Haven't posted on my subwaying in a bit so figure I'll post a few thoughts now. First, I finally decided to put together a few runs on my Black 2 cartridge, and started off with my old 336 win standby of Garchomp/Suicune/Ferrothorn, with the only update being my switch to Rough Skin on Chomp. The team played great, as expected, and Rough Skin continued to prove its worth. Unfortunately, after reaching 221 wins pretty smoothly, I punted a match to a missclick, got irritated, and stepped away from the Subway for a bit. I can post the proof photo if people want, but since it's a lesser streak than I already have with that team, I don't really see the need to have it on the leaderboard.
Coming back, I thought about giving that team another go, but felt too impatient to go through hundreds of matches where I'd be using both slow set up Suicune and Ferrothorn in a bunch of my matches, and so wanted to try something faster.
I first tried out Focus Sash/Destiny Bond Gengar. I had some early success when Pokemon Black first came out with a Gengar/Garchomp/Scizor team (see
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3454748&postcount=86 for my write up of 139 wins with them), and thought that Gengar with Dragonite and Scizor could be fun and fast. The team certainly was both, but it had too many vulnerabilities. Gengar can pretty much guarantee one kill, but was unable to get a second on too many occasions, and Dragonite/Scizor found it a bit too easy to lose to hax and the like against the final two enemy pokes. A bulkier setup/pivot poke like Suicune might help here, but that pulls me back towards using Garchomp as my third poke, and that would leave me retracing ~Mercury's~ footsteps, and slow battles down as well.
In my original write up, I noted that Focus Blast was a bit of a free roll on Gengar, getting many OHKOs (where the other two moves wouldn't even 2HKO) on a hit, while not costing me much on a miss, since I could still fall back on Destiny Bond/Focus Sash in most cases to trade one-for-one. Giving it more thought, however, I now feel that I was mistaken. If I'm still winning battles just fine after a Focus Blast miss, why waste a slot on the move at all? And if a Focus Blast hit is the difference between losing and winning a battle, I should not be relying on 70% accuracy. That my loss on my early 139 streak included a Focus Blast miss really hammers this point home. Moreover, too many of the things that Focus Blast hits hard are either really bulky and able to tank it, or Sashed/Sturdy, requiring a second hit. If I play Gengar again, I'll replace Focus Blast with a 4x weakness hunting move, with leading options being Energy Ball, HP Rock, and HP Fire. Yes, the speed loss from HP Fire would be frustrating, but since you already have to play speed ties like you'll always lose if you want to ensure a destiny bond, I think the practical impact of the lost point of speed will be lower than one might assume.
More generally, the difficulty I've had with Gengar is that even though he is amazing at guaranteeing a one-for-one trade, he's only really helpful when he's able to kill two pokes, for which he is not quite consistent enough. Sure, the classic outrun and 2HKO the lead, survive the first attack with Sash, then outrun and Destiny Bond the second poke happens a lot, but weather damage, paralysis hax, a faster opposing poke, or Focus Blast miss mean you are stuck in one-for-one land more often than I would like. Once you are just trading one-for-one, you're in a suboptimal position. As a thought experiment, imagine a team with 2 pokes that could each guarantee to trade with one of the opponent's pokes (and even shut down their lasting moves/abilities, which Gengar does not) but do nothing else. Clearly, this would be a horrible team for building a long streak. You'd end up in a one-on-one with a random enemy poke, and no matter how well designed your final poke is, many enemy pokes will be able to beat it. You'd win most of your battles, yes, but that isn't enough when you want a to win several hundred times in a row. ~Mercury~ certainly made Gengar work for a monster streak, and his Garchomp and Suicune synergize marvelously, so I shouldn't say it's impossible, but leading with Gengar, I felt like there were too many ways for my team to lose, particularly given my desire to keep battles moving briskly.
