Hi everyone, I’m hihatvgc and I’m happy to write here about the team I used to go 5-3 at the European International Championships 2025. This team is very special, both in the metagame as it features an extremely uncommon restricted in Ho-Oh, and to me personally as it is the culmination of 10 months of practice, experience and research. Below I detail the story of how I came to build around Ho-Oh, was crazy enough not to change my mind, finally settled on the EUIC team and performed in the tournament itself. Thank you to DevonCorpPress for giving me this opportunity, and I hope you all enjoy!

Part 1: Deciding on the Restricted

I remember around April 2024, I had just finished EUIC 2024. It was Regulation F at the time and although I enjoyed the tournament, I had been looking forward to Regulation G for a while. In many ways it was a completely new format - single restricted for one, but also added Terastallisation, Koraidon/Miraidon and new items like the Clear Amulet into the mix, which to me made things interesting. The format didn’t start officially until May, but I had no plans to go to any more regionals that season, so I decided to get a headstart.

I had a lot of fun with hard Trick Room teams in the past, so I decided to try the newly buffed Calyrex-Ice with the Clear Amulet and Dialga-Origin. I had a lot of success with them but found them to be too predictable and linear, and too similar to my Liverpool 2024 team, so it didn’t really feel like a new experience. I also wanted to try Zamazenta and Koraidon, as I had Shield and Scarlet and really enjoyed using them. Upon using Zamazenta however, I really didn’t like how its nerfed ability forced it to stay on the field - it played very differently to how I used it in Shield. Koraidon I liked the most out of the four, as it opened up so many ways to play with its ability setting the Harsh Sunlight. However, I also didn’t enjoy how dependent Koraidon was on the weather to do damage and support its team.

Three things became very clear. First, I wanted a restricted that wasn’t required to sit on the field - ideally one that could switch in and out of the battle often, as this best matched my playstyle. Second, I didn’t want to be held back by temporary effects like Trick Room and Harsh Sunlight, preferring to take games at my own pace without putting a timer on my offensive presence. Third, Calyrex-Ice and Zamazenta were the dominant restrictions at the time, so having a way to beat both of them seemed essential to succeed. I started to wonder if there was a restricted strong into both, maybe a Fire-type, that liked to switch around and could play games slowly…

Part 2: Taking Flight

I had decided on my Restricted of choice, but what next? There was almost no information on building Ho-Oh teams as the top 3 restrictions were quickly becoming clear - Caly-I, Caly-S, and Zama. Everyone was gravitating towards these, and I was left with the odd team that I had encountered on the SD ladder, normally running Clear Amulet and Tera Grass, so that’s what I started with. I had also heard the odd rumour of Ting-Lu partnering well with Ho-Oh, and in practice I grew to love this combination - Ting-Lu solved the problems I had with Caly-S. As this pairing was weak to Water-types, I added Amoonguss to give me a reliable answer inton Urshifu-RS, which was establishing itself as the best non-restricted in the game. Suddenly I had a core that could deal with the top 3 Restricteds in the meta, which I dubbed HAT. I added Araquanid and Farigiraf to provide useful support, and Urshifu-RS to deal with the occasional Terapagos, then joined a grassroots online tournament to test it out:

I was very happy with this result. It confirmed my suspicions that the HAT core was insanely strong into the meta, and I knew I could change the last three slots over time to improve the team even further. As I practiced, I became increasingly confident that I could win tournaments, potentially even a regional. After all, I had a good matchup into every popular team!

Right?

Part 3: The Bike

The first official regional changed everything. Miraidon winning put it on everyone’s radar for the first time, and EVERYONE wanted to ride the bike. Players who watched Rajan Bal’s team report also knew that he and Aaron Traylor built the team together, with Aaron opting for Ditto and Rajan going with Ogerpon-Cornerstone. Until now, almost no-one had been using the Cornerstone form, but this contrast emphasised its strength on the team. Both Miraidon and Cornerstone were death sentences for Ho-Oh and it seemed like, almost overnight, the few people in the world that were still using Ho-Oh dropped it entirely. I’m not sure why I didn’t join them, but I knew this was the most fun I’d had with a team for a long time, and it had done well enough before the regional that I knew I could find a way to deal with it.

