The Global Challenge – May 2026

Overview

I brought a team that combined the power of sand with my desire to make the mega bunny work. It wasn't the team I had hoped to bring: I changed Excadrill's Earthquake for High Horsepower in the time between registering and Day One, which doesn't register and honestly wouldn't have changed much about my results. The tournament took place over a weekend while I was preparing for a Machine Learning exam scheduled for the following Monday, so I didn't have much time or headspace free to focus on Pokémon. Nonetheless, while I may not have performed all that well; finishing with a near .500 record, a 1545.484 rating, and a position of 37,566th, I enjoyed the experience and believe experience in general will be essential as I try to actually get into competitive.

The Team

Mega Lopunny – Limber (Scrappy) – Lopunnite

Fake Out, Facade, High Jump Kick, Drain Punch

Adamant – 2 HP, 32 Atk, 32 Spd

His role was to punch things really hard. Fake Out was faster than most Sneaslers I saw and provided opportunities for teammates to do their thing. Facade could punish Dire Claw statuses and random Will-Os from Rotoms and Incins and such (also my poor guy gets no good Normal STAB :(). I contend High Jump Kick is stronger than Close Combat as Fighting STAB; most of the time I get 10 extra base power and don't drop my defenses. Misses are rare but pretty devastating, and Protect is something to consider. High Jump Kick also synergizes better than Close Combat with Drain Punch, which I ran specifically to be more reliable Fighting STAB in situations where HJK recoil would be game losing and the extra damage wasn't necessary. The glass-ness of his cannon was actually less pronounced than I thought it would be, so Drain Punch healing played more of a role than I expected it to.

Whimsicott – Prankster – Focus Sash

Moonblast, Tailwind, Encore, Taunt

Timid – 2 HP, 32 SpAtk, 32 Spd

Pretty standard Whimsicott set to do pretty standard Whimsicott things. I did click status at least once into Farigiraf because I wasn't sure if Armor Tail blocked Prankster moves with neutral priority originally and into at least one Dark type (encoring Weavile into Fake Out would've been so nice). In my first iteration(s) of the team, this slot made sense; I had a box of about 10 mons, none of them wanted or needed the Sash, it was one of my few reliable Dragon answers, and more or less my only form of speed control. It did have some anti-synergy with Ttar, but I could generally position carefully enough that sand wasn't breaking my own Sash. This iteration of the team; however, did not suit this Whimsicott. I do quite like this mon, but this team wanted sand more often, didn't rely on tailwind as much, and honestly would've preferred if this disruption could affect Dark types and Farigiraf.

Tyranitar – Sand Stream – Choice Scarf

Rock Slide, Knock Off, Stomping Tantrum, Superpower

Jolly - 2 HP, 32 Atk, 32 Spd

I've been using this set all of Champions, and I do like it. Scarf Rock Slide go brrr. A fast Knock Off matches up nicely into threats like Basculegion, Sinistcha, and Farigiraf, and it provides some pretty good utility/disruption into just about everything. Stomping Tantrum and Superpower were coverage picks, but I am not sure how well they work. It seems Low Kick would be better as Fighting coverage, and I wasn't getting as much out of Stomping Tantrum as I would have liked.

Excadrill Mega – Sand Rush (Piercing Drill) – Excadrite

Protect, Earthquake, Rock Slide, Iron Head

Adamant - 2 HP, 32 Atk, 32 Spd

The upper bound on the number of times I Mega Evolved this thing is two. Even in games where the bunny stayed on the bench, the opportunity cost of losing Sand Rush was too high in almost every situation. As it turns out, functionally itemless Excadrill doesn't work as well as it could. That isn't even to mention the fact that this Excadrill had Earthquake and basically no teammates that could comfortably sit next to her while she clicked it, which meant there were very few cases where Excadrill could click its best move. All that considered, this Excadrill still saw some pretty good utility through the run. It was one of two pokémon that could actually protect, which made it a pretty good bring in a lot of cases, especially against Trick Room funny enough. All in all, in spite of some obvious flaws, Excadrill did Excadrill things.

Incineroar – Intimidate – Sitrus Berry

Fake Out, Parting Shot, Will-O-Wisp, Flare Blitz

Hardy - 32 HP, 8 Atk, 13 Def, 13 SpDef

Ignore the spread for a second. Incineroar is here to do what Incineroar does. As it turns out, it is pretty good at doing what Incineroar does, even with Unburden White Herb Sneasler on every other team in the tournament. Incin is actually an explicit Arcanine replacement from the early iterations of this team, trading the utility of Extreme Speed and Protect for the utility of Fake Out and Parting Shot. I have found Will-O to be incredibly handy in this format given the abundance of physical attackers, and obviously Intimidate is also a handy thing to have against (most) physical attackers. The spread is born of me just fooling around with sliders more or less; I knew I wanted a lot of bulk and at least some Attack investment, but I didn't know what specifically I needed. My solution was this wacky allocation that never felt too bad in the run up to the Global Challende, so I never bothered actually fixing it.

