Hello hat lovers!

We have decided to greatly exceed our quota by posting a second time in 2025. This is a brief guide on the top teams that have populated grassroots tours and the ladder, Showdown ladder of course because we do not have an in game ladder because Big Pikachu wasn’t feeling very festive, including notes about variations of these archetypes. Sample pastes are provided to practice with or against, as well as a very brief overview of how each team functions. In some cases, some players who placed highly at major tournaments with these archetypes have also released their pastes publicly, which will be provided when available. These teams are what I would consider to be the teams that you should be most familiar with when preparing for this format, at least at present.

A quick note on the sample pastes: a lot of these sets are recreations, either by me, taken from other publicly available teams, or from other players who have provided similar guides online. I wish I could credit every single person who contributed those spreads, but I placed them in a personal compendium, and the pastes from this post were taken from that compendium, with the original source often being lost in the process. Just know that if you have publicly provided guides that were well informed, I have probably seen it, and those ideas may have made their way into this post as well. Thank you all for the work that you do, truly! 🫡

The F in Regulation F Stands for Fake Out Fake Out Fake Out Parting Shot U-turn Protect Fake Out Fake Out Fake Out

Japan Balance (sample paste)

Stefano Greppi VR (sample paste)

These two teams are what have defined Reg F: Incineroar, Urshifu Rapid Strike, Rillaboom to form a Fire/Water/Grass core, standing with the Reg F boogeyman in Calm Mind Raging Bolt. Chien-Pao and Landorus-I as the last two is a team known as Japan Balance, once seen as the top threat in this format. This team, however, has declined in popularity lately as players have instead mostly preferred a version with Ogerpon Hearthflame over Chien-Pao, the version that won the first large grassroots tournament in Reg F 2.0. This team is boring, soulless, and is the VGC equivalent of unseasoned chicken, but might forever remain the biggest threat of this format.

Other Variations:
After the Fire/Water/Grass + Bolt core, any two of Landorus-I, Chien-Pao, Flutter Mane, Amoonguss, Ogerpon Hearthflame could realistically round them out to form a team, with Hearthflame sometimes outright replacing either Incineroar or Rillaboom.

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This is my personal tier list of the restricteds as we return to Regulation G. Though results and other people’s opinions were considered, this is largely based on my own opinions of each Pokemon’s viability.

The Pokemon are ranked within the tiers, and lazily done so after Necrozma Dawn Wings. The blurbs for each Pokemon below I think are more important to take into account than the ranking itself. I assessed the strengths and weaknesses of each Pokemon, and others may weigh those characteristics differently which can change the order of their rankings, and some of those characteristics may be more or less important as the metagame cycles.

As far as how actionable this list might be, I think everything down to Koraidon is perfectly defensible to use at majors, and their common teams are definitely worth spending time to prepare against. The Niche Threats I think can be used if you can truly and honestly see the narrow opening that would allow them to be successful, and while I think you should still also prepare against them for majors if you have the time, you will likely be able to get away with simply winging gameplans against them, if you even get paired versus them to begin with. All the Pokemon below Dawn Wings are for content creation and for meming at locals only.

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Warning: Included screenshots and importables contain profanity and sexual innuendo

Introduction

Hello Hat Lovers!

My name is Scott Iwafuchi and I’m here to share my experience using one of my favorite Pokemon – Porygon2 (P2) – during VGC 2024’s Regulation F (Reg F) ruleset! This report will encompass the entire teambuilding process that led to each iteration of the team as well as my runs at the Portland, Charlotte, and Vancouver Regional Championships where I finished Top 128, Top 16, and Top 4, respectively. 

One of my best friends, Demitri, and I discovered the Tera Poison Porygon2 idea very early in our experimentation with the ruleset and I eventually committed to refining the team throughout Reg F. Not only did I think that P2 was an incredibly strong Pokemon, but it made the game feel comfortable and familiar to me despite some general gripes that I had with the format at large. There were moments where I doubted P2’s ability to hold up amidst shifts in the meta, but I ultimately chose to lean into my experience with the team and how well it weaponized my talents as a player, rather than try to develop something else. 

