The accessibility of battle‑ready Pokémon has become a quiet trimph of Pokémon Champions (not looking at you Mx. $69.99 Floette), drawing new players into their first steps in VGC and coaxing a few veterans back onto the battlefield.

cover art by RaiDamant – go give them a follow!

One of those returning veterans is GreyfoxVGC — a close friend from my earliest competitive days and someone I’ve teambuilt with since 2015. I’d been wrestling with the final pieces of a Trick Room composition and, knowing he was also exploring the viability of Mega Mawile, I reached out to my old partner to see if we could shape a team to unleash Mawile’s potential to its fullest.

The Core

The core of the team came together almost immediately. I’d already been experimenting with a trio built around Last Resort Kangaskhan, Torkoal, and Farigiraf in my first Trick Room draft, and their synergy proved too strong to abandon. It was also picking up traction in the community with many top players commenting that they were using this Trick Room Trio together, and having a blast with it! Kangaskhan supports Farigiraf in setting Trick Room; once the dimensions twist, Farigiraf returns the favour, enabling Kangaskhan to carve through opposing teams with Silk Scarf, Helping Hand boosted Last Resorts.

If I anticipated a passive turn from the opponent in the first turn of Trick Room (i.e, double Protect), Farigiraf could pivot straight into Torkoal, letting both Torkoal and Kangaskhan sweep through as much of the opposing team as possible before the Trick Room turns expire.

The addition of Mega Mawile rounded off the offensive core, enabling the team to cleanly OHKO the offensive backbone of the common Big Six archetype.

Charizard could be dispatched by Kangaskhan’s Last Resort, Garchomp would go down to a Play Rough (if it connects!) from Mawile, as would Basculegion. Sucker Punch would also be an option to safely deal with Choice Scarf Variants if they didn’t lock into Aqua Jet. Kingambit would be annihilated by Torkoal and wouldn’t be able to utilise priority Sucker Punches in front of Farigiraf. Mawile also gave us a psuedo “quick” mode outside of Trick Room, partnering with Farigiraf to fire off Helping Hand boosted Sucker Punches.

An early challenge came from the Archaludon rain teams shaped by CybertronVGC’s influence. Our best answer to quickly remove Archaludon was Torkoal, with its Eruption and Weather Ball offering the most reliable pressure; however, opponents often found an easy route around it. A simple lead of Sableye and Archaludon let them place a Light Screen, then manually change the weather from Sun to Rain if we weren’t able to quickly dispatch of Sableye.

Kangaskhan’s Scrappy Fake Out would be able to limit Sableye’s support, stopping Sableye on the opening turn before removing it on the next with a Helping Hand boosted Last Resort. Even so, Sableye frequently managed to slip in a screen or a weather change, and Archaludon would be quietly boosting its Special Attack with Electro Shot whilst I waste my time and resources on removing Sableye. To soften that pattern, I added Psychic Fangs to Farigiraf with the idea being to clear Sableye, break the screens, and open a clean path for Torkoal to tske down Archaludon in one hit with a Helping Hand boosted Weather Ball or Eruption.

Unfortunately, most opponents were able to anticipate this fairly transparent game plan and could keep the weather advantage by keeping Pelipper hidden away in the back, ready to jump onto the field as soon as Torkoal appears. We often found ourselves sweeping through three members of the opposing team during Trick Room, only for a giga boosted Archaludon to reverse sweep us in the end game.

After noticing Mawile got access to Brick Break, I ran some speculative damage calcs against Archaludon and was stunned by how much damage we could do:

30+ Atk Huge Power Mega Mawile Brick Break vs. 32 HP  / 1 Def Archaludon: 128-152 (64.9 – 77.1%) — guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery

30+ Atk Huge Power Mega Mawile Helping Hand Brick Break vs. 32 HP  / 1 Def Archaludon: 190-224 (96.4 – 113.7%) — 75% chance to OHKO

This simple change immediately turned our toughest matchup into one of our easiest – allowing us to lead Mawile & Farigiraf into the Sableye & Arch, set Trick Room and immediately drop Archaludon to 30/40% before finishing it off with Mawile on the subsequent turns.

At this point, we both opted for different Farigiraf sets – I stuck with the bulky, support oriented set to take advantage of Helping Hand both inside and out of Trick Room, whilst Grey went with a more offensive EV spread and moveset, utilising Nasty Plot and Hyper Voice to punish opponents playing passively inside Trick Room. Both sets worked and had their own individual pluses and negatives, eventually we would settle on a combination of our two sets…

The Final two Slots

Whilst the core above remained unchanged, the final two slots were experimented with throughout our building process.

We tacked a Sinistcha onto the team with a  Scarf Basculegion to round off the six. Sinistcha would act as a secondary Trick Room setter and help a with the Rain matchup whilst the Basculegion would provide us with a way to sweep through opponents once Trick Room expired with Wave Crash or Last Respects. It would also give us a way of threatening opponents without needing to set Trick Room immediately; inspired by the role Miraidon would play next to Farigiraf in Scarlet and Violet’s regulation I, we could lead Basculegion + Farigiraf to create an instant mind game on turn 1. Our options were to either Flip Turn out into a Trick Room sweeper and set Trick Room immediately with Fairigiraf or go straight for a Helping Hand Wave Crash to immediately eliminate a threat. Getting this call correct would often win a game for us immediately.

In theory, these two felt like they rounded off the team nicely  but in practice there were far too many variables. “Big Six” could slow down our Farigiraf + Basculegion lead by opting for Kingambit next to an intimidate user or Charizard. Sinistcha was a good option to set a second Trick Room should Farigiraf go down, but that often meant leaving one of our sweepers out. It also didn’t help with the rain matchup completely being vulnerable to Hurricane from Pelipper. We trialled a Coba Berry version but ultimately, surviving one Hurricane wouldn’t advance our board position against Rain. Kingambit was also proving to be a substantial issue, often taking advantage of a Defiant boost granted by Mega Mawile and dropping significant damage inside our own Trick Room.