Primarina – Liquid Voice – Leftovers

Protect, Dazzling Gleam, Hyper Voice, Ice Beam

Timid - 2 HP, 32 SpAtk, 32 Spd

Primarina is on this team because at this point it needed a special attacker, and ideally a Water type to complete the Fire-Water-Grass core. The Fairy typing was also considered for its utility into what was once a format where several Dragons on a team wasn't the most uncommon sight. I ran max Speed because I figured that could pair with Whimsicott's Tailwind to outspeed things that thought they would be safe, which may have happened once or twice. Ultimately, I don't think max Speed actually did as much as I would have liked, mainly because I hardly actually got Prim on the field with Tailwind. In fact, even knowing that it was max Speed Prim, I still often played him like a slower, bulkier piece. I still feel I managed to get a fair bit out of it regardless, even if a slower, bulkier spread would've better suited what I needed out of it in most situations where it was on the field.

The Run

There really isn't much to say about the run through this Global Challenge. I more or less traded a win for a loss one for one throughout the tournament, though I do think that I ultimately ended up winning (slightly) more than I lost.

There were definitely some problem matchups. My least favorite thing to deal with was Farigiraf Trick Room. I realized rather early on that the tools that could deny Trick Room against other archetypes would not work against Farigiraf's Armor Tail. This left the option of trying to burst Farig down, which is quite a tall order given that the giraffe is often paired with a Fake Out user, that Fake Out user is often Intimidate Incineroar, and the giraffe is typically trained quite bulky. My go to would be an Excadrill + Ttar lead, doubling Iron Head and Knock Off into the giraffe. Typically Trick Room goes up, I protect Excadrill and switch in either Incin or Prim, and try to find a way to survive the next five turns without losing too much ground. Not a fun time.

Bulky Waters like Rotom-W and Milotic were also quite difficult to break. I don't remember them making much progress against me on any one turn, but they were able to stick around long enough on several occasions to gradually put me further and further behind. My best way through tended to be Mega Bunny, but focusing his limited turns on those targets often left more immediate problems unchecked.

The Experience

I think ultimately the experience was positive. In a shocking twist, playing video games (especially Pokémon) is fun. I still feel relatively new to this, which in itself led to some interesting moments. I may have been a bit hard on myself, though I would prefer to think of it as being frank. Trading wins for losses game to game could be quite frustrating, and I certainly was disappointed I didn't do better. As I told myself plenty of times during the run, though, it is mostly a skill issue. My teambuilding, my game knowledge, and my play leave a fair bit to be desired. But, the other thing I told myself with frequency was that those things will come with more experience. How much of the skill gap I can address just by playing the game more and how much comes down to me not being the sharpest tool in the shed remains to be seen.

Unfortunately, this tournament fell on the weekend before my Machine Learning in Python exam. I have a lot to say about how impossible it felt to prepare for that exam, but that is a different story for a different time. The relevant part is that I do think it had an effect on the way I experienced the tournament, in ways that were mostly, but not entirely, negative. The biggest thing is that most of my time was dedicated to preparing that exam. If I remember right, I played 23 of my 45 games, which obviously is a decent chunk, but also not as many as I probably would have been able to get in without the exam over my head. It also meant that I was a fair bit mentally out of it by the time I was ready to play a few matches, and I think that also meant that I felt the emotional swings of each game a bit more. That said, I do think it was nice to have the tournament as a bit of a distraction from exam prep. This way, I could go from being frustrated at the seemingly impossible amount of material I had to revise to being frustrated at the fact that I just missed a Facade on Rotom-W with my paralyzed Mega Lopunny (stupid Bright Powder why'd they put it in the game).

Moving On

Let's start by addressing the team. On the whole, it felt fine, but certainly not great. There were several things that felt quite difficult to answer, and not every piece felt complimentary in a way that left the team feeling quite rigid in playstyle. The current plan is to try to continue iterating on this team, because I would really like to be able to make it work. High Horsepower on Excadrill seems to be working better than Earthquake was in the games I've played since the tournament ended. In spite of its best efforts throughout my time in Champions, I do think it might be time for my queen Whimsy to be replaced. I feel the team doesn't need the speed control from her Tailwind as much as it did in previous iterations, and it felt like too often Prankster was preventing me from getting the disruption I needed instead of enabling it. There are a couple of other Taunt + Encore pokémon in the format. Dropping Whimsy would let Excadrill hold Focus Sash, which I think would enable a lot of options that I could've used during the Global Challenge. Depending on with what I replace Whimsicott, I may trade Tyranitar's Choice Scarf for the Tyranitarite. The ability to reactivate sand without switching could be handy, though I think that may lead to some costly wrong predictions, and it would mean I give up the speedy Rock Slides that have been helping me through my entire time in Champions. Regardless, I want to reexamine the coverage I've given Ttar. Low Kick seems to be preferred over Superpower, and Stomping Tantrum hasn't given me the value I've wanted. The other three are mostly fine; I think some spread changes on Incineroar and Primarina are warranted, and I might consider looking at moves like Triple Axel and U-Turn on Lopunny.

Speaking of Lopunny, I get the feeling that he and the rest of this team might not work even with these changes. Lopunny specifically feels inconsistent; when he works he's great, but when he doesn't you end up quite far behind. There's also the small matter of how the team matches into the meta. It's not a completely losing battle, but the meta feels like it tends to be a neutral to bad matchup for this team. In my past dabbles on Showdown, I've mostly run Trick Room, though I did run sand effectively a few games. As such, I've been looking at other, more successful Trick Room teams and Sand teams, and I may end up trying to build something new in one of these archetypes.

Ultimately, I think the biggest thing for me in terms of getting better performance is to just play more Pokémon. The extent to which I will be able to do that is a bit of an unknown, but I do think that that is the most actionable, effective step I can immediately take to start seeing more success.