A SLOW CLOSE TO THE REGULATION: A HARD TRICK ROOM TEAM REPORT
Introduction
Hi, My name is Connagh “CaisealBoy” Johnston, an Irish VGC player, part-time Caster and avid fan of niche or underused Pokémon and moves. Despite my outlandish choices, I am far from nascent to playing VGC, with my debut back in 2014 with a very primitive and rudimentary Trick Room team using Ursaring (little did I know that Ursaring would evolve in a decade’s time and become a Trick Room staple!). Since those days I have earned 2 Worlds invites (2014 and 2017) and earned Top Cut finishes at Regionals, MSS and PCs with a splendid mix of standard and unorthodox Pokémon.
In the past few years I’ve been a lot more recluse and grounded with my VGC interactions, sticking to friend groups and team compositions that I knew well, but this year I thought I’d take it out my comfort zone and work with more people to create and learn teams that felt more purposeful and meta appropriate than those with unique Pokémon or tactics shoehorned in. Luckily, however, some of my friends were either just as crazy as I was, or were down to earth enough to balance me out, and we all found ways to make staple roles or teams out of underexplored Pokémon.
I feel my newfound confidence in not only my team choices but also within my interpersonal skills has helped massively in propelling me towards being a lot better a player than I was a few years ago - helping me find that sweet spot between enjoying the game and being competitively driven. This same confidence is why I’m writing for you all now, helping me approach websites like DevonCorp where I once felt I was too “unknown” to be able to suit the public eye.
This season has also been the first in 7 years (when I was in Seniors) that I have amassed over 100 Championship Points. Whilst that is only a grain of sand compared to some players, knowing that travel to Hawaii and multiple regionals was too expensive, I set my lower end milestone as reaching triple digits Championship Points by the end of the season; the team in this report has helped me achieve nearly half of the points I have earned at the time of writing!
The Report
Following an average 5-4 finish and slipping into the threshold for Championship Points at Liverpool with a Gouging Fire team, I wanted to step away from the balanced-skewed teams I pressured myself into using throughout the opening formats of the 2024 circuit. Whilst I wasn’t completely upset with my choices or performances, especially following success with the “Rinya” PaoNite team of a similar nature, I felt like going back to a Hyper Offense (or at least hyper offensive) was the best approach – not only would it fit one of my preferred play styles but it would also throw off my local opponents who scouted the teams I had used prior.
Not being a fan of the Urshifu-Rapid-Strike + Tornadus teams that were dominating the Hyper Offense domain, but fully respecting their power and influence, I looked to other options for exerting enough pressure to win games in as few turns as possible. With this in mind, in the tumultuous environment of Regulation E and Regulation F, where speed reigned supreme, I decided to entertain the idea of teams that could defy metagame conventionality by either being too fast or too bulky for the top picks to handle. Of all the possible avenues, I ultimately decided to put my faith in Trick Room because it was too hard to find Pokémon fast enough to overwhelm what was already popular.
Originally I constructed my team around the Trick Room staples of Indeedee-Female, Torkoal, and Ursaluna. From those two, I tried rudimentary ideas like Chlorophyll Pokémon to have a fast mode and slow Paradox Pokémon to take advantage of the Sun when in Trick Room. I even tried some crazy ideas like Iron Ball Flutter Mane or Chi-Yu. However, seeing no success in my crazy ideas, I turned to the best people I knew when it came to building and playing Hard Trick Room teams: Brian “angelohunter” Collins, Ryan “ryanogiggs11” Powney, and Conor “Bomber” McCormack.
The Trick Room veterans pointed me in the direction of the coveted “Irish Trick Room Army” and it gelled with me from the start. I used the team at every Regulation F event following Liverpool Regionals, making ample changes as I worked out the matchups I struggled with in the vacuum metagames of my local Premier Challenges and Midseason Showdowns. The core 6 of the team never changed: Torkoal, Indeedee, Hatterene, Gallade, Ogerpon-Cornerstone, and Urshifu-Single-Strike. The team had the perfect blend of passive support and offensive play, with each Pokémon holding a strong role in the team’s functionalities.