Consistent practice into the team led me to discover that Ting-Lu was extremely strong if I could deal with Cornerstone, and I came across Tinkaton, which could OHKO Cornerstone through Sturdy with Mold Breaker Gigaton Hammer, Fake Out through Armor Tail and even set Stealth Rock to amplify the Regenerator benefits. As the months passed, I found I was beating Rajan’s team almost every time, between Tera Grass on Ho-Oh, Tinkaton and the HAT core. I didn’t have the money to travel to regionals, but when the 2025 season started on July 1st I travelled to what was believed to be the first League Challenge in the world (they were called Premier Challenges in the 2024 season.) I went undefeated and won, making me perhaps, for a few funny hours, the No.1 ranked player in the world!

Like every other player, I was anticipating Worlds as it would be the last Reg G tournament for a long time, and whatever won there would stick for months.

AGAIN!? Not only did Miraidon win, but almost everything on this team seemed to threaten Ho-Oh in some way - Miraidon, Urshifu-RS and Iron Hands could all OHKO it in some way, and Ogerpon-H could 2HKO if I went for Tera Grass. But I had come too far - I wasn’t planning to stop now.

Part 4: The Dark Ages

There was a new Regulation (H) in town, and Reg G was disappearing fast. I managed to win another local before the change, but there quickly became no official way to practice Reg G - the Showdown ladder vanished, and all that was left were grassroots tournaments organised by players. These were good practice in theory, and I managed to top cut a few, but the restricting time zones meant most opponents were from neighbouring countries, which caused metagames in different regions to become isolated from each other.

I was very busy for the next few months, but when I had free time I would go to Reg H tournaments or come up with ways to improve the Ho-Oh team. By the time Reg G came back around in 2025, I was running Raging Bolt and Cornerstone, mainly for Kyogre and Hearthflame respectively. I had a team I was happy with going into Birmingham 2025:

My result was a double-edged sword. On one hand, I won 4 out of 5 of my non-Miraidon matchups (the unfortunate exception being a Tera Fire Calyrex-Ice Rain team piloted by Audric David), so I knew I was strong into most of the meta. On the other hand, I lost ALL THREE of my Miraidon matchups, and finished 4-4. My attempts to build in Miraidon answers had not worked.

(And to add insult to injury:)

Part 5: Virtual Insanity

I reflected on my result. Had those Miraidon been Zamazenta, I’m confident I would have done a lot better. But simply hoping not to face what was now the most common restricted in the format was not a viable strategy. I had to find a way to beat this team in time for EUIC.

I had a look at what the three Miraidon teams I faced had in common. They were all slightly different, but there was one key similarity: all three had Tera Fairy. I realised that the partners for Miraidon were not the problem, but rather the Miraidon Tera - previously I could use Ting-Lu to pin the Tera Electric Miraidon, but that was not the case with this team. At last, I had a plan: find teammates that could deal with Miraidon regardless of Tera.

Ho-Oh, Amoonguss and Urshifu-RS were consistently strong throughout Birmingham, so I kept those three. Taran Birdee recommended that I try Chien-Pao to improve the matchup, so I swapped out Ting-Lu. I found that Chien-Pao helped a lot against Miraidon teams, but sacrificing Ting-Lu meant much worse matchups into Calyrex-Shadow, Lunala and Eternatus to name a few. It was part of the HAT core that held the team together, so I swapped it back in. In hindsight I could have used both Ting-Lu and Chien-Pao together, but doubling up on Dark-types didn’t sit right with me at the time and Sword of Ruin actively hindered the team’s bulky playstyle.

