Hi guys, girls and everything in-between! Now that you know what tier you are building your team into and you are finally familiar with the rules, let’s go to the next step: Teambuilding 
. This is my speciality. I realized that I will have difficulty entering into details without using competitive terminology and I apologize. I should have talked about vocabulary first but I promised you team build.
Sorry again. Open your books folks, school is on.
- Offense
– Your goal when playing
– Team structure
– Common variants
– Pros/Cons - Stall
– Your goal when playing
– Team structure
– Cpmmpn variants
– Pros/Cons - Balanced
– Your goal when playing
– Team structure
– Common variants
– Pros/Cons
I am not a professional competitive trainer. I do not pretends to hold the holy sacred Truth and in no mean replace experts and experienced players. I simply think I have strong enough bases to share my knowledge with less experienced players.
What are the archetypes
?
Archetype means this:
For those who are more into RPG, you already familiar with a kinda of archetype. You know, the Wizard, the Warrior and the Assassin. These three all have subclasses like Barbarian and Paladin for the Warrior, Magician and Cleric for the Wizard and Theif and Spy for the Assassin.
Pokémon teams works exactly the same way. Unlike RPG, the archetypes are Balanced, Offense and Stall. All three have subdivisions and regroups other styles within them. But they are generally the three biggest guidelines inside a given metagame.
We could argue they fonction a bit like Fire/Water/Grass in a sens that one win against one but looses to the other, but honestly, I don’t really feel that way. What I mean is that Offense often wins against Stall, Stall wins against Balanced and Balanced wins against Offense. However, this is not always the case. As an example, a good balanced player can easily defeat a Stall team and most Stall players know how to make a Offense player ragequit so hard it starts playing Bakugan instead.
In VGC, however, archetypes are totally different. Since I do not know much, I cannot explain it here. I have some basics, but trust me, there are better people than me and I really recommend to look by yourself.
Let’s start with the most basic to the more complex.
Offense
Offense is the most intuitive and simple play style. Due to being easy to understand, it offers a lot of flexibility and creativity to the teambuilding. It is also the one with the most variants. Since games are generally short, often 20/25 turns, you gain experience quickly are you become good faster. Offense teams are those who takes the first step into the aggression and who strike hard.
Your goal when playing
When playing offense, your goal is simple. Punch until it cannot move. It does not means stauts moves are useless, quite the contrary. Offensive team will require support Pokémon to function correctly.
Team structure
Offensive teams are composed of 4-5 offensive Pokémon and 1-2 support Pokémon. They often carry pivot Pokémon since they sometimes lack bulk to switch into attacks. Offensive teams carry one sweeper who’s role is to set up (sometimes) and knocking out the rest of the opposing team.
Common Pokémon found are Garchomp, Mega Diancie or Tapu Koko.
Variants
- Bulky Offense
Bulky Offense, or abridged as Bulky-O, is the absolute best team style for beginner. It combine Offense with Pokémon that share great type synergy and are somewhat bulk enough to take few hits. I cannot recommend this more to begeiner and people who want to get familiar with a given metagame.
- Hyper Offense
Often call HO, Hyper Offense says no to defence and decide to go all out. The first Pokémon sent is always a suicide lead, most of the time the only support Pokémon of the team and who’s goal is to set up hazards and other team specific options, faint and let its teammate wreak havoc. Pokémon here are fast, strong and it is not rare to see 1 suicide lead, 1 wallbreaker and 4 sweepers.
- Weather based
These teams use weather in Rain, Sandstorm, Hail, Harsh Sunlight or New Moon to get the advantage over the opponent. While weather based team can sometimes get to balanced, they more often then not are offensive of Bulky-O teams. These team always carry a Pokémon that can setup weather reliably, AKA when it enter the field (or a Prankster user IN LAST RESORT) and a Pokémon who get double speed under given weather. Keep in mind, in Gen 5, since weather were permanent, weather based were dominant and also had Stall varient of themselves. Weather have the advantage of being superior under its weather but is often inferior without it.
Pros/Cons
- Intuitive playstyle.
- Quick Match.
But
- Hyper Offense is hard to master, as it require to know when to sacrifice what Pokémon.
- Teambuilding sometimes complex as it is often hard to adapt to a wider metagame.
Stall
There are two types of people. People who love stall too much and those who prefer swallow a gallon of Polonium 210 by their butt than seeing a Chansey on the opposing team. In both case, intense reactions in both sides. Other comparison people do is those who play stall and those who have a soul.
Stall is a fully defensive plastyle who’s defence is ment to be unbreakable.