Since using the Team, I have never failed to Top Cut a Premier Challenge, getting a mix of Top 4 and Top 8 finishes.
THE TEAM
As with any Hard Trick Room composition, the purpose of the team was to get Trick Room up as soon as possible and then sweep with the remaining Pokémon. In some matches, the sweep could be achieved with the two Pokémon that I would lead with, adding to how strong each Pokémon was and how well they all complimented each other. In other match ups, the opening Pokémon were capable of doing just enough damage or setting just enough momentum that I was happy to let them drop to make room for the remaining Pokémon to sweep under the remaining 4 or 5 turns of Trick Room.
The only tough match ups that the team had were the Balance teams popularised by Japanese players (especially those with Assault Vest, Snarl Raging Bolt), teams that had Screens and/or lots of damage reduction, and teams that had bulkier Dark-types, Water-types or Steel-types. These weren’t complete dead-ends to face into, but the chances of the team’s success relied heavily on the Item and EV spreads, as well as how the opponent played into the match up.
Indeedee-F @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Psychic Surge
Level: 50
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 SpeDazzling GleamTrick RoomHelping HandFollow MeIndeedee was a bread and butter set. My friends and I felt no need to change it because it did everything it needed to do. Max HP was staple because its SpD is already naturally high and it compliments well with the max Defense with a Bold nature because it provided as much support as possible to the lower stat. The choice of spread was justified even further by having it hold a Rocky Helmet, allowing Indeedee to take as many physical hits as possible and punish multi-hitting Pokémon like Urshifu-Rapid-Strike.
Tera Fairy was chosen to help Indeedee face into Urshifu-Single-Strike and Raging Bolt. On the very odd occasion it would also be beneficial to damage rolls with Dazzling Gleam.
If I were to make the Indeedee any different, I would use the following spread:
Indeedee-F @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Psychic Surge
Level: 50
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 244 HP / 196 Def / 28 SpA / 36 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
This spread has 2 key calcs for 2 key match ups. Against teams with Urshifu-Rapid-Strike, the Defence is the bare minimum you can go before a Jolly Tera Water and Mystic Water boosted Surging Strikes becomes a guaranteed OHKO, whereas the SpD with a Sassy nature allows for a better survivability into Bloodmoon Ursaluna teams that lead with Tornadus + Bloodmoon (thanks to Brian and Ben for pointing out this spread!) The 28 in SpA is dumped to add to the offensive capabilities of Indeedee, though the damage is still closer to chip than anything major.
252 Atk Mystic Water Tera-Water Urshifu-Rapid Strike Surging Strikes (3 hits) vs. 244 HP / 196 Def Indeedee-F on a critical hit: 168-204 (95.4 – 115.9%) — approx. 93.8% chance to OHKO
252+ SpA Life Orb Ursaluna-Bloodmoon Hyper Voice vs. 244 HP / 36+ SpD Indeedee-F: 70-83 (39.7 – 47.1%) — guaranteed 3HKO + 252+ SpA Tornadus Bleakwind Storm vs. 244 HP / 36+ SpD Indeedee-F: 58-69 (32.9 – 39.2%) — 99.8% chance to 3HKO (Total Damage: 72.6 – 86.3%)
Hatterene (F) @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Bounce
Level: 50
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 212 HP / 60 Def / 236 SpA
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 SpeExpanding ForceDazzling GleamTrick RoomProtectLike Indeedee, you can never go wrong when playing with standardised builds on Hatterene. Going for outright damage and dumping into HP is always good for Hatterene because its two roles are getting Trick Room set up or sweeping with Expanding Force in Psychic Terrain (often also in Trick Room). The damage potential was increased even further when Hatterene was able to go Tera Psychic.
