Alright, so, to the actual team now! … Well not quite… Teambuilding in a vacuum isn’t very good teambuilding. A team’s value is judged based on the options it provides the player when up against other teams. As such, knowing what the common Pokémon, movesets, item choices, teams and archetypes are is the crucial first step I took (since I had only really been passively aware of what the meta was in Series 12). To do this, I looked at the usage stats on Pikalytics, grassroots and official tournament results, watched Aaron Zheng‘s Road to Ranked episodes, and played on the ladder (with a number of teams). This process of gaining metagame awareness is crucially important for both teambuilding and playing, especially when coming off of a break, like I was.

These were my takeaways: Zacian is obviously incredibly busted (the coldest take ever, I know), but I found myself disappointed with it in practice. Zacian is so common that not only does everyone know what it can do and how to play against it, but I found the Zacian mirror incredibly awkward. Zacian can benefit a lot from extra bulk, but in doing so it becomes significantly worse against opposing max Speed Zacian, and since Zacian is on more than half of teams, that’s a huge deal. So just use max Speed? You absolutely can, but the number of speed-ties I saw when doing so made me really not a fan (again, trying to promote team/gameplan consistency in teambuilding). So I realized that I did not want to use Zacian, despite its power (and similarity to my name). What I did want was a Restricted Pokémon (or maybe two) that could go toe-to-toe with Zacian.

I also noticed that a large chunk of the most common Pokémon in the format resist Steel or are weak to Ground, such as Kyogre, Regieleki, Incineroar, Zacian, and Thundurus. This meant that I wanted to make sure I had a strong Max Quake on any Max Steelspike user on my team, for both the coverage and the Max Move synergy. And finally, with Incineroar as common as ever, I wanted to focus more on offensive treats that wouldn’t be slowed down by Intimidate, Parting Shot, and Fake Out.

Now, the team I was using on the ladder to get a better feel for the format was a version of the Zacian + Palkia team that my brother and BlubVGC ended up using in Salt Lake City (with Grimmsnarl, Landorus-T, Incineroar, and Amoonguss as the other four in this version). I knew Zacian and Palkia were a strong duo and even though I decided not to use the team, I did learn some key lessons from trying it. As strong as Zacian and Palkia are together, they can struggle against teams that have good Zacian answers and can stall out Palkia’s Dynamax since the rest of the team often has little in the way of offense. These teams usually lack strong Dynamax options other than Palkia, so I wanted a team with a little more Dynamax flexibility.

The Grimmsnarl was easily the Pokémon that impressed me the most on the team; screens are incredibly strong in this format (thanks to how they can slow down the overwhelming power of most Restricted Pokémon and because they stack wonderfully with Dynamax) and Grimmsnarl can set them up reliably. Grimmsnarl was something I wanted to keep in mind while building.

I first tried Life Orb Dialga. It fit the bill as a strong special attacking Restricted Pokémon with a reasonable Zacian matchup (when Dynamaxed) and the coveted Max Quake and Max Steelspike combo. In the process of trying a random assortment of other ideas and seeing what sticked, I tried out the following hot mess of a team:

The main idea was to get a feel for Dialga and try out some off-beat Fire-types to further swing the Zacian matchup in my favor. Special Choice Scarf Ho-oh was interesting, but far less useful in practice than it seemed on paper (though it looking decent on paper is also questionable). Marowak was much the same; I had trouble capitalizing on its good Zacian and Thundurus matchups, but there is probably something there. Yveltal proved to be a huge problem for this team since repeated Snarls just ruin Dialga and everyone else except for Grimmsnarl, and support Grimmsnarl can’t beat Yveltal on its own.

This highlighted the biggest problem I had with Dialga: it was often too easy for my opponents to slow it down. To explain exactly why this is, I want to contrast Dialga with the next Restricted Steel-type with a strong Dynamax option I tried, Solgaleo. Thanks to Full Metal Body, Solgaleo can actually ignore Incineroar more effectively than Dialga can, since Parting Shot is still a nuisance for Dialga while it outright fails when targeting Solgaleo. And while Solgaleo has an even worse matchup into things like Yveltal, that was alright because I didn’t expect it to be good against Yveltal.

