Pokémon of the week - 6 July, 2026

Spotlight on... Ceruledge

, our Pokémon of the week!

Why Ceruledge?

Ceruledge has seen more and more play in VGC and its win rate has been increasing over the last few weeks since the start of Regulation M-B. Even though it's not part of the best teams in the format, it has a lot of tools to deal with the most threatening Pokémon in the current meta.

Ceruledge build, stats and effectiveness

The current main build for Ceruledge is a bulky Physical Attacker build based on Bulk Up to set up as a sweeping threat alongside its signature move Bitter Blade and the priority move Shadow Sneak:

Part of what makes this build so relevant is that it can deal with a lot of meta threats, such as:

Mega Floette with its high physical damage output exploiting its weaker Defense stat, and its Fairy-type resistance
Mega Charizard Y thanks to Flash Fire making the use of Heat Wave very awkward, and its Grass-type resistance against Solar Beam
Kingambit against which Bitter Blade and a +32 HP investment make it easy to win any trade. Colbur Berry also helps survive a +2 Atk Sucker Punch
Mega Froslass with an almost guaranteed OHKO under the snow
Mega Delphox by walling Heat Wave and threatening heavy damage with Shadow Sneak; potentially OHKO at +1 Atk

In addition to this, Ceruledge takes advantage of Bulk Up to become really hard to stop for any physical damage dealer that can't deal very effective damage to it, with Bitter Blade adding to that tankiness.

Best partners

Ceruledge's best partners are those that help it sweep more easily without being disrupted. The most important ones are:

Milotic as a partner that can handle what Ceruledge cannot, such as Ground-, Water- or Rock-type moves. With its Coil + Hypnosis build, Milotic is also an extremely valuable support that can neutralize a threat for 1–2 turns, giving its partner enough time to set up and/or KO said threat
Incineroar is another very valuable support for Ceruledge, helping make its partner's bulk even harder to overcome
Alolan Ninetales serves much the same function as Milotic by covering Ceruledge's weaknesses, but in a more aggressive way, threatening mainly Water- and Ground-type users like Basculegion and Garchomp

Best counters

What threatens Ceruledge the most is Pokémon that can OHKO it without being themselves weak to Ghost- and Fire-type moves — especially Shadow Sneak for faster threats. These include:

Garchomp with Earthquake
Basculegion with Wave Crash / Liquidation
Hydreigon with Dark Pulse

Ceruledge competitive teams

Here are a few examples of teams including Ceruledge that hit rank #1 in recent tournaments.

Thavorian Trials 3 — Mhew (#1 out of 45 players)

Mid-Week Smoke #5 - Joshua De Jose (#1 out of 37 players)

CHAMPIONS REG. M-B |👑CROWN FIGHT Bo3 TOUR #73👑 - Gotou (#1 out of 39 players)