I tried to find combinations that could deal with specifically Miraidon for the last two slots. I can only describe those few days as a mental breakdown, but I will quickly go through some of the pairings that actually worked:

By running Tera Normal Life Orb Regieleki next to Helping Hand Dusclops, I could outspeed everything on the main Miraidon team and OHKO with Explosion, before walling most of the team with Dusclops;

By using an extremely specific combination of sets on Iron Leaves and Iron Boulder, I could theoretically beat the entire main Miraidon team;

By combining Tera Psychic Choice Scarf Iron Crown with Helping Hand Indeedee, I could OHKO Miraidon with Expanding Force, as well as most of the team.

The first two combos felt incredibly situational in practice however - they were literally only strong into the main Miraidon team. I liked Iron Crown/Indeedee the most, and ended up running those two for the Global Challenge I. I finished positive, but the pairing felt too predictable and weak into Incineroar. Although the damage output was impressive from Iron Crown, I also wasn’t a fan of using Indeedee on the team and in general (this might have been partially because I didn’t have time to fully train the Indeedee before the tournament hahaha).

Iron Crown however, I was a fan of. Choice Scarf in particular felt like a really underexplored way to use it - most of the Iron Crown I had seen so far were running Booster Energy, but that required you to drop Sp. Atk EVs in order to get the Speed boost from Quark Drive. That Speed boost is also lost entirely when Iron Crown switched out, and as mentioned previously, switching is an important part of both mine and the team’s playstyle. Riley Factura later used a Life Orb Iron Crown to some success, but this was dependent on running Miraidon as a partner or it would be too slow. The Iron Trio (for lack of a better name) feel underexplored generally when restricteds are running around, seeing as Quark Drive gives them an inherently good matchup into Miraidon. I would urge more people to experiment with them!

As I was no longer running Indeedee, I added Cornerstone back in to provide redirection with Follow Me, as well as to help against Miraidon and Hearthflame. After much discussion with Vikram T. (who finished Top 8 in the Seniors Division with Iron Crown - go check out his team!), I decided to change the Tera type to Ground and add Tera Blast, giving me a roll to OHKO Miraidon before Tera and an Electric-type immunity - in addition, the Steel-type gave me ways to survive Draco Meteor and Dazzling Gleam, as well as a guaranteed OHKO into Tera Fairy Miraidon with Tachyon Cutter.

I practiced hard with the team, to great success. I reached 1400s on Showdown, beating players ranked in the Top 500 - I even beat one of my Miraidon opponents from Birmingham 2025, who was running Miraidon again! I turned to one of the best Miraidon players in the UK, James Clough, to figure out a game plan into the main Miraidon team. For the first time in months, I finally felt like I could consistently deal with Miraidon. I also practiced with some of the best UK players for each restricted just days before EUIC (shoutout to Gem Kiddle, who is now technically the best Eternatus player in the world!) At last, the team felt ready, and I prepared for the tournament.

The Team

After initial testing, I realised that that most people running Ho-Oh were using it as a worse version of Caly-Ice or Koraidon - a bulky physical restricted that prioritised hitting hard. I found that by playing to Ho-Oh’s supportive strengths, I could keep the team alive better than any other restricted. My philosophy became building a team of "mini-restricteds" that Ho-Oh could make bulkier with Life Dew, instead of using the team to support the restricted's damage as much as possible like many single-restricted teams do. Calyrex gets access to life dew, but Caly-Ice has no room for it and Caly-Shadow can't benefit from it nearly as much. Sacred Fire was also a unique tool that let me permanently reduce opposing physical damage for the team while negating opposing Leftovers recovery.

I wanted Ho-Oh to be able to consistently beat Zamazenta and Caly-Ice, so I used an extremely bulky spread that could deal with both kinds of teams. Ice-type damage was a problem for me in practice, so I wanted Ho-Oh to be able to deal with attackers such as Chien-Pao too.