Originally, the version of the team my friends sent me had a basic 252/252/4 spread that called for big hits. I saw no issue with this, however I did remember a team report from a Hard Trick Room team from Sword and Shield that said Hatterene was actually suboptimal if it has its HP EVs maxed out. The discrepancy at hand was that 252 HP meant that Hatterene took a lot of unwanted damage from Life Orb recoil, despite the high investment to be there to minimise damage. By going with 212 HP, Hatterene’s HP stat (159) suffices the functions 16n-1 and 10n-1, which means the Life Orb recoil is rounded down to 15 rather than 16. To compliment the new HP stat, Brian told me to reduce the SpA to 236 and bump the Defence up to 60, though I never sought to find the intricate values behind these changes.
After reading through Brian and Ben’s rendition of the team, if Hatterene were to want extra bulk for its worries, then you could drop the SpA investment down to 220 and then divvy up the remaining EVs across its defensive stats. In the small window of testing I’ve had for the closing doors of Regulation F, I have toyed with a spread of 212/x/68/220(+)/4/x(-). There is no intrinsic value to the bulk, it just makes both defensive stats hit a value of 124.
Torkoal @ Charcoal (or Choice Specs)
Ability: Drought
Level: 50
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 SpeEruptionHeat WaveEarth PowerWeather BallThe pattern continues with Torkoal also boasting a 252/252/4 spread. However, unlike the other two, it feels heavily dependant on the spread and has no room to change unless Torkoal’s entire role changes. Getting to let off a 252+ SpA, Sun boosted, Charcoal boosted Eruption at full HP (sometimes with Tera Fire) was an unfathomable when my opponents had no resistances or immunities to soak up the damage. Heat Wave provided a similar role if Torkoal was low on HP or if I knew it would take damage before it attacks.
Earth Power and Weather Ball were arguably Torkoal’s best coverage options. Earth Power helped into possible opposing Torkoal and other Pokémon weak to Ground, like Raging Bolt and Incineroar, whereas Weather Ball helped with making sure Torkoal wasn’t as dead of a weight if the opponent had a way to set up their own weather. In some situations I wish I had Protect in one of the slots, but it was a rough case of fulfilling all of Torkoal’s needs into only 4 slots for moves.
Brian, Ryan, and Conor all suggested I used Choice Specs on Torkoal. As much as I loved the extra damage Choice Specs exerted when Torkoal had a full potential Eruption ready to go, I also felt I wasn’t as comfortable enough a Trick Room player to make the risk of having Torkoal locked into Eruption at lower levels of HP. In testing and competitive play, both items felt usable.
Urshifu @ Choice Band
Ability: Unseen Fist
Level: 50
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 204 HP / 252 Atk / 52 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 SpeWicked BlowClose CombatPoison JabSucker PunchMin Speed Urshifu-Single-Strike has slowly become a familiar face on Trick Room teams. The pressure it exerts with Unseen Fist and Wicked Blow’s guaranteed critical hits makes it so players have to be careful when attempting a double Protect on the last turn(s) of Trick Room.
With Choice Band, the damage stacks even further, especially when going for Wicked Blow. Urshifu was often very good for removing threats like Ogerpon because the sheer damage overwhelmed the common spreads that were built with Focus Sash variants in mind. Alongside this, the damage of Poison Jab under the influence of Choice Band, with the possibility to also go Tera Poison, made it so Raging Bolt couldn’t go for a defensive Tera Fairy as safely. The only drawback of this item choice was if my opponent could force me into Sucker Punch mind games, leading to a lack of PP in crucial 1v1 vacuums.
Although originally a standard 252/252/4 variant to maintain the motif of hitting hard with Trick Room momentum, I found that there was one calculation that I wanted to nail in case I faced a mirror, or anything remotely similar; that calculation was Dazzling Gleam from opposing uninvested Indeedee-Female, as well as any other weaker/non-STAB equivalents. With 204 HP and 52 SpD, the roll for Tera Fairy Dazzling Gleam from uninvested Indeedee-Female is a 37.% chance to OHKO – with any less SpD making it a 56.3% chance. Although lower HP investment can yield the same percentage chance, I chose 204 to keep the investment above 200 for the sake of the physical Defence stat and because it held the niche benefit of being the lowest the HP could go before the minimum raw percentage of damage dealt hit/exceeded 90% from the aforementioned scenario .
