u/allbright4

Hey Friends,

I recently cracked the top 500 on showdown with a Sand Team I have been tweaking since halfway through season 1 and wanted to share my team and give a brief team report for anyone who may want to try it or improve on it.

Poke Paste

Team+ Moves

EVs

My starting point for this team was of course TTar+Excadrill. There is nothing too surprising here. Rockslide on 3 mons to help slow the other team down with flinch chance. My one "tech" is ice punch over something like low kick. Ttar is currently trained to survive a stomping tantrum or an EQ from Garchomp, and KO (or get really close depending on the Chomp set) with ice punch. Mega+ ice punch guarantees the OHKO each time. Personally, I found low kick lack luster and ran into more matches where I wanted ice punch over a fighting move.

Excadrill-goes fast and hits hard with stab or gives me flinch chances with a fast rockslide. I experimented with white herb as an item but needed to compensate for its fragility. Especially in the face of things like scarf chomp or sneasler.

Sinestcha- redirection, healing and can pass status with matcha gotcha. I personally did not enjoy having trick room and opted for shadow ball to help deal with opposing ghosts, like basculegion, gengar, or sableye. This shadow ball also helps with some of my more difficult match ups like Archaludon by having a solid stab special move.

Milotic- Bulky attacker, solid into garchomp. Can dissuade opposing intimidate from coming to the battle at all with competitive.

Rotom heat- Originally rotom-w, but I found myself needing a fire move and strong electric attacks as more whimsicott joined the meta, and different steel types posed threats to my rock types. I also needed electric support to deal with rain teams, basculegion and bulky flyers like corviknight. Trained to outspeed scarf basculegion and chunk it with volt switch or thunderbolt. (Used to be secure a KO, but the fish is running a bit bulkier as of late.)

Aerodactyl- Pretty simple set, went with a mega stone to help secure KOs with tough claws and outspeed opposing aero, Aero+rotom are my most common leads, I ended up needing wide guard over protect to help mitigate spread moves from mons like primarina or opposing rockslides. Tailwind for extra speed, and dual wingbeat to get around sneasler.

Most common Lead- Aero+Rotom. Fast volt switch and wide guard support provides flexiblity and a chance to pivot if you don't call the opponents lead correctly. Geneally with this lead you are able to bring Ttar+ a flex mon to meet whatever the opponent might bring (this is most often milotic or excadril)

Weaknesses

Lack of 100% accurate moves. Rockslide, Iron Head, High Horsepower, matcha gatcha, dual wing beat, overheat CAN and WILL miss. Be prepared to have to play around a miss.

M-Venusaur or scovillain teams. M-Venusaur matches up really well into this team, especially if they can KO Aerodactyl. Thick fat+ giga drain can pose a threat if you cannot take it out quickly through dual wingbeat or other big damage. Scovillain is just annoying, easily able to pass around burns can really handicap the team if you're not careful. I typically with sacrifice aero and use them to take the burn and focus down the peppers, to help keep the rest of the team burn free.

Archaludon+Sableye- this team is solid for a reason. The lack of fighting moves means we are reliant on rotom and excadrill to take down the bridge. Best advice is to focus down sableye by leading TTar+sinestcha to try and prevent both sets of screens from going up. If that is successful, focus on weather control and you are generally able to leave the bridge for last with smart play, while you take down the rest of the team.

Whimsicott- priority tailwind+encore can really disrupt this team, and put you on the backfoot if you are unable to get your own tailwind up

I will put trick room up here, as it can be hard to outlast trick room once it is up, but it is possible. M-TTar with knock off is able to secure KOs on most setters, with a double up if they have the colbur berry.

Strengths-

I think sand gives you a lot of solid options into the more common teams running around atm. The team has a positive match up into sun and snow teams. A neutral to difficult match up into TR teams, and a difficult match up into some rain teams if you lose control of the weather I don't think I have run into a team comp that cannot be beaten with better play on my end.

Thanks for reading, hope this helps someone! Next step is making adjustments for the Bo3 ladder.