The last part is that it’s better to be a physical attacker that’s weak to Max Quake than a special attacker that’s weak to Max Quake. This is because your opponent already wants to click Max Quake into Dialga for the damage, and they get the added benefit of weakening Dialga’s attacks at the same time. Solgaleo doesn’t have this issue; Max Quake does good damage to it, but the boosts from Max Quake aren’t relevant against it. This makes opponents choose between a super-effective Max Quake for the damage or a resisted Max Steelspike to better take hits from Solgaleo. So although nearly every team is equipped with Max Quake, Solgaleo is much better at handling it. Add to that that Solgaleo is faster, has a far more impactful Ability, and isn’t weak to Zacian’s Sacred Sword, and there are a number of reasons to like the metal lion over the metal dragon.

It was for those aforementioned reasons that Solgaleo was a Pokémon I wanted to try out. Weakness Policy and Life Orb were the premier item options. I decided to look into Weakness Policy to leverage Full Metal Body and the fact that Solgaleo has more weaknesses than Dialga. Weakness Policy has the added benefit of making Incineroar even less useful against Solgaleo: Flare Blitz, Darkest Lariat, and Snarl all do minimal damage and activate the Weakness Policy, Fake Out is not reliable since Solgaleo Dynamaxes often, and Parting Shot is as useful as Splash against it.

I then started looking into good options to support Solgaleo. The following three Pokémon came to mind at the same time. Grimmsnarl was already on my mind and its typing and ability to increase the team’s bulk perfectly complemented Solgaleo. Tapu Fini was a Pokémon I had used alongside Solgaleo back in 2019’s Ultra Series and I quite liked their type synergy, as well as Tapu Fini’s Misty Surge preventing the only reasonable way to slow down Solgaleo’s damage output: burning it. Lastly, I wanted something to activate Solgaleo’s Weakness Policy on demand, preferably Bulldoze for its additional utility as a speed control option. Since Shadow Rider Calyrex is the fastest Pokémon with access to Bulldoze, I thought it was worth trying despite how foolish it seemed to make this offensive monster effectively a support Pokémon (more on that later).

Just like that I had a core to work with. Putting them together I realized a couple things (both good and bad). Zacian + Palkia is an archetype that really doesn’t like this core. With Tapu Fini on the team, Thunder Wave on Grimmsnarl becomes a lot less appealing as an option (for myself and my opponents). Despite the abysmal matchup of Solgaleo and Shadow Rider into Yveltal, the two bulky Fairy types already go a long way to help with this problem matchup.

Because I wasn’t too confident in the core’s matchup against Rain and Sun, I slapped Charizard and Ludicolo on the team and took it out for a drive (yeah, it looks weird).

I learned a lot of useful information at this stage. Solgaleo and Grimmsnarl were working extremely well, able to mow down unsuspecting teams, especially teams that rely on Zacian and Kyogre or Palkia for most of their damage. Shadow Rider Calyrex rarely would snowball and sweep teams, but its immediate offensive pressure was very appreciated. Charizard was very useful against Sun teams, where Solgaleo was not. Yveltal was still a little tough to deal with, and both Tapu Fini and Ludicolo were quite lackluster.

In situations like this, it can be difficult to determine what the actual source of the problems are. Was it the set on Ludicolo and Tapu Fini that made them underwhelming or their item choice, their EV spread, their matchups against the teams I played, my inexperience with them, or just that they weren’t the right Pokémon for the job? While Charizard was great against Sun teams, I came to realize that, when played properly, Ludicolo wasn’t needed in Rain matchups. So I looked to replace Ludicolo with something else with Fake Out.

