GSC OU qwilfish offense

i'm bored and i thought this was a decent idea to spark conversation with. i had already exhausted the idea of spikes smeargle and cloyster gets pretty monotonous after a while.. so why not qwilfish? and this team ensued.

Zapdos @ Leftovers
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
- Thunder
- Hidden Power [Ice]

standard lead zapdos. spikes and zapdos are just two peas in a pod. it's the only stalk user on the squad so it's pretty crucial to play the bird well against sleepers in particular. that being said, opposing lk laxo are pretty threatening. besides that, zapdos does typical zapdos stuff like helping keep vap/champ etc in line, being a huge offensive threat, and having a pretty neat aesthetic.

Qwilfish @ Leftovers
- Curse
- Sludge Bomb
- Hydro Pump
- Spikes

qwilfish isn't great but it's decent. it has steep competition with cloyster as a spiker but it manages to set itself apart through its typing and curse. a fight resist makes qwil pretty decent against machamp which is especially important here given how soft i am otherwise. curse lets it theoretically beat the nonexistent druidcruel as well, but i haven't run into it yet. another perk is that qwilfish is a marginally better ttar switch than cloyster, but that's not saying much. typically you just lay spikes and hope for a poison on an elec. it's pretty hard to spin on qwilfish, so you usually get to play the spikes game.

Steelix @ Leftovers
- Curse
- Earthquake
- Roar
- Explosion

lix does what it always does. spikes enables lix to be a bit more potent with roar shuffling. you really just play lix like a soft lax/elec check though and scout your opponents team through roar just like any other lix team. missy can't perishtrap as easily with the snake lurking, but it's not like it's a huge threat otherwise. rock slide isn't v needed imo since i usually play for the snorlax sweep instead of a lix sweep. boom good move.

Meganium @ Leftovers
- Reflect
- Leech Seed
- Razor Leaf
- Synthesis

i just needed a ground check and egg seemed to tread on qwilfish's use over cloyster so i just went for meganium. standard set really. it fucks with phys attackers like lax with seed and gives ok team support as well, but it's mostly self-serving as a move. leech is a pretty solid move with spikes too. razor leaf i'm kinda unsure on since toxic seems like a decent option as well, but i like being able to directly hit aa vap.

Houndoom @ Leftovers
- Sunny Day
- Fire Blast
- Solar Beam
- Pursuit

houndoom is mediocre but fits the role of a 3rd fightweak mon a qwilfish team. he's kinda cool though in certain matchups (egg or gar). sunny day + fire blast is surprisingly strong and opposing zapdos becomes a far shittier check to it with only a 50% chance of hitting. if their lax is weakened you can possibly dent some spikes offenses pretty heavily. sunnybeam gives cvrg vs rocks, ttar in particular, which would be a dick otherwise. tbf it does hamper the team's zapdos itself, but it's about an equal tradeoff. the synergy with meganium's synth seems too cute to pass up for a boring thief set.

Snorlax @ Leftovers
- Curse
- Double Edge
- Rest
- Thunder

snorlax. i had lk originally but on second thought i felt a bit too weak to skarmory to not have coverage for it. thunder seemed superior to fire blast given my team composition, and it has pretty cool things going for it like nailing cloyster vs offensive teams and forcing boom vs lix mindgames. i've found that ppl are very liberal about switching cloy into lax, and thorlax is great for counteracting this.

 

The Meganium set's interesting. I'd recommend Light Screen, but between Steelix and CurseLax you've mostly got Electrics covered already. Could be an idea if you wanted to switch out one of those, which you probably do (specifically Steelix for a Rock or Lax for Sleep Talk; you're rather weak to Fire Blast CurseLax as-is).

Swap Thunder for Thunderbolt on Zapdos to fix the incompatibility with Sunny Day.

 

I always saw Qwilfish as a hack to allow a more guilt-free Umbreon addition to the standard Explosion team, thus supplying Lax insurance with Charm & maintaining team inertia with Mean Look + BP (not to mention solidifying defenses against the likes of Gengar / Egg / Nidoking).

Zapdos
Qwilfish
Exeggutor
Umbreon
Snorlax
Steelix

 

Not bad actually; I use a similar setup in my UU team and always thought it quite well balanced. Qwilfish is quite underestimated ; the water poison typing is perfect as mixed attackers go, it also beats the other spikers 1 on 1 (bar hp elec cloyster) due to its speed advantage, water/ice/bug resistance, toxic immunity and ability to inflict poison status.

I would probably use Toxic & counter over reflect & razor leaf on meganium, probably just switch the whole slot to exeggutor in all honesty. No major weaknesses are jumping out at me; Hp bug Marowak and drum Charizard are probably your biggest threats. Maybe Machamp too. All in all pretty good job, original too!