0 SpA Tera-Fairy Indeedee-F Dazzling Gleam vs. 204 HP / 52 SpD Urshifu-Single Strike: 180-216 (89.5 – 107.4%) — 37.5% chance to OHKO
Ogerpon-Cornerstone (F) @ Cornerstone Mask
Ability: Sturdy
Level: 50
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 20 HP / 220 Atk / 44 Def / 4 SpD / 220 Spe
Jolly NatureSpiky ShieldIvy CudgelTauntFollow MeOgerpon-Cornerstone is an amazing multifaceted tool for supporting Trick Room teams. Despite being an exponentially fast Pokémon, its unique traits come in handy for getting the initial Trick Room set up by using Follow Me to redirect threats, Taunt to stop any slow or mid-speed status moves (which was especially great for preventing any other Taunts, Trick Rooms or Imprisons that could threaten my Trick Room), or by putting out offensive pressure with an Ivy Cudgel. By having Sturdy (pre Terastallization) too, Ogerpon made it so most redirection attempts were successful at taking at least 2 hits away from the Trick Room setter or sweeper. Being able to redirect Spore from Amoonguss or Smeargle was also beneficial for helping Gallade or Indeedee safely set up Trick Room, if not prevent any stagnation during Trick Room turns. In the same vein, the ability to ignore Rage Powder helped a lot when using Ogerpon’s offensive presence.
The spread on Ogerpon has undergone the most changes in my rendition of the team. Initially a 252/252/4 Jolly build focused on getting Taunt or Ivy Cudgel off as quick as possible, it felt like it was too fragile. Even though it had Sturdy, and in most cases I wanted it to be knocked out for the free switch into Hatterene or Torkoal, I always wanted it to do a little more in the match ups where it was potentially my best attacker, or I needed the support for as long as possible. This desire sent me through multiple alterations of 252/252/4 252/244/4/4/4 across the HP, Attack, and Speed stats, but none of them ever felt right and were either too slow, too fragile or too weak.
When testing bulkier spreads that saw Ogerpon act as an impromptu Trick Room attacker, I tried Horn Leech over Taunt. This helped with covering more bases in damage output and allowed Ogerpon to stay around longer.
Deciding to meet in the middle on my spread, I looked to see what I needed to live, what I needed to KO, and what I needed to outspeed. The main culprits were Urshifu-RS, opposing Ogerpon (all forms), and Tornadus (as well as other Rock weak Pokémon).
Given that Cornestone gives Ogerpon Sturdy, I was happy to only outspeed max Speed Adamant Ogerpon and those with 188 EVs and a Jolly nature; whilst 196 EVs in Jolly would have achieved this (or 204 to speed creep others that speed creep), I wanted to be able to outspeed Adamant max Speed Roaring Moon, allowing me to Taunt any potential Tailwinds and to catch them off guard if they expected all my Pokémon to be minimum Speed and went with Tera Flying to try and nuke with Acrobatics. This left me with 220 EVs and a Jolly nature.
The next milestone was easily achieved by shaving EVs off Attack until Ivy Cudgel was no longer pressuring a >50% chance to OHKO a max HP, max Defence, Bold Tornadus. With 220 EVs, the roll is 56.3%, any lower is only a 50% chance or below. Similarly, as long as any opposing max HP Incineroar had 188 or less Defence EVs, an unintimidated Ivy Cudgel had a chance to Knock Out, and was always an OHKO on any with 20 EVs or less.