+1 156+ Def Zamazenta-Crowned Body Press vs. 252 HP / 244 Def Ho-Oh: 48-57 (22.5 - 26.7%) -- possible 5HKO after Leftovers recovery

4 Atk Zamazenta-Crowned Behemoth Bash vs. 252 HP / 244 Def Ho-Oh: 29-34 (13.6 - 15.9%) -- possibly the worst move ever

252+ Atk Calyrex-Ice Rider Glacial Lance vs. 252 HP / 244 Def Ho-Oh: 85-102 (39.9 - 47.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

252+ Atk Sword of Ruin Chien-Pao Icicle Crash vs. 252 HP / 244 Def Ho-Oh: 85-102 (39.9 - 47.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

By running Leftovers and Protect alongside Life Dew, I had much more longevity and the ability to stall in a lot of matchups, which won me a lot of endgames in practice.

This is a relatively standard Amoonguss set, notably I ran Sludge Bomb at Liverpool 2025 but noted a lot of moments when the healing from Pollen Puff would have helped, and in practice it definitely did. Amoonguss also gave me an important way to deal with both Rapid Strike and Electric-types for Ho-Oh, as well as a win condition in certain matchups with Spore. Regenerator alongside Ho-Oh also gave me interesting ways to bring back games and in rare cases, even counter stall. As the meta developed, Amoonguss became invaluable into the Caly/Dozo/Weezing teams that were everywhere, as it could deal with Dondozo and absorb Toxic Spikes. With the combination of Tera Grass Leftovers Ho-Oh, Sacred Fire, Life Dew, Rocky Helmet Amoonguss, Rage Powder, Spore and Pollen Puff, as well as Protect and Regenerator on both Ho-Oh and Amoonguss AND bulky spreads on both, I could stall out almost any Dondozo I came across after Tatusgiri’s Commander Ability had activated.

+2 196+ Def Dondozo Body Press vs. 252 HP / 204 Def Amoonguss: 45-54 (20.3 - 24.4%) -- possible 6HKO after Sitrus Berry recovery

+2 4 Atk Dondozo Wave Crash vs. 252 HP / 204 Def Amoonguss: 71-84 (32.1 - 38%) -- guaranteed 4HKO after Sitrus Berry recovery

+2 4 Atk Dondozo Order Up vs. 252 HP / 204 Def Amoonguss: 63-75 (28.5 - 33.9%) -- 52.75% chance to 4HKO after Sitrus Berry recovery

For a long time I was running Heavy Slam in the Snarl slot, then I was running Heavy Slam in the Earthquake slot, but shortly before EUIC I decided to run both Earthquake and Snarl together. This gave me both a fast and slow option into many bulky teams, and really helped with Raging Bolt and Caly-Shadow. The spread was also immensely bulky and benefitted greatly from Life Dew. Notably it helped against Regidrago teams and could take hits from Miraidon really well.

252+ SpA Dragon Fang Dragon's Maw Regidrago Helping Hand Dragon Energy (150 BP) vs. 76 HP / 252 SpD Assault Vest Vessel of Ruin Ting-Lu: 108-127 (45 - 52.9%) -- 26.56% chance to 2HKO

252+ SpA Dragon Fang Dragon's Maw Regidrago Helping Hand Draco Meteor vs. 76 HP / 252 SpD Assault Vest Vessel of Ruin Ting-Lu: 126-148 (52.5 - 61.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

244+ SpA Choice Specs Hadron Engine Tera-Fairy Miraidon Dazzling Gleam vs. 76 HP / 252 SpD Assault Vest Vessel of Ruin Ting-Lu: 104-126 (43.3 - 52.5%) -- 13.67% chance to 2HKO

244+ SpA Choice Specs Hadron Engine Tera-Fairy Miraidon Draco Meteor vs. 76 HP / 252 SpD Assault Vest Vessel of Ruin Ting-Lu: 114-135 (47.5 - 56.2%) -- 81.25% chance to 2HKO