I don’t like stall, but I respect people playing it. This is a legitimate strategy no matter what people says. If you decide playing stall, you might feel like in Among Us because you will soon discover all your friends wants to kill you.
Your goal while playing
When playing stall, the goal is not to win, but to not loose. This might sounds similar, but it is very much different.
How do you win? You make all of your opponent Pokémon faint.
How do you loose? All of your Pokémon faint.
If your defence is so strong that your Pokémon cannot be knocked out, then you just won’t loose. You won’t win either, but you can manage if your opponent decide to give up! And that’s the secret. Stall teams will play on your nerves to make you loose your patience and makes mistakes or forfeit. That’s why Pokémon is one of the game that breaks the most friendship, behind Monopoly and Mario Kart. Chansey, Quagsire and Mega Sableye are all staple Stall Pokémon and what makes it infuriating to fight.
This team goal makes it a very common sight in smogon tournament.
Team structure
As previously mentioned, Stall teams does not carry offensive Pokémon. Well, except if Arena Trap and Shadow Tag are allowed. In that case, Dugtrio become a staple for Stall teams as it can safely remove dangerous threats its teammate like Swords Dance Mega Mawile (who can 6-0 most stall by itself) or Mega Metagross. Since Stall will very often switch back and forth, hazard removal or prevention mesure are mandatory. That often take the form of Magik Bounce users and defensive Rapid Spin/Defog support.
Stall teams also rely on passive damage in Toxic, burns, hazards and sometimes sandstorm to deal damages. Most Stall games ends without a single Pokémon fainting.
Variants
- Semi Stall
If you still want to have some kind of friends while also being a jerk, you can opt for a semi-stall. In that case, you follow regular stall core and structure but adding one offensive Pokémon who generally aren’t there normally. It can be Mega Medichamp, Garchomp or any strong wallbreaker/sweeper.
- Hard Stall
You gave up your humanity and decided to be the ultimate piece of 
. Exact opposite of HO, you have absolutely 0 intention on doing damages or even attacking, you just look down on your opponent with a demonic smile and nourish yourself from its anger. If you loose, its karma.
Pros/Cons
- If your team is build correctly, you have an answer for every single metagame threat. You name a Pokémon to a good Stall player and he say “Nope, I can handle it with […]”.
- Victory rate vey high in ladder.
But
- Very predictable
- Matches that are most of the time 50+ turns long. If two stall team face each other, then turns are counted by the hundreds.There was one in the last Smogon Official Ladder Tournament that lasted around 720 turn (ABR vs Ayk). Very few people are patient enough to play Hard Stall.
Balanced
The jack of all traits, the most fun way to play Pokémon in my mind. Balance is my predilection play style. It is simple, I have an option for every situation. Combining offense and defence in the perfect… balance, they are very versatile teams that can adapt with ease. If you look at my teams, you will see I do about 20% Bulky-O and 80% Balanced.
Your goal when playing
When playing balance, your goal is to control the tempo of the match, either by accelerating it with your offense or slowing it down with your defensive core. One you setup the rhythm, you then break it to take the momentum. As you can see, it is radically different from the other two. Balanced team till adapt themselves to every situation.
Team structure
Balance have one universal rule: 3/3. 3 Offensive Pokémon, 3 defensive Pokémon. All of this must be combined with tight synergy between each Pokémon to cover most threats of in the metagame.
Very popular Pokémon featured in balanced are Ferrothorn, Tapu Fini and Mega Metagross.
Variants
- Stack Hazards
Stack Hazards team… stacks hazards. Big surprise. They will function by stacking both Stealth Rocks and either Spikes or Toxic Spikes (sometimes all three) to weaken the opponent faster and force the opponent to use defog and capitalize on that turn to break the rhythm of the match.
- Volt-Turn
Volt turn is a prediction and momentum based team style. Its simple, add to much pivot in your team and you are good to go! People tends to limit it as just a bunch of guys spamming U-Turn and Volt Switch, but it is a little more complex than that. With cores like Mega Scizor + Rotom-W + Tornadus-T that cover each other’s checks, playing around it makes it very hard. It has good momentum grabbing tools and a great advantage state. Volt-Turn works great with Stack Hazards. It could be better, if Ferrothorn, Banefull Bunker and Tankchomp weren’t as popular.
Pros/Cons
- Extreme flexibility.
- Great general matchup. Both defensive and offensive core allow to be ready for any situation.
But
- Even if rarer, bad matchup are almost impossible. Balanced does not excels at anything.
- Teambuilding FREAKING HARD.
Those three are the main team archetypes. Tell me, what team style suits you best?