I want to take some credit away from Borat

Zapdos, cloyster, steelix, lax, exeggutor, vaporeon.

This is a very popular team. It was made popular by borat. I've seen it countless times. A lot of people use it or a variation of it. Borat made a guide where he went into detail about a team he made in 2004 and how he evolved it through the years all the way to 2011 into the team I posted above. It is a good offensive team and ever since he created his guide he has been credited as the creator of the team. Well today I want to take that credit away because I discovered something.

[GSC] havoc posts a team

Havoc created a nearly identical team 7 years earlier. The only difference is that vaporeon replaces gengar. For as long as I've been playing gen 2 I have called that team the borat team. Well from now on, it will be called the havoc team. You don't get to replace one pokemon on a team and call it your own. So ownership is being placed back in the original creator's hands. Looks like havoc was ahead of his time, or borat was just behind the times. Probably the latter.

If someone has stolen a team that you made, please contact the Roostur police at 1-111-chicken chicken chicken
 
That's a cool find but 1 it could be chance 2 iirc the main thing of that team that made it innovative etc. was the vaporeon with its set
Well I would have to disagree. Even Borat says in his guide that vaporeon is not the focal point of the team. And as one of the better players of the gen who has used the team and variations of it a lot, I can tell you that vaporeon is one of the more replaceable pokes on the team and sometimes isn't the best poke to have in that slot. And after finding this I don't even know whether I want to believe that borat even was the first to use that vap set. But this is all beside the point. I just wanted to get rid of the misconception that he created the team and give credit back to havoc.
 
Well I would have to disagree. Even Borat says in his guide that vaporeon is not the focal point of the team. And as one of the better players of the gen who has used the team and variations of it a lot, I can tell you that vaporeon is one of the more replaceable pokes on the team and sometimes isn't the best poke to have in that slot. And after finding this I don't even know whether I want to believe that borat even was the first to use that vap set. But this is all beside the point. I just wanted to get rid of the misconception that he created the team and give credit back to havoc.
well it's an interesting point

still, it could be coincidence, but yea definitely interesting
 
well it's an interesting point

still, it could be coincidence, but yea definitely interesting
Could be a coincidence. We can't know it for a fact and we never will. All we know is when havoc was playing with this team in 2004, borat was also playing the game. And not only was havoc playing with that team, he even posted it on a forum for all to see (988 views last time i checked). Which would mean even MORE people were playing with it. It is possible that borat just happened to dodge havoc and all the people that used it, and that he didn't see the post, and just happened to recreate it all on his own years later. But that is a hell of a coincidence. You can't blame me for being a little suspicious. Maybe he sub consciously stole it. Maybe he did see the team, forgot it, and genuinely thinks he created it. But regardless, I'm just glad I found that post. For five , almost six, years we have all thought it was an original idea by borat.

I actually stumbled onto that post trying to find information about Celia and the teams he used back when he played. Still haven't had a lot of luck.
 

Ortheore

Emeritus
2 1 3 3 3 1 2 2
Well I would have to disagree. Even Borat says in his guide that vaporeon is not the focal point of the team. And as one of the better players of the gen who has used the team and variations of it a lot, I can tell you that vaporeon is one of the more replaceable pokes on the team and sometimes isn't the best poke to have in that slot. And after finding this I don't even know whether I want to believe that borat even was the first to use that vap set. But this is all beside the point. I just wanted to get rid of the misconception that he created the team and give credit back to havoc.
He also says that he built the team around Vap, focussing on using Explosion to clear the way for it. I'm not disagreeing with your point that it's replaceable, just pointing out that that was what he set out to do in creating the team, only to find as he used the team that Vap isn't necessarily the star afaik. I'd argue that this is just coincidence brought about by the nature of GSC- the idea of using Explosion to clear a path for a sweeper is pretty simple and probably something many players have come up with independently. By building with that strategy you'll probably end up with a team that looks similar to that of Borat/Havoc, regardless of whether or not you've seen their teams.

Also there's an interesting discussion to be had on things being named after you- in the context of RBY, two notable sets are RaishSey and m9mBro. Both are named after the players who popularised the set, but I don't think either of them invented their sets.
 
Well, I've never called it that. My nickname for it, as far as I used one, was "Tankbro". I took the idea from some of Jorgen's theorymon. Withdraw + Amnesia Slowbro technically was invented by Nintendo, as Lorelei has one (though it doesn't have Rest and has Water Gun as its damaging attack); I've no idea how much, if any, competitive use it saw in the era of real RBY.
 

Chrysalis

scorpion
Emeritus
I'm just gonna quote the paragraph Borat puts on top of all of his guides.