At this point, Grey and myself split paths to find the best solution to the final two slots. Grey went away to trial a RainRoom build whereas I stuck with Sun.

I went back through Trick Room teams I’d used previously for some inspiration and happened across the first team I’d built for the first format in Sword & Shield. This team utilised a fast mode with Indeedee & Hawlucha and a Trick Room mode utilising Torkoal. Vileplume rounded off this team synergising wonderfully with Torkoal due to the Chlorophyll ability and being able to use After You to make Torkoal attack first.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the definitive solution I’d hoped for – in theory, the Vileplume/Torkoal mode seemed like it would be the perfect solution, providing the team a fast mode whilst both Pokémon, individually, were slow enough to operate inside Trick Room. At the time though, most teams were very prepared for an After You Eruption. Due to Charizard Y’s prevelance in the format, almost every team had a strong answer to deal with a fast sun mode. Sleep Powder’s poor accuracy made this far too volatile & inconsistent to rely on to gain ground and disrupt opponents (despite what we’ve just witnessed in the Senior’s World final!). I still found the fire damage to be increasingly important so I settled on a different Sun duo instead…

Mega Pyroar was heavily slept on in the early days of the format. Its ability, Fire Mane, boosts the damage of its fire type moves by 50% – add that to the damage increase provided by Ninetale’s sun, even resisted Overheats would be enough to take down threats to the Trick Room mode, or duos designed to deal with the Torkoal Vileplume mode. Unfortunately, the synergy just wasn’t there with the rest of the team. If I brought Pyroar Ninetales to lead, I’d have to select two of Farigiraf, Kangaskhan or Sinistcha in the back to help close out games. My Farigiraf build didn’t do enough damage, neither did Sinistcha and, whilst Kangaskhan would be able to drop significant damage with Last Resort, it would need to take a turn to click Fake Out before it could contribute to the end game. I decided if this was going to work, the team would need to either resemble a completely hard trick room team or the two final Pokémon would need to have enough bulk/utility to be used both inside and outside the twisted dimensions. I tried one last ditch attempt to make the faster sun mode work, adding in a Life Orb Venusaur and switching Ninetales for Torkoal but this felt extremely awkward to pilot.

I ditched the fast mode entirely and went back to the core of Farigiraf, Mawile, Torkoal, Kangaskhan and trialled two different versions of the team. For the hard trick room varient, I decided I needed a Trick Room setter which could provide immediate offensive pressure after twisting the dimensions and a secondary mega which could match up well into the common “big 6” archetype.

I landed on Focus Sash Gallade next to Mega Dragalge. Gallade was perfect, able to threaten KO’s onto Incineroar, Chople Berry Kingambit and Archaludon immediately whilst Dragalge could trade positively with Mega Charizard Y, Mega Floette and the rest of the “Big 6” inside Trick Room.

The second version kept the same Farigiraf, Mawile, Torkoal and Kang core but also added two bulkier, more balanced Pokémon – Milotic and Ceruledge. These additions gave the team an alternative mode, relying on Milotic’s bulk setting up coils and disrupting with Hypnosis, or Ceruledge making itself feel indestructable after a few bulk ups. I settled on this more balanced approach to the team and entered Blazybard‘s content inferno – a tournament for small streamers and qualified for top cut with a 5-2 record in Swiss. A couple of games can be watched in the vod below. Although I lost in top 8, it demonstrated this version of the team could work extremely well against the meta.

At this point, Grey’s brief experiment with Rain hadn’t quite worked out and we came back together to discuss some immediate improvements we could make to the team. We saw a team hitting the top end of the ladder with an Inner Focus, Taunt Annihilape & Toxapex which could prove to be problematic – in addition, Taunt Tsareena seemed to be picking up in usage to cover Trick Room teams so we made our Farigiraf more offensive, giving it Nasty Plot and dropping Psychic Fangs & Thunderbolt in favour of Psychic and Hyper Voice. Farigiraf hits surprisingly hard, even without boosts, allowing it to catch out Annihilape and Tsareena by throwing out a big chunk of damage on the turn it gets taunted. This new build came into play almost immediately for me. Participating in a UK draft league, my opponent for a match immediately after the Content Inferno tournament happened to be a teammate of one of the players I defeated in Swiss. Unsurprisingly, my opponent miraculously had Inner Focus Taunt Annihilape & Tsareena on their team… Fortunately, I’d changed to the new Farigiraf set and managed to take the win comfortably.

The final version of the team was almost complete. A few more tests later, myself and Grey had a debate on Charizard – though we could effectively wall it with Ceruledge, we didn’t have a way to take it out quickly. Grey came up with Lycanroc as a solution, being able to take a KO inside or outside Trick Room with Priority Accelrock whilst also being able to dispatch of Kingambit with a 4x effective Close Combat.

With this final change, the team was complete and, after some intense laddering sessions, our Mega Mawile Lycanroc reached the Champion Tier! And to top it off, one of my favourite content creaters of all time, PokeaimMD, showcased the team on his channel. Check out Joey’s video below!

It felt great to be back teambuilding again and very satisfying to see the squad hit the highest rank in Pokémon Champions before being piloted by an exceptional content creator. The boost to my own teambuilding confidence was unreal. If you’d like to try out the team for yourself, hit this link for a copy of the paste!

For the next season, I decided I was ready to shelve this team and challenged myself to build around a more… obscure… Pokémon. Which one? Well, perhaps there will be another post soon…