I've since turned to *Dragon/Suicune/Scizor (with Mono-Water Chesto Suicune and Scizor holding Leftovers and using Bullet Punch/Bug Bite/Swords Dance/Roost). My first choice for lead Dragon is ol' dependable Choice Band Garchomp. Garchomp/Suicune/Scizor naturally plays similarly to Garchomp/Suicune/Ferrothorn, but there are some key differences. First is that Scizor speeds up a lot of matches. A quick Swords Dance followed by attacking is much faster than grinding out a series of Leach Seeds, Substitutes, and Curses. You also perform much better in situations where Garchomp leaves an opposing poke at low health before being KOed himself (a reasonably common occurrence when locked into Outrage). Ferrothorn is so slow that it always has to take a hit before being able to get the kill, but Scizor can just Bullet Punch for the last bit of damage. In particular, this is helpful against things like Focus Sash Blizzard/Wood Hammer/Focus Blast Abomasnow, which can cause a lot of super effective pain for Garchomp/Suicune/Ferrothorn.
Scizor's comparative weakness is that he is much less tanky. I'm using an Adamant max Attack/max HP spread, and even with Roost for recovery, Scizor is very vulnerable to things like neutral damage crits. Accordingly, when playing him, however tempting it is to go for a full set up on things he dominates, it's often best to attack after one boost, rather than trying to get all the way to +6. Without the safety of Substitute to hide behind, an untimely hit or status effect can really ruin Scizor's day. Sometimes you can safely set up all the way, but when in doubt, err on the side of attacking too early rather than too late. Another weakness of Scizor is painfully specific: he's less consistent of an answer to Timid King's Rock SPIT Starmie than I would like. Ferrothorn is bulky enough that it can handle one instance of hax and still counter Starmie, even getting a couple of Curses and a Substitute in while it bleeds the starfish out with Leech Seed. Sure, with no freeze, critical hit, or flinch, Scizor can switch into Ice Beam, eat a Surf, and OHKO with Bug Bite, but the chance of one of these happening is too high for my taste. Even coming into revenge kill, where the danger of a freeze or crit on the Ice Beam is removed, he still loses to a crit or flinch on the Surf, which will happen an unacceptably high 15.625% of the time (6.25% chance of crit + 10% chance of flinch - 0.625% chance of both ). Since SPIT Starmie beats Garchomp and pre-setup Suicune, this is a big problem.
In the end, I think that with tight play, Garchomp/Suicune/Ferrothorn is still a better team than Garchomp/Suicune/Scizor in terms of winning percentage, but if you want faster battles, switching to Scizor is defensible.
The second Dragon lead I've tried with Suicune and Scizor (and what I'm currently playing) is Adamant max Attack, max speed Lum Berry Dragonite with Outrage, Earthquake, Swords Dance, and Fire Punch. This type of team has already been shown to be strong, as Carl put together a sweet 404 win streak with identical pokemon and moves, written up here:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4250017&postcount=1729. Unlike Carl, I'm using Leftovers on Scizor and Chesto Berry on Suicune. I find the initial quick sleep more helpful for Suicune than Leftovers recovery, and Scizor is very happy to have Leftovers freed up for its use. Still, I'm sure that even with this change, this plays out very similarly to Carl's squad.
Interestingly, though you most often spend your first turn having Dragonite use Dragon Dance, this team plays faster than the version with immediate attacking Choice Band Garchomp in the lead. Choiced Garchomp typically has to switch out after confusion, meaning that a slower poke often needs to come in and set up to finish a match. Dragonite, because of his ability to switch moves and recover from confusion with its Lum Berry, is typically able to stay in longer, and so many battles are won in quick fashion by dancing once or twice and then attacking three times. Where possible, I do try to get in two Dragon Dances, as after two, Dragonite outspeeds the entire Subway, and very few things avoid a OHKO absent Sturdy or a Sash. After just one Dance, Adamant Dragonite's Outrage hits harder than that of Jolly Choice Band Garchomp, which is enough to OHKO several bulky neutrals that barely survive Garchomp's outrange. This is very nice. The unfortunate trade off is that lacking STAB, Dragonite's Earthquake is much weaker than that of Choice Band Garchomp, even after a single Dance, and so a second Dance helps a lot for getting Earthquake KOs. A particularly nice thing about Dragonite is that where you are able to Dance early, it can often dominate many of the pokes that can outspeed Garchomp. With all of the the base speed 111 Kami and base speed 108 Musketeers on the all-legendary trainers' teams, this is particularly helpful. Likewise, being able to boost speed helps mitigate the risks from SPIT Starmie, because after one Dance, Dragonite can outspeed it and OHKO with Outrage.