220 Atk Ogerpon-Cornerstone Ivy Cudgel (1.2x Mask Boost) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Tornadus: 170-204 (91.3 – 109.6%) — 56.3% chance to OHKO
220 Atk Ogerpon-Cornerstone Ivy Cudgel (1.2x Mask Boost) vs. 252 HP / 20 Def Incineroar: 204-240 (100.9 – 118.8%) — guaranteed OHKO
220 Atk Ogerpon-Cornerstone Ivy Cudgel (1.2x Mask Boost) vs. 252 HP / 188 Def Incineroar: 170-204 (84.1 – 100.9%) — 6.3% chance to OHKO
The HP and Defence investment are the only remaining calculations of interest. Normally on a spread with 4 HP EVs, Urshifu-RS is a guaranteed OHKO with 3 Surging Strikes hits, making it hard to justify bringing Ogerpon when it may have been a key piece in the puzzle. Initially I shifted EVs to make it a 6.3% chance to OHKO but even that felt shaky. Once I knew I had loads of EVs to spare after reducing the Atk and Speed, I trickled in HP and Defence EVs until it came up as a guaranteed 2HKO, thus, giving me security in my matchups where Ogerpon was strong, but also feared Urshifu. The 4 in SpD is dumped because it was free after the physical calculations.
252 Atk Mystic Water Urshifu-Rapid Strike Surging Strikes (3 hits) vs. 20 HP / 44 Def Ogerpon-Cornerstone on a critical hit: 126-153 (79.7 – 96.8%) — guaranteed 2HKO
Gallade @ Clear Amulet
Ability: Sharpness
Level: 50
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 212 Atk / 12 Def / 28 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 SpePsycho CutSacred SwordWide GuardTrick RoomA staple to the trends of Irish Trick Room teams, and a pseudo-mascot of Brian Collins, Gallade is the perfect way to round out the six. Primarily, it fills the important role of having another physical attacker to avoid the sheer weakness the team has to Snarl, and has the added bonus of not only the 1.3x Psychic Terrain boost to its STAB Psycho Cut, but also an additional 1.5x boost from the new ability Sharpness. A secondary holistic feature that bode well for Gallade was its lack of common usage made it hard for some opponents to know what it normally does, sometimes even mistaking it to be a naturally fast Pokémon
Wide Guard allowed for a lot of adaptation in the face of a spread-move heavy metagame. In passive scenarios, such as setting up Trick Room, Wide Guard helped play a lot of mind games with my opponents; this would either force them to play heavily into a Wide Guard, only to get redirected by Indeedee’s Follow Me, or they would play to heavily into Follow Me and have their spread-moves blocked by Wide Guard. With the addition of Tera Fire, my opponent’s were faced with an extra dimension of predicting if I would opt to Terastalize to be able to safely go for Follow Me + Trick Room in front of Pokémon like Flutter Mane.
Clear Amulet is hands down the best item to have on Gallade. Where some have opted to hold Scope Lens to further boost the critical hit rate of Psycho Cut (as well as the base boost to Sacred Sword), it felt that the reliance on chance was too slow for what the team wanted to do, especially when Sacred Sword wasn’t as high a critical hit rate. With Clear Amulet, Gallade could hold its own against opposing Incineroar because they would drop to a Sacred Sword, if not a rare roll. If not knocking out Incineroar, the pressure it exerts forces a switch, and the lack of Atk drop means that Gallade can put even more pressure on any Pokémon with a fragile physical Defence, such as Flutter Mane.
212+ Atk Sharpness Gallade Sacred Sword vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Incineroar: 204-240 (100.9 – 118.8%) — guaranteed OHKO (252+ Def is never an OHKO, but that was way too uncommon to worry about)
212+ Atk Sharpness Gallade Psycho Cut vs. 156 HP / 124 Def Flutter Mane in Psychic Terrain: 160-189 (106.6 – 126%) — guaranteed OHKO
The EV spread has seen 3 iterations since the teams conception. The original paste that Brian, Ryan, and Conor used had the HP and Defence EVs finetuned to handle oncoming damage from most Rock Slide users and then pressure back with a Sacred Sword, which was more often than not a Super Effective hit (Fighting -> Rock). Following the team reaching my hands, Brian told me that the Rock Slide calculations weren’t as prominent, so we settled on a set with 244 HP/252 Atk/12 Def to maximise damage and have some resemblance of physical bulk. The spread that I eventually ended up using for most of my tenure with the team was primarily focused around getting a 2HKO on bulkier Raging Bolt.