244+ SpA Choice Specs Hadron Engine Miraidon Electro Drift vs. 76 HP / 252 SpD Assault Vest Vessel of Ruin Tera-Poison Ting-Lu in Electric Terrain: 114-135 (47.5 - 56.2%) -- 81.25% chance to 2HKO

244+ SpA Choice Specs Hadron Engine Miraidon Volt Switch vs. 76 HP / 252 SpD Assault Vest Vessel of Ruin Tera-Poison Ting-Lu in Electric Terrain: 79-94 (32.9 - 39.1%) -- 99.83% chance to 3HKO

This spread was my crown jewel going into the tournament. I spent a long time developing it, and it ended up with a ridiculous amount of important calcs. Here are some notable ones.

108+ Atk Mystic Water Urshifu-Rapid Strike Surging Strikes (3 hits) vs. 252 HP / 196+ Def Incineroar on a critical hit: 198-240 (98 - 118.8%) -- 99.76% chance to OHKO

252 SpA Life Orb Calyrex-Shadow Rider Psychic vs. 140 HP / 252 SpD Tera-Normal Urshifu-Rapid Strike in Psychic Terrain: 165-196 (85.4 - 101.5%) -- 6.25% chance to OHKO

252 SpA Life Orb Calyrex-Shadow Rider Expanding Force (120 BP) vs. 140 HP / 252 SpD Tera-Normal Urshifu-Rapid Strike in Psychic Terrain: 165-195 (85.4 - 101%) -- 6.25% chance to OHKO

It could also OHKO even bulky Caly-Shadow with Helping Hand Surging Strikes when I was running Indeedee. With Tera Normal, it proved to be one of my strongest answers into Caly-Shadow teams, and balance comps in particular struggled to deal with it in practice. Tera Normal also gave me more ways to deal with Rillaboom and Raging Bolt, which I was mostly faster than already.

This was a very interesting mon to run calcs for. With max Sp.Atk Quark Drive would give me the Sp.Atk boost in Electric Terrain and not the Speed Boost. What was great about this was that Choice Scarf didn’t affect the Quark Drive boost, allowing me to be both fast and strong outside of Psychic Terrain! As a result, I could outspeed Miraidon and still have a strong matchup into it.

252+ SpA Quark Drive Tera-Ground Iron Crown Tera Blast vs. 44 HP / 12 SpD Miraidon: 164-194 (90.6 - 107.1%) -- 43.75% chance to OHKO

252+ SpA Quark Drive Iron Crown Psychic vs. 44 HP / 12 SpD Miraidon: 93-109 (51.3 - 60.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ SpA Quark Drive Iron Crown Tachyon Cutter (2 hits) vs. 44 HP / 12 SpD Tera-Fairy Miraidon: 204-244 (112.7 - 134.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO

244+ SpA Choice Specs Hadron Engine Miraidon Draco Meteor vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Iron Crown: 117-138 (70.9 - 83.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

244+ SpA Choice Specs Hadron Engine Tera-Fairy Miraidon Dazzling Gleam vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Tera-Ground Iron Crown: 108-127 (65.4 - 76.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

It was somewhat reliant on predictions, as many of the defensive calcs against Miraidon not shown here were OHKOs. However it gave me valuable tools in the matchup that I could use to pin or establish endgames. Iron Crown was also useful into other matchups too, notably Rapid Strike, Cornerstone and Tera Fairy Caly-Ice. By running 252 Speed I could also outspeed Adamant Choice Scarf Rapid Strike by 1 point, which was crucial in many practice games.

