Welcome to DevonCorpPress! We believe in sharing the VGC stories and ideas of anyone in our community. We’ve recently noticed the efforts of Andrew Armstrong on X with his extensive Pokemon breakdown threads. After being given his permission, we’re incredibly excited to feature his work on DevonCorpPress. This piece in particular may be of interest to many of you struggling with Archaludon in the Scarlet/Violet Regulation H format!

- Ryan B Hebert

Founder of DevonCorpPress

If you’ve played Reg H you might be getting sick and tired of a certain staple remover.

Fear not!

For this is SlowHomie’s guide to beating Archaludon Pelliper rain!

This will be a long thread but first, we need to understand what makes rain work before we can beat it.

Starting with Archaludon: it’s a big ball of stats.

If you go after it early it can stack up Stamina boosts for Body Press. Ignore it and it can steamroll with Electo Shot. Its defensive typing is great and there’s a present lack of Pokemon using special ground and fighting-type moves for its less impressive special defense.

Next up is the star of the show, Pelipper: Not only does it set up the rain, but it threatens Incineroar and Rillaboom offensively which can help counter Fake Out cycling. I also had good defensive synergy with Archaludon and can support with Wide Guard or Tailwind

That’s all you need for rain. It’s flexible because it can enable Pokemon offensively, and defensively, and the condensed core can fit other partners. That said I think the best last 4 Pokémon for rain are: Incineroar, Basculegion, Amoongus, and Gholdengo. I’ll talk about options too but start here…

Incineroar, on a rain team? Yes’ without a stint pivot, rain is far too linear and easily exploitable. Incineroar is the best pivot for this team Fake Out, Parting Shot, Knock Off is busted. But more importantly, it keeps the team from insta-losing to Sun and Psyspam

Basculegion provides a strong fast offense that can’t be faked out and can dish out massive damage with rain-boosted Wave Crashes, Flip Turns, and late-game Last Respects. Basculegion also prevents rain from being too linear and can punish passive play, and can plough through teams.

Amoongus does its mushroomy thing. Spore, Rage Powder, Regenerator pivoting etc. But it’s even better on rain because fire is its main offensive weakness and it pretty much negates it. Also, Pollen Puff and redirection are even more invaluable to mons like Archaludon and Gholdengo.

Why Gholdengo? It’s one of the best mons in the format, and with rain eliminating a weakness, Incineroar for damage mitigation and Fake Out, and Amoonguss for redirection and healing you can absolutely just win whole games with it.

There are a lot of mons to consider but I would strongly consider some of the following: Rillaboom, Sinistcha, Maushold, Annihilape, Palafin or Primarina, and DozoGiri if you’re evil like that. Now that we know the enemy let’s dive into their weaknesses.

Archaludon’s weakness: it wants to be clicking Electroshot but that needs rain. It wants to click Body Press but that needs Stamina boosts. It often can’t Protect and is slow. If you force it to be clicking its 3rd or 4th moves it’s really just a Pokemon that’s not special.

Pelliper wants 5 moves: Hurricane and Weather Ball to attack, Tailwind and Wide Guard for support, and Protect. It can only carry 4 of those. Take advantage of that. Pelliper is rarely left at home and you can often pick it off Turn 1 or on a switch.

Incineroar is a bit weak offensively because it usually is just carrying Knock Off. It also is threatened by rain-boosted water attacks. It really gets maximum value from Fake Out and Parting Shot. Other than that it can sometimes be a dead weight or a sitting duck

Basculegion is susceptible to Grassy Glide and Sucker Punch and strong spread damage. It wants to be clicking water-boosted attacks in the rain, and can’t click its strongest move until the end game. So it becomes predictable especially when choice locked.

Amoonguss is often really slow with no offensive pressure. So you can either get it out of the way quickly, or you can ignore it if Spore or Pollen Puff doesn’t scare you.

Gholdengo is strong but some common mons like Incineroar scare it. It needs the rain to protect it from fire attacks, but water attacks can damage it well. Specs is choice locked and Leftovers wants a Nasty Plot before attacking. After Tera you can Fake Out.

Rain works so well because it has strong offensive and defensive synergy. Good rain teams have a fast mode and can play flexibily. But a lot of times they can be linear and too rain reliant.

How do we punish them?

• Option 1: Take away the rain. Sun can hamper a lot of the options on rain teams. If you can remove Incineroar then fire damage is pretty effective at clearing out the rest of the team. Snow and Sand can do this as well. But manual Sun is the easiest way to win weather wars

• Option 2: Power through with offense. Aside from Swift Swim, rain teams can tend to be slow and you can sometimes remove key pieces very quickly. If they bring Archaludon, Pelliper, Incineroar, Amoonguss, and you KO Archaludon in 1-2 turns? Gg ez

• Option 3: Slow down and stall out. Fake Out, Snarl, Foul Play, Parting Shot, Will O’ Wisp. Rain teams can often take a while to set up and get going. If you can keep them from going fast or steamrolling. Stall out the rain and chip everything down. Make good switches

• Option 4: Run better rain If you can’t beat them join them. Rain is flexible and you can run rain that beats rain. Whether that’s by getting the right speed stats, tech moves, or tech mons. Rain can get centralized so you can plan around it

• Option 5: Play better. I know this is kind of a cop out, but it’s always relevant in Pokémon. Learning your matchups is key regardless of team. Ideally your team should have multiple answers for rain, so experience is key knowing which strategy to use

• Option 6: Secret techs I’m not sharing I hope you enjoyed!

Please follow and comment below with what team archetype you want me to cover next!

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