Following trends on Pikalytics and MunchStats, I calculated the damage of Psycho Cut into Raging Bolt with 192 HP/132 Def. With 212+ Atk, in Psychic Terrain Psycho Cut deals a minimum of exactly 50% (rounded down from 50.8%); without Terrain it can deal 39.2-46.8%, however, I was comfortable with this because it was as close to 50% as I could get on the high roll, and I always knew that I could pray for the raised critical hit rate to do extra damage, nor was was I getting any higher knockout chances at 252 EVs. If opposing Raging Bolts weren’t Tera Fairy (or hadn’t yet done so/were unable to), I could always rely on Sacred Sword, which was a flat 50% minimum raw damage percentage.
212+ Atk Sharpness Gallade Psycho Cut vs. 192 HP / 132 Def Raging Bolt: 88-105 (39.2 – 46.8%) — guaranteed 3HKO
212+ Atk Sharpness Gallade Psycho Cut vs. 192 HP / 132 Def Raging Bolt in Psychic Terrain: 114-135 (50.8 – 60.2%) — guaranteed 2HKO
212+ Atk Sharpness Gallade Sacred Sword vs. 192 HP / 132 Def Raging Bolt: 112-133 (50 – 59.3%) — guaranteed 2HKO
212+ Atk Sharpness Gallade Psycho Cut vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Flutter Mane in Psychic Terrain on a critical hit: 204-240 (125.9 – 148.1%) — guaranteed OHKO (81.3% OHKO chance w/o Terrain; 2HKO (83.3% – 98.7% w/o crit; 2HKO (64.8% – 76.5%) w/o either boost)
With less Atk investment, I was free to bump the HP up to 252 for maximum comfort and coverage on the defensive field. With 44 EVs left to toy with, I initially dumped 36 into Defence and 4 into SpD (with Brave min Speed and no need for SpA, 4 EVs will always remain unused). In testing I saw no issue with dumping EVs because Gallade was mostly attacking or being supportive, not both at once, but I did notice issues with facing into Flutter Mane. Whilst it is fairly obvious that Flutter Mane will OHKO Gallade unless it underwent Terastallization, I wanted to see if there was any smidge of a chance that it could survive naturally, or at least take less damage from the super strong variants after opting for Tera. Luckily enough, the amount of EVs I had remaining were just enough to make some Flutter Mane Dazzling Gleam or Moonblast a roll rather than an OHKO – what’s even better is that it was even enough to be a <50% chance! I wasn’t too worried about losing out on physical Defence because Gallade is quite frail physically and the initial variant had 12 as well but with less HP.
252+ SpA Flutter Mane Moonblast vs. 252 HP / 28 SpD Gallade: 158-188 (90.2 – 107.4%) — 43.8% chance to OHKO
Closing Thoughts
Overall, this team has been my favourite to use all season. Where I enjoyed the competitive strength and viability of other teams I have used, this one tops the charts by offering the added element of enjoying the Pokémon, rather than being purely driven by the success rate. I am glad I chose it to be the one to round out Regulation F, if not my ultimate run for the 2024 season-proper.
I’d like to properly thank Brian Collins, again, for teaching me as many tips and tricks with this team as he possibly could, especially the late night calls in Team Ireland Discord right before I’d catch a train to an event!
As for the future of the team, I feel that the right person and right Pokémon choices could continue its validity going into Regulation G. If you read Brian and Ben’s report, you will see that both Lilypad Bros and Team Ireland were constantly adapting the team to best fit the metagame environments and the personal tastes of each user, so it isn’t a one trick pony void of change. Personally, I have entertained the idea of implementing Lunala or Dawn Wings Necrozma over Hatterene to add a restricted Pokémon that both deals damage with Expanding Force and sets up Trick Room, as well as the ability to go with Power Herb + Meteor Beam for a Choice Specs boost to Expanding Force, without the drawback of being locked, and the ability to hit Incineroar. Other changes see Gallade swapped out for Calyrex-Ice, filling the same role of slow Clear Amulet physical attacker but with the added bonus of cumulative Attack boosts per KO.
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