252+ SpA Iron Crown Psychic vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Urshifu-Rapid Strike: 242-288 (137.5 - 163.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252+ Atk Mystic Water Urshifu-Rapid Strike Surging Strikes (3 hits) vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Iron Crown on a critical hit: 135-162 (81.3 - 97.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ SpA Iron Crown Tachyon Cutter (2 hits) vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Ogerpon-Cornerstone: 184-220 (118.7 - 141.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO

252+ SpA Iron Crown Psychic vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Ogerpon-Cornerstone: 84-99 (54.1 - 63.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ SpA Iron Crown Tachyon Cutter (2 hits) vs. 252 HP / 20 SpD Tera-Fairy Calyrex-Ice Rider: 144-172 (69.5 - 83%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ Atk Calyrex-Ice Rider High Horsepower vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Iron Crown: 142-168 (85.5 - 101.2%) -- 12.5% chance to OHKO

The Cornerstone shown here is very standard - I initially ran Taunt over Power Whip to better deal with Caly-Ice, but found I was doing quite well into it anyway and Power Whip gave me another tool for dealing with Rapid Strike, and helped against Ursaluna. I also tried Adamant for a short while but decided that Jolly was more reliable as a big part of why I was using Cornerstone was for dealing with Hearthflame, who were more likely to outspeed if I went with Adamant. In practice, Tera Rock was actually very useful too in certain matchups, specifically the Caly-Ice/Roaring Moon team used by Justin Tang and Shiliang Tang. The team did not have many tools into Roaring Moon, and going for Tera Rock allowed me to take Glacial Lance, Knock Off and Acrobatics relatively well and hit hard in return.

116+ Atk Calyrex-Ice Rider Glacial Lance vs. +1 4 HP / 0 Def Tera-Rock Ogerpon-Cornerstone: 72-85 (46.1 - 54.4%) -- 55.08% chance to 2HKO

252 Atk Tera-Rock Ogerpon-Cornerstone Ivy Cudgel (1.2x Mask Boost) vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Calyrex-Ice Rider: 184-220 (88.8 - 106.2%) -- 37.5% chance to OHKO

84 Atk Roaring Moon Knock Off vs. +1 4 HP / 0 Def Tera-Rock Ogerpon-Cornerstone: 42-49 (26.9 - 31.4%) -- guaranteed 4HKO

84 Atk Roaring Moon Acrobatics (110 BP) vs. +1 4 HP / 0 Def Tera-Rock Ogerpon-Cornerstone: 22-27 (14.1 - 17.3%) -- possible 6HKO

252 Atk Tera-Rock Ogerpon-Cornerstone Ivy Cudgel (1.2x Mask Boost) vs. 148 HP / 116 Def Roaring Moon: 146-174 (73.3 - 87.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Tournament Run

Round 1: James Scoot [UK]

Typically Zamazenta was a good matchup, so I thought it would be an easy start for the tournament. However the combination of Tornadus and Urshifu-RS was not particularly common on this type of team, so it ended up being harder than expected. It was taken to Game 3, but ultimately I was able to burn Zamazenta in the endgame and stall it out with Life Dew, winning me the set.

Round 2: Nicholas Rotti [IT]

This match was probably the hardest one in the tournament for me. The only spread moves on my team were Snarl and Earthquake on Ting-Lu, and my opponent had Caly-Shadow with Tera Grass and Giga Drain. On top of that, they had two redirectors in Clefairy and Smeargle. As a result, I basically had no way to properly damage Caly-Shadow after Tera Grass, and it was free to go for Nasty Plot and sweep through my team with Astral Barrage. Suffice to say I lost very quickly this round.

Round 3: Winter Berry [UK]

I had prepared for different Caly-Ice teams a lot, so this one felt decent. The combination of Urshifu-RS and Caly-Ice was problematic, but fortunately I could deal with most of the team using Sacred Fire burns. Iron Crown also helped me with a lot of the team here, as the combination of Psychic and Tachyon Cutter could hit my opponent’s whole team quite hard. I managed to win this one as a result.

Round 4: Pau Riera [ES]

This match was extremely tense, and there was a lot of variance on both sides. Earthquake on Ting-Lu of all things was the MVP of the set, and in the end it came down to waking up early from an Amoonguss Spore and pulling off Earthquake at the right time for the win. Another case of a matchup that should’ve been very easy, but made difficult by the presence of a specific issue for Ho-Oh (in this case, Cornerstone).

