get a little bit tricky. We'll see. Nidoking might go down here. P2 coming back out. Okay, my opponent playing us super well here. Whether or not they can take two attacks from Metagross is going to be the big thing. Now they're going to Max their own Metagross. And that's why they're bringing the P2 back in. It makes a lot of sense in this situation where they can get rid of the Mimikyu and then just have free reign to get their trick room set up, which is probably the most ideal situation for them because they get the P2 in the Maruak onto the field against what we've got and it becomes very difficult for us. So I think depending on the damage that we do here, okay, it's in range to go down the next turn. So Mimikyu not so pivotal for us going forward in the match. It's kind of nice if we keep Nidoking, but I don't know what my opponent, I think they go for the Steel Spike into that slot. Yeah, we could have switched into Zapdos here. Okay, Nidoking actually taking that, which is really good for us, really good because we can now double into the P2 and just make sure that we do remove it from the field. I think we just go for a safe Earth Power just in case the Maruak comes in there. We'll just go for another Max Quake into that slot. Now we haven't boosted our defense at all, which would be the nice thing to be able to do here, but we can remove the trick room. Wow, look at that damage Nidoking does. It's nuts. Nearly as much as like a P2 Max Quake from a Metacross. It's absolutely nuts with the sheer force ability there. It's crazy. Okay, well, let's see what the Metacross does. And the thing is there, we don't want to just attack into the Metacross when it's maxed with the Earth Power because we could proc a weakness policy and then things get a bit difficult. Okay, well, we are going to lose Nidoking. Not ideal, but not the worst, not the end of the world. It would be nice to keep it around for later, but I think we needed just the additional damage there to help us out. I think what we'll do is... I mean, Zapdos isn't bad for the late game. Zapdos isn't great right now with Marowak still around. So if we can get rid of the Marowak, then we can really take advantage of having Zapdos as an end game Pokemon against the opposing Metacross. Now, our Metacross will have to stall out at least one turn against the opposing Metacross. Did we just go for a Shadow Sneak? Just to get some damage off onto the Marowak. I think it's a bad play. And we'll just protect as well. Because they may go Steel Spike, but I think here they've probably gone max quick. Although, Steel Spike makes a lot more sense. It puts the Metacross on plus three defense. Marowak just protecting here. Now, I wonder if they go after our Metacross. Okay, well, we don't get anything there. Another Steel Spike, okay, gone plus three. Which is kind of, it's fine. What we want to do now is get Zapdos onto the field. Get a Thunderbolt off. We can't get a Thunderbolt off, can we? Maybe we can't even Heat Wave. Maybe go Hurricane into the Marowak. It's really frustrating that we haven't got protect from Zapdos because that would help us out a bunch right now. But I mean, we're still in an alright position. I think we just go Hurricane into Marowak and we go for the Stomping Tantrum as well into that slot just to try and remove it. We're going to need Zapdos to help us take down this Metacross and probably double up with Heat Wave Stomping Tantrum should be enough. And we are the fastest bunch of Pokemon on the field. I don't think an Ice Punch from a Metacross unboosted is going to take us down. So we've got nothing to worry about there. Zen Headbutt. Probably better than an Ice Punch. And I think we could potentially go for just a Thunderbolt. I think we've got Thunderbolt stomping because we don't want to let our opponent back in the game. If we protect our Metacross here and it goes a little bit wrong, then it can open the door for my opponent to come back into this game. We're not going to kill. I don't think with this, but we are going to proc a weakness policy. This is the bad thing where we maybe, like where I was thinking, maybe protect Metacross here. But if they do, then reveal. Okay. Oh, we get so lucky. We get so lucky there. Okay, Zen Headbutt. Yeah, because would this be enough? Yeah, that's enough. Okay. I mean we get pretty lucky, but I mean a win-to-win. So we'll take it. Very good game to Austin. And we'll wrap things up and get you that rental team. So we've had a good go with the team. We've seen more stuff. So hopefully you have enjoyed the episode so far and stick around for the rental team right now. Okay, friends. Here is the rental team of today's squad. Here is the Zapdos, the Metacross, the Taranitar, Nidokings, Suikud and Mimikyu. So there's the card. Have a lot of fun if you try the team out. And definitely let me know down in the comment section below if you do give the team a go and what your thoughts are. I really feel like it's got a lot of nice elements within it. And it's got a lot of functionality, lots of different modes, and it's got a way to deal with most things that you're going to see in the format at the minute. Got to be careful against certain threats, but I think it's just about leading correctly against those and not getting too deep in thought and complications and team preview and just go with what you've got and just have a little bit of faith in the team in itself and how it can kind of operate and do a lot of good things. Like Suikun is a defensive tank. It can take a lot of hits. You can rely on it quite a lot of the time to take even the biggest of hits and get your speed control going. And the same goes for Zapdos as well, especially when you max it. It's going to do a lot of work. But there we are, friends. We're going to wrap it up there. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope you've enjoyed the games. Hope you enjoyed the team and I'll see you for another episode very soon. So until then, take care of yourselves and bye-bye.