A common trend within Pokemon is the idea that teams have an inevitable expiration date and will need to be updated drastically, or scrapped entirely in order to keep abreast of meta developments. There are certain strategies, like Dondozo + Tatsugiri and Psyspam, whose rate of success rises and falls dramatically based on the kinds of teams that are popular within the field. While there is a lot of value in analyzing meta and usage trends to help construct teams, my perspective has always been: ‘Comfort is supreme’. After deciding that I would stick with P2, Incineroar, and Amoonguss, the goal was to perfect the last few slots and hone my ability to pilot the team. Let’s start by talking about the team’s origin story.

Disclaimer: The bulk of this report will be a narrative account of how I arrived at the team I brought to Vancouver. If you are looking for details about the spreads and my matchups guide, feel free to scroll to the bottom. If you are at all interested in how the team came about though, please read. I think it’s pretty fun and cool, and I worked really hard on it 🙂

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Hello hat lovers!

This season I decided to fully compete again despite stepping away from the game part way through 2018 and basically not playing at all in 2019 and during Sword & Shield. Despite my best efforts, I missed my worlds invite, but will detail the challenges I faced and mistakes I made in order to learn from them in the future.

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Hello Hat Lovers,

We’re back! After eight years since attending my first one, I finally top cut a regional. This is the report of my team building process, the final product, and my tournament run.

Teambuilding

Given that I was not able to prep for Portland very well after returning from EUIC three weeks prior, I decided to use some variant of Palance for this regional  (Flutter Mane / Amoonguss / Arcanine / Palafin). Palance is a stable team that rarely gives away big advantages per turn, and while it also often only creates incremental progress, I figured that a team like this would give me the best chance of success. I figured that because of my poor prep, Palance could allow me to simply outplay my opponent even if I did lack understanding of the meta game and match ups. I also had some understanding of the archetype given it is what I used at London, and the fact that it was such an established core meant that I did not have to prove to myself with practice that the team could succeed.

I used Ting-Lu and Gothitelle as the last two at EUIC and I tested the most vanilla version of the team with Baxcalibur over Gothitelle, but did not feel either version suited what I wanted to accomplish with the team. Gothitelle felt like a sidegrade rather than something that improved match ups, and I did not want to use Baxcalibur as I felt people would know the match up far better than I did. Despite its success, the Baxcalibur version also felt like it could be something that people could overprepare for. 

After testing different ideas and Lexar Dondozo, Chi-Yu + Iron Bundle was the only duo that I resonated with and thought would be unlikely to be overprepared for, but I had no idea how to build around it. I found Dondozo too difficult to use. I figured that it would probably be okay to mush Chi-Yu + Iron Bundle together with Palance even if doing so meant that I had two Fire types and two Water types. Despite this, I second guessed bringing Baxcalibur + Palance and only submitted my teamlist on the car ride to Portland. I decided that the process that lead to committing to Palance + Chi-Yu + Iron Bundle gave me a better chance to succeed than the reasoning to use Baxcalibur, even if the Baxcalibur version was a more established team.

Iron Bundle generally has a positive match up versus opposing Palance, which was suggested to me as an important goal to meet when deciding one of the last slots on Palance. The combination of Iron Bundle + Chi-Yu also gave me an abundance of options to break Amoonguss, which I felt was the backbone of Palance’s stability. This team did have structural issues when I wanted to bring Palafin, though. Palafin was awkward when I brought it without Arcanine and Amoonguss because Iron Bundle and Chi-Yu are difficult Pokemon to switch in. My general game plan for the tournament was to bring Palance whenever I was unfamiliar with the match up, and to bring Iron Bundle + Chi-Yu if I faced Palance. This plan did not work as intended at all as I only brought Palance to one set and somehow did not face opposing Palance, but the team performed well anyway.

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