By this point, I was 3-1 and feeling quite confident about my performance so far. No big mistakes were made, and my one loss was to a team I don’t think I could have beaten without some absurd crits or misplays on my opponent’s end. The day was not over yet though.

Round 5: Fabian Braun [DE]

This is where things started to get problematic. Groudon was a matchup that once again should’ve been fine for me, but it was made difficult by two things - Cornerstone (of course) and Breaking Swipe on the Gouging Fire. If you recall, I had chosen to run Leftovers on my Ho-Oh instead of Clear Amulet, which in my opinion was better most of the time. Even against Intimidate, I could just switch out, recover with Regenerator and remove the stat drop. However when the opponent is free to spam Breaking Swipe every turn, it’s not that easy to remove the drop, and it resulted in my Ho-Oh, Ting-Lu and Cornerstone doing much less damage than needed. I lost Game 1, and only won Game 2 thanks to a misplay by my opponent.

Game 3 came very close, and by the end it was Ho-Oh/Cornerstone vs Gouging Fire/Groudon. I had a clear way to win - outspeed the Clear Amulet Booster Attack Gouging Fire, OHKO Groudon with Cornerstone and stall out the Gouging Fire with Ho-Oh. Suddenly the Gouging Fire moved first though, and I realised my mistake. This was a Howl Gouging Fire, and last time I had seen Protosynthesis activate was after a Howl boost, causing it to boost Attack, when in actuality it was Booster Speed. Looking back, I think I had other ways to win in the endgame using Protect or Spiky Shield, but went for what seemed like the easy win when I should’ve stopped to consider the potential of Booster Speed. It was a rough loss, as I would’ve been in a really good spot had I won, but I moved onto the next round.

Round 6: Jordan Milton [UK]

I match into someone I’d been talking to earlier about their Kyogre team, and immediately I know I’m at a disadvantage. Kyogre was originally my worst matchup after Miraidon, and I had been prepping way more for Miraidon than I had for Kyogre. I lose pretty quickly, only realising too late how I might have maybe dealt with the team, in what felt at the time like an unwinnable matchup.

Having gone 3-1 to 3-3 so quickly, I left to regroup. I knew my own team well, and I knew I could probably win the next two matches, so I figured I just needed a break. I came back about 20 minutes later intent on reaching the goal I had set for myself at the start of the tournament - to finish 5-3.

Round 7: Anilson da Cunha Cardoso [UK]

Eternatus! My ridiculously specific matchup prep had paid off. I knew exactly what I had to do to win, and the combination of Ting-Lu and Iron Crown carried me to victory quite comfortably. It was a good boost of confidence after the last two losses, and I moved onto the final round.

Round 8: Tai Hei Yu [HK]

It was a really scary team - they had not only Cornerstone, but Roaring Moon, something that had been popping up recently and that my team was not too great at dealing with. It was probably my closest set along with Round 4, but in the end it came down to my Ho-Oh and Cornerstone against their Ursaluna. With no way to hit both Ho-Oh and Cornerstone at the same time, they had to pick their target and I just about managed to win.

That’s how I ended 5-3 at EUIC 2025 with Ho-Oh and Iron Crown! I was one of two players to go 5-3 with Ho-Oh, which was Ho-Oh’s best record in the tournament (alongside Jinkyum Kim from Canada, another great Ho-Oh player in his own right who used Pikachu and Kingambit - I’d recommend checking out his team too!). My goal going in was ultimately to show that Ho-Oh could compete with the top restricteds in the format, and I hope I managed to show that here. Although I didn’t end up facing any Miraidon, I feel confident that I could’ve beaten the Worlds team given the chance after all my practice. Feel free to try out the team for yourself and thanks for reading my Team Report!

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Rising from the Ashes: An EUIC 2025 Team Report