u/braytreuse

This is my Hail team v2! Froslass lead is replaced with Weavile, who provides Fake Out and Taunt support so I don't lose to a Steel type, Trick Room, Dragon Dance, etc. turn 1 and I can get up Aurora Veil more often without sacking a mon. Also Vanilluxe has been replaced with Mamoswine in the back. Mamoswine is mainly there to spam Stomping Tantrum so Rock, Electric, and Steel types aren't getting free wins against me.

But one side effect is that the team is much weaker to rain. For the last team, this battle would've been very easy with a switch to Vanilluxe to immediately set Hail back up, Aurora Veil turn 1, spam Freeze Dry and Thunderbolt a bunch and I win easily.

But with this new team, it's much more awkward to reset Hail, and Ninetales has to do some very heavy lifting because no one else deals with Water types well. As the battle shows, Ninetales is just a tad on the weak side.

There's also one thing that stays the same with this team: Rotom-Wash is the bane of its existence. Last battle, the opponent hit the 50% accurate Thunder, 80% accurate Hydro Pump, 70% accurate Focus Blast, and 90% accurate Hyper Beams. This battle, I ended up having to leverage accuracy again in much the same way to hope for an eventual miss. So already this team may not be much of an improvement.

I spent a very long time trying to make this first version of my Hail team work. I made it to the 40s repeatedly. I even made it to Blue once. But it was constantly coming down to luck, avoiding Colress, Mega Metagross, various Electric types, Mega Tyranitar, etc., and every game was super dependent on Gyarados staying alive in order to win.

After this, I made some adjustments. Ninetales was the core of the strategy, and Gyarados was the MVP, so I decided to change the rather redundant mons and give myself more consistency and more strength against Electric, Rock, and Steel types. That would become my Hail team v2.

All 4 members weak to Rock? Tyranitar is even more of a threat than normal!

After 1 Dragon Dance, my entire team is outsped, and the threat of Mega means I can't easily do away with its Sand turn 1. This mon is the bane of most weather teams, and along with Mega Metagross, it felt like I needed to pray to dodge certain mons that would 1v4 my entire team. Still, I was holding out hope that luck would at least get me to blue...

This one started out rough. Ninetales was not going easy on me in this battle, and that was only the beginning of a dangerous fight against the Sun.

With 3/4 Ice-types on a Hail team, Sun teams should be one of the worst matchups. This battle shows how team v1 handles it, with pretty bad luck to start.

As always with this team v1, Gyarados is the keystone holding everything together, for better or worse.