The biggest downside of Dragonite compared to Garchomp, in my mind, is how many opposing Dragons initially outspeed you. Garchomp is outrun by the Timid Lati twins and opposing Scarf Chomp, but can shred everything else by just Outraging. Dragonite is typically stuck either switching out or eating a super effective attack on the first turn. Thanks to Multiscale, Dragonite can often survive a lead Dragon-type attack, Dance once, and then KO with Outrage, but it remains vulnerable to particularly high powered opposing Outrages, critical hits, and Mold Breaker Haxrous. It is likely that this risk can be partially mitigated by switching to Carl's slightly bulkier 64 HP / 252 Atk / 192 Spe spread, but I have not yet theorymoned this against opposing Dragon attacks to see which in which specific matchups such a spread turns a OHKO of Dragonite into a 2HKO. Consider that to be on my to-do list. I'm sitting at a little over 100 wins with the team right now, and hope I can keep going for a big streak.
Returning briefly to the issue of SPIT Starmie, I find it is the single most important poke in the entire Subway for theorymoning. So many otherwise great teams match up really poorly with it, because thanks to the 10% flinch chance, many things that could otherwise counter it risk losing to flinch Hax. Yes, you can use a cripple and set up team to avoid this problem, but in that case, you are dooming yourself to slow matches. The natural solution would be to use something faster than the starfish that can also OHKO, but not much outspeeds Starmie without a Choice Scarf, and frustratingly, SPIT Starmie is just bulky enough to survive almost all unboosted STABed neutral attacks and unboosted non-STABed super effective attacks, so even with a scarf, most attacks won't quite get there. One very cool exception is Latios. A Modest, max Attack Scarfed Latios just barely guarantees the OHKO against subway SPIT Starmie with Thunderbolt. (Draco Meteor also works, of course, but the 10% miss chance makes it too unreliable for my taste.) Accordingly I've long wanted to try a team with Modest Scarf Latios as something of a catch-all cleanup poke.
Unfortunately, settling on the two main lead pokes to go with this Latios has proven difficult. A lead Dragon is awkward because it gives you two pokemon with a shared weakness. I love lead Cloyster, but Cloyster really, really loves having Garchomp as a partner (since Thunder Wave is so crippling), and that puts you back into double Dragon territory. Similarly, most teams, even fast ones, want something reasonably bulky that can serve as a pivot and counter opposing bulky pokes, and Cloyster/Garchomp/Latios lacks that. Cloyster/Scizor/Latios avoids the shared weakness issue, but Thunder Wave remains a significant problem. Scizor/Suicune/Latios could actually be a lot of fun, includes a nice type spread, and has Suicune to answer opposing bulk, but you lose a little of the initial pop that other leads have. Scizor's type coverage is imperfect, and after one Swords Dance, it still doesn't OHKO as many things as does a boosted Garchomp, Cloyster, or Dragonite, which I suspect makes it much more vulnerable as a lead than I would like.
Right now, I'm leaning towards making my next attempt a variant on Jumpman's "Bullet Train" team of Latios/Suicune/Terrakion, written up here:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3683679&postcount=390. I'd have a nice mix of attacks, good defensive synergy, no awkward double-dragon weakness, and the ability to win many of my battles very quickly. With Scarf Latios as my catch-all cleaner, Terrakion would need to lead, and though I haven't ever tried lead Terrakion, I imagine that it will work well, and since Suicune and Latios both cover its weaknesses well, switching out should not be too much of a hardship. Unlike Jumpman, I'd stick with Scald/Calm Mind/Substitue/Rest and Chesto/Lum Berry on Suicune. I'd lose the cool "team support" aspect of Icy Wind, and some matches would go slower for me than for Jumpman, but on such a team, I'm willing to trade off a little battle speed for the hyper-reliability of mono-Water Suicune.
Do any of you have other ideas on ways to get maximum value out of Scarf Latios? I'd love any input you might have. I know this has been a rather long and somewhat meandering post, so thanks for reading!