Though Tapu Fini was underwhelming initially, it was proving its usefulness with Misty Terrain alone; blocking burns, Thunder Waves, and Spores has been criminally undervalued in the format so far. Tapu Fini has been a comfort pick for me for the longest time; I’ve used all sorts of sets on it in every format in the past and am intimately familiar with its strengths and weaknesses. However, the supportive set with Icy Wind and Nature’s Madness was not at all what this team needed. The support that I needed from Tapu Fini was being fulfilled just by switching it in and setting up Misty Terrain. So what I needed was to make sure it was more impactful when it did show up and strong enough that I would want to bring it for reasons beyond its support (as a side note, this was the exact same reason why I came to like Bulldoze Calyrex; I never felt like I had to compromise much to bring Bulldoze into a game). I decided to try out the exact same Choice Specs Tapu Fini that I had used in Series 7/9, and it turned out to be the sleeper MVP of the whole team.

Since Thundurus and Regieleki could be annoying for the team, I decided to pluck out another Pokémon that I used alongside Choice Specs Tapu Fini back in Series 7/9: Raichu. It also has Fake Out, which was the one thing I really wanted out of the Ludicolo slot most. This left me with this team:

And I know what you’re thinking: “That’s one Pokémon away from the final version of the team, surely this part of the team report is nearly over!” And it would be very easy for me to just say that I realized that Therian Landorus was better against Yveltal while keeping a positive Sun matchup and so I swapped Charizard out for it (which is true). However, it took me a little longer to come to that conclusion.

After ironing out some details, like the last move on Grimmsnarl and Solgaleo’s EV spread, the team felt alright, but the Sun matchup was shaky at best. After some feedback from BlubVGC, I decided to try out Entei and Zapdos instead of Charizard and Raichu to see how it felt.

That version didn’t last too long before I had another realization: if I could set the sun for Charizard, I could bring it to more matchups. In hindsight, I can see that that was solving for a problem that the team didn’t really have. The problem wasn’t that Charizard needed to contribute more to other matchups, but that it wasn’t good enough in the matchups I needed it for: Sun and Yveltal. Again, these things always seem obvious in hindsight, but when we are in the thick of it, it can be hard to see what the actual problems you need to solve are. The best way to improve at this is to critically reflect on your teambuilding process. Anyway, in order to better support Charizard, I decided to do the unthinkable and swap out Grimmsnarl, for Klefki of all things!

Even though I don’t think it was what this team needed, Klefki is still a solidly underrated support Pokémon; it’s basically a Grimmsnarl with access to Sunny Day and Rain Dance that can survive a Behemoth Blade after Reflect. And sure enough, Klefki was able to put in work by powering up Charizard and pulling the rug out from under opposing Kyogre ready to drench my team with Water Spout, all while providing the same support with dual screens. However, it wasn’t long until I realized that Klefki didn’t improve my matchups against Sun or Yveltal, but made them slightly worse.

At this point I was sold on Raichu, but I knew that it was the Charizard slot that needed to be better against Solgaleo’s problem matchups. I had also been burned by Charizard speed ties a fair amount at this point and I didn’t want to hang my Sun matchup on a coin flip; I wanted something that could naturally outspeed and OHKO Charizard in the Sun. I decided to try out Terrakion for its positive Charizard and Yveltal matchup.

And Terrakion was certainly great against Charizard and Yveltal. But it was at this point that I realized that my lack of Ground-type resists was untenable. I needed a Flying-type to act as a Ground switch-in, especially since the Terrakion slot was supposed to be for Sun teams and Groudon isn’t afraid of Terrakion. So I tried, with few expectations, the fastest Flying and Rock-type: Aerodactyl.

I can say now that Aerodactyl was a choice rooted in denial. I had a sneaking suspicion I knew what would fit perfectly in this slot, but I wanted to make sure I exhausted every other possible option first. With the little time I had left, this wasn’t the best idea, but we can often be our own worst enemies. Thankfully though, Aerodactyl’s flaws perfectly highlighted what I need from this slot, which was a strong Dynamax candidate that was immune to Ground, could threaten Charizard and Yveltal with huge damage, and had positive matchups against Groudon and Zacian (since they are frequently paired together). I can only think of one Pokémon that fulfills all that… Flygon!

…Nah, just kidding, sorry Flygon, you don’t have Intimidate, unlike Therian Landorus, which checks all of those boxes and brings us to the final team I brought to the Salt Lake City Regionals.

Now let’s dive into what the team is exactly and how it works.