"The pleasure, harshness, and depth of Double Battles... You do understand, don't you?"
Orre Colosseum
For those that aren't familiar, the resulting format is essentially ADV VGC. It's fast-paced, explosive, and has a lot of room for creativity.
This is not meant as a replacement for ADV Doubles OU, but as an alternative, with quite a few key differences.
Rules
- All Pokemon from the first three generations are allowed, except Restricted ("Box" Legendaries) & Mythicals.
- Item Clause (no duplicate items), Species Clause & Sleep Clause
- Team Preview
- Bring 4 out of 6
- The format is Double Battles, with standard Gen III mechanics.
- Soul Dew is banned.
- When a Pokemon is made to faint, the replacement is sent in before the turn ends.
- No Physical/Special split. Moves are either Physical or Special based on their type.
- Hidden Power has 70 BP.
- Protect has a 1/2 chance of working in succession, instead of 1/3.
- Spread moves have 50% damage reduction, instead of 75%.
- Spread moves that target the entire field (Earthquake, Explosion) have no spread reduction.
- Type-specific boosting items like Charcoal only boost moves by 10%.
- Steel resists Ghost and Dark.
- Explosion deals double damage.
- Sandstorm does not boost Rock types' Sp.Def.
- Ability-summoned weather conditions are permanent.
- Surf does not damage your ally.
- Critical hits do 2x damage.
Threats
Much like in Doubles OU, Metagross remains a premiere threat. Steel typing, Intimidate immunity, and, of course, Explosion. Meta-defining, and should probably be on your team.
Despite the Soul Dew ban, Latios & Latias remain excellent additions to almost any team, with their combination of speed, power & versatility.
Immune to both Explosion & Earthquake, Gengar is possibly the best Metagross pairing, and a great lead Pokemon in general, with fantastic Special coverage.
A reliable Choice Band user with powerful STAB moves and the excellent Intimidate ability.
A menacing Choice Band user that outspeeds almost everything.
A flexible special attacker with an amazing speed tier.
A powerful offensive presence that resists Explosion and chips teams away with Sand.
A phenomenally bulky tank with the strongest Explosion in the game.
The premier Rain abuser, with well-rounded stats and an excellent defensive typing.
A strong and bulky tank that provides support with Fake Out.
A fearsome offensive threat with access to Dragon Dance and the excellent Intimidate ability.
A destructive Fire-type with the moves and typing to hard-counter Metagross.
An unpredictable threat with Thunder Wave, Dragon Dance, and the excellent Intimidate ability.
A fantastic special attacker with Thunder Wave and exceptional typing.
A powerful sweeper with an amazing speed tier.
A flexible Rain abuser with great typing and Fake Out.
The strongest physical attacker with terrifying STAB Earthquake and the supportive Lightningrod ability.
A fragile but fierce physical threat that provides support with Fake Out.
Viability Rankings
Sample Teams
Orre Cup Results
History
Orre Colosseum is essentially the first ever VGC format. While it wasn't called VGC at the time, a series of official tournaments took place in 2005 that effectively used these rules. [1][2][3][4]
The only difference is that anything exclusive to Emerald and XD (such as the Battle Frontier tutors) was not allowed, as those games weren't released at the time. Furthermore, they used Level 50 rather than 100, which caused Tyranitar & Dragonite to be banned, neither of which are top tier threats.
We decided to base the format on the Orre Colosseum game mode in XD, as it felt like the most complete version of the format, without any unnecessary limitations.
Resources
In order to play, simply message the following command to someone on Pokemon Showdown:
Code:
/challenge gen3doublesou @@@ teampreview, item clause, freeze clause mod, !sleep clause mod, stadium sleep clause, exact hp mod, picked team size = 4, !evasion moves clause, !ohko clause, -Mew, -Celebi, -Jirachi, -Deoxys, -Deoxys-Attack, -Deoxys-Defense, -Deoxys-Speed, +Wobbuffet, +Wynaut, +Latios, +Latias, -Soul-Dew, +Bright-Powder, +Lax-Incense, +move: SwaggerHere's an example match, modified to 6v6 to showcase more Pokemon.
Finally, here's Smogon's guide to the game mode in Pokemon XD. And the original Reddit post.
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