One thing you have to drop is the idea of "new" team. If you're not using a certain move, or a certain pokemon because it would be "copying" someone else's idea and not it being an original creation, that's idiotic. Between the fundamental sets and strats (restbell, curselax, sleep talk) developed by the 00-02 foundational players, and vil/celia/bob/whatever developing most of the defensive conceptual shit, and my developing everything else, there's very little, if any "new" left. The concept of "new" teams revolves around a "new" idea, of which there really aren't any. Changing surf to hydro pump, or cloyster to forretress, doesn't really destroy the core foundational function of the team, so for all intents and purposes, it's still the same team. That's why if I try to "rate" teams, I really just end up giving them a worser version of a team I already made.
 
For a guy who seems to know quite a bit about the gen idk why he thinks that team is the best team ever created. I don't think it's that great. It could be that it was just really effective against the sort of teams people were using back then. But I have so many teams saved that work so much better for me.

I've played that Kuririn guy. Forretress, golem, gengar, exeggutor, vaporeon, lax is what he used on me. He's pretty good.
 
Thats a harder team to play at the start imo.

Easiest stuff would probably be something like this formula:
Zapdos, Cloyster, Snorlax + TTar/Steelix +
if TTar: Nidoking or Raikou
if Steelix: Exeggutor, Gengar
+ last Mon 1 out of: Machamp, Vaporeon, Gengar, Exeggutor, Heracross (Eggy/Hera pref. if Raikou)
 

Ariel Rebel

#1 rsutton23 Fan
Member
Just a noob question, but what IS an easy team for beginners? I've tried a bit of GSC using Nat's Nidoking/Skarm/Lax/Forretress/Raikou/Vaporeon so far.

Skarm, Raikou, Lax and Cloyster is a very safe core to work with. The other 2 spots are really at your discretion. At least one of those spots should be dedicated to being able to opening the game up (see Conflict's last point).
 
Yeah I agree with Arial, the defensive teams are always what you should learn GSC with. Not only that, they just are the best team structures in GSC period, even at advanced levels of play. Once you've found your feet and really know your way around the mechanics well, that's when you start trying the damn stall assasin teams like Borats. You're never going to be able to use that team properly if you don't understand the defensive threats to begin with. Here's 2 examples of pretty much standard defensive teams which imo are the best with which to learn GSC:

1.Raikou
Thunder, hidden power ice, rest, sleep talk

2.Starmie
Rapid spin, psychic, surf, recover

3.Snorlax
Curse, double edge, fire blast, rest

4.Nidoking
Lovely Kiss, earthquake, Thunder, ice beam

5.Skarmory
Toxic, drill peck, whirlwind, rest

6.Miltank
Growl, Body Slam, heal bell, milk drink

Or:

1.Raikou
Thunder, hidden power ice, rest, sleep talk

2.Cloyster
Spikes, toxic, surf, rapid spin

3.Snorlax
Lovely Kiss, curse, double edge, rest

4.Suicune
Toxic, surf, rest, sleep talk

5.Skarmory
Toxic, drill peck, whirlwind, rest

6.Tyranitar
Curse, rock slide, earthquake, roar

(leftovers on everything)

I might just turn this into a whole new thread because I kinda feel like this question comes up a lot from players trying to pick up the gen and I think the guides/ sample teams already out there are probably a little too complex for most beginners to be taking on.
 
I don't really like either of those teams. The first one gets hard stalled really badly by basically every form of missy stall, any other stall matchup is basically a stalemate of switching. Second one doesn't fair as poorly, but it doesn't look like it has the right tools to really play the long matchup v. stall. raikou on the second team looks like the only answer to vaporeon, since lax won't kill in time, suicune can't do anything, and cloyster can't explode; which makes the team a bit too simple to pin down imo.

I mean if you want them to learn by figuring out why the team is losing I guess it makes a lot of sense. Figuring out that your opponent can just switch and pp stall you solely by matchup seems like something a lot of new players haven't been noticing. That and last mon lax scenarios. Most new players seem to risk way too many explosions on pokes that their team is reliant on as well, i.e. they don't get that being forced to trade is extremely bad.
 
Also I really wouldn't be surprised if it was sheer coincidence. Borat mentioned that he and some other user also came up with a team independent of one another. I think I remember him posting somewhere that the team was similar to one that havoc made before but icr.

I don't think the last slot of the team isn't nearly as malleable as people make it out to be either. Vaporeon fits the spot a lot better than Gengar for that specific combinations of pokemon and sets borat posted, at least for the current meta. I don't think the RMT he posted recently is a very good iteration of the team though. The formula conflict posted as an easy-to-play template is far more accurate in showing the changes you'd need to make to that style of team to fit on a 6th.

Realistically just swapping the 6th will do okay at a low level, but at higher levels of play you need to swap out certain pokes and throw hp fire/electric or ice beam on it. Simply swapping it out without that usually means you'll get hard stalled or that curselax will roll over you.
 
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