by Doc – Owner, Founder, Wanted to Find a Spongebob Joke In That Title But It Didn’t Sink In
One of the interesting facets of this early portion of the meta is that while roles are seeming to come together – typically formulating around either a Garchomp or Gyarados core, backed up by a Steel type – counter options to those strategies have also emerged. Yesterday I discussed Glaceon and how she can easily pin down both Garchomp and Gyarados, but being an Ice type, she is still weak to Fire, Rock, Steel, and Fighting types, and there’s been several other counters thrown around for the center parts of the meta.
As fate would have it, if the meta were to centralize further around Garchomp, Mega Garchomp, or Mega Gyarados, there would be an even more specialized counter option for each of those three outcomes (though not regular Gyarados). This option has been run extensively in the tournament that I will analyze in an upcoming post, where most of the top 8 ran this Pokémon, so it’s a fairly well-understood option already and in use in parts of the meta.
Enter Mega Clefable
That option is Mega Clefable. Mega Clefable is Fairy/Flying, placing it in the advantageous position of completely resisting Ground-type and Dragon-type attacks, though it is weak to Steel types and Ice types especially. Additionally, while she’s fairly bulky, she can also hit Dark and Dragon types super effectively with her Fairy-type Moonblast and very high Special Attack, keeping both Garchomp/Mega Garchomp and Mega Gyarados in check, though she’d have a harder time against Gyarados anyway due to his practically mandatory usage of Ice Fang to deal with Garchomp.
This is the kind of specialized counter that you would keep in your back pocket if something like Glaceon was being walled off by other options in the meta. A Mega Clefable running something like Moonblast, plus Mystical Fire or Drain Punch to handle Steel types, Protect, and Thunder Punch for regular Gyarados could tackle the two cores if they are still in play. She’s not the bulkiest possible option for this, but she doesn’t need to be: her primary target is Garchomp and other Ground types. She fits that role and precious little else.
But Let’s Be Contextual, Here…
In the current ruleset of the community Discord that I linked you to the other day, there are six Pokémon legal, not three like in other communities. There will surely be someone in their back line that can counter Mega Clefable by typing alone, so you have to keep her on the bench unless you know that they can’t or won’t switch anymore. She’s a late-in-the-stock play built to stuff a Garchomp sweep back into its hole.
Fortunately, she’s also custom-built to eliminate Fighting types, should they ever arise as counterplay to the Steel types. If we ever come to a day where Machamp is actually meta… I’ll be a very happy man.
Amiibo Doctor 