SS Monotype:
Choice Scarf Bisharp:
https://pokepast.es/88b5c70b7a9886fe
This team is probably the most comfortable steel team I like using right now and I used it against shiba and jonfilch. Choice scarf bisharp is great against steel's natural weaknesses in ground and fire. The combination of toxic ferrothorn + toxic excadrill and bisharp means landorus-t has a hard time setting up if you play well. Stone edge bisharp against fire is self explanatory, and even though it doesn't kill cinderace from full, it leaves it at the range where aegislash's shadow sneak can beat it. I had substitute against jonfilch but changed it to shadow sneak later on because it made more sense. Shed shell excadrill is because electric started farming again so having insurance against it became top priority. I got owned vs shiba steel vs fire but I also got outplayed and didn't take enough initiative.
Archeops Volturn:
https://pokepast.es/4857f21059c655a5
Archeops is underrated role compression, it has a really good speed tier that is capable of setting stealth rock and using switcheroo against pokemon like calm mind clefable which galarian zapdos cannot do. The combination of archeops, thundurus-t, and choice band landorus-t overwhelms opposing teams very easily through clicking voltturn, and galarian moltres at the back is always capable of sweeping. Landorus-t has rest to beat substitute zapdos and zeraora long term, although I might be tripping against zeraora. I used this team against shiba for game 1 and archeops had rock blast for arctozolt against ice, but I decided stone edge + stealth rock with double steel STAB celesteela should be good enough for ice and stealth rock is needed to beat metagame titans in kyurem and galarian moltres.
Guessing games:
https://pokepast.es/5d33179a8c700991
I used this team against shiba for our game 3. Fairy has always been one of those types to me where it's heavy on catching things off guard despite including the same 8 pokemon every time. It constantly evolves quickly because of that and you see new techs popping up everywhere. This team's concept was to mimick attribute's fairy team and to use it to surprise the opponent, mainly with the klefki, tapu bulu, and azumarill sets. Klefki's set is something I've been really enjoying because switcheroo with lagging tail messes up almost every setup ever and just faster pokemon general like volcarona, regieleki, tapu koko, spectrier, and excadrill. Imprison with defog and spikes gives the fairy team the upper hand in the spikes trade which is huge. You completely shut down the opposing team from defogging, leaving types like poison and water in a sticky situation and the types with excadrill get crippled with switcheroo and beat by clefable. Screens tapu koko is nice because tapu koko isn't even a great offensive pokemon either way and can use its speed and recovery to set screens multiple times throughout a match. The tapu bulu set helps against psychic where you can bait the victini with occa berry and beat it with high horsepower; synthesis makes up for the lack of leftovers recovery. Encore azumarill lets you beat corviknight as well as set up against steel if you get it in against a spikes turn from ferrothorn, kings shield or substitute turn from aegislash, or protect turn from celesteela. Overall, I've come to enjoy fairy as a type that can secure wins in tournaments due to its combination of having a lot of tricks up its sleeve-pretty much every single pokemon on the type can run more than one set and tapu koko, cleable, and tapu bulu probably have like 5. Azumarill or klefki catching the opponent off guard on a turn can easily seal the game. The steel matchup is exaggerated because melmetal gets worn down by spikes, scizor can't do anything to clefable once psychic terrain is set, and azumarill can instantly sweep with one turn if you get encore off.
Togekiss bulky offense:
https://pokepast.es/8eb126147f96554c
I used this against jonfilch for our game 3. It's pretty standard team with togekiss to support the sweepers defensively. Wish + heal bell means you can be a lot more reckless with landorus-t and galarian moltres in game, for example taking rotom-w's burn against electric or letting galarian moltres get badly poisoned against steel. This team looks really similar to the archeops team posted above, but it's played very differently where the archeops team is momentum based and this one is focused on slower progress making.
Toxtricity offense:
https://pokepast.es/ecc13d7f8138bd63
Toxtricity electric with choice scarf tapu koko for speed control that I used against floss week 1. Toxtricity is cool because it breaks through midgrounds in matchups like poison ground and water while being great against fairy and grass, as well as aegislash. Brave bird on choice scarf tapu koko is for volcarona since you always OHKO. Rotom-w is fast because there isn't any alolan raichu on this team to beat nidoking. Zapdos is toxic + hurricane for ground since you beat everything besides excadrill which gets trapped by magnezone.
SM Monotype:
Togekiss balance:
https://pokepast.es/c3020c89ddef8cca
I wanted to use togekiss against mateeus because I thought he was going to dragon me. Mateeus and I agreed that dragon was not that consistent but in my eyes, it does very well against the gigafat teams I spam in SM like water, poison, and flying, so I wanted insurance for it. Togekiss beats kommo-o and kyurem-black in one slot; yache berry lets you live ice beam after taking chip and roosting damage off. Yache berry is also nice for pokemon like greninja and weavile to paralyze with thunder wave. I'm a huge fan of togekiss in monotype because it's a really nice glue pokemon and here it beats a lot of other balances too like water, flying, and poison. Yache thundurus-t is for deoxys-s and greninja, usually I run choice scarf tornadus-t to beat it but here I had no room so I had to compress. Overall, this team is so weird to use even though I think togekiss is a cool concept because of how awkward mantine is in a generation without heavy duty boots. It resembles flying teams from 2018-2019 era SM Monotype heavily with the mega charizard y + mantine + choice scarf landorus-t cores.
GastroEmp balance:
https://pokepast.es/f1dd7502f498b239
I love gastroemp because it covers weaknesses really well as a core. Gastrodon beats electric and has clear smog against calm mind clefable while empoleon beats ice while helping against a lot of other types because steel typing is broken. Toxapex being thrown in naturally makes the team ground weak but mega slowbro covers stuff like choice band excadrill and landorus-t while gastrodon walls landorus-i. Toxapex is wacan for tapu koko and future sight slowbro helps break mid-game even when it's not ready to set up and win. I realized I had no progress maker against fairy so I used hidden power poison calm mind keldeo which basically punches through it no matter what. Tapu bulu can't stop it from making progress now, and nothing likes switching in. Fightinium z beats ferrothorn instantaneously because the team struggles with passivity a lot against it otherwise.
Unused SM stuff:
https://pokepast.es/32d85224bbc42102
I built these teams for hyper when he was playing zap in week 7. A lot of these had cool concepts and I wanted to provide a lot of options to pick from in case hyper wasn't feeling one. The teams are very unrefined though because not gonna lie I was definitely unhinged to a certain degree when making them so do use them at your own risk. We ended up using poison with gengar for psychic anyways but I think these teams are still interesting and might refine them in the future.
Congratulations to the thunders for winning the tournament.
