For weeks, the honest scouting report on this format has been "and then there's Basculegion." Last Respects scales with your fainted Pokémon, and it hits so hard that even resists don't feel safe. So it's telling that one of the most talked-about team notes lately isn't about the fish — it's about the Pokémon quietly built to end it: Hisuian Samurott.

The core interaction is beautifully simple. Samurott-Hisui gets STAB Sucker Punch, and with the right build it OHKOes Basculegion before Last Respects ever fires. The calcs are stark: an Adamant, Expert Belt Sucker Punch is a guaranteed OHKO on standard Basculegion, and even a Jolly Scarf set with Night Slash has around an 81% chance to remove the bulkier spreads. Priority that erases the format's scariest snowball is exactly the tool this meta has been missing.

And Samurott doesn't stop at the fish. Sharpness — its ability, which supercharges slicing moves — turns the rest of its kit into a wallbreaking toolkit. Sacred Sword, which most players call mandatory, decimates Archaludon, Incineroar, and Kingambit while ignoring their defensive boosts. Ceaseless Edge sets Spikes and chunks Farigiraf; some players swap it for Night Slash with a Scope Lens for a genuinely terrifying crit rate. Aqua Cutter rounds out the coverage with more Sharpness-boosted damage. With Black Glasses or Expert Belt, it's one of the cleanest offensive answers to half the threat list at once.

The recommended build reflects how deliberately it's tuned: 32-plus Attack, five Speed to creep most Archaludon, and the rest in HP so it lives specific hits — the report notes it survives a -1 Close Combat from Sneasler. That EV story matters, because it points at the one caveat you should be honest about.

Samurott is frail. It's a wallbreaker, not a wall. The most clear-eyed take on it puts it this way: the fact that Basculegion's best offensive answer still takes around 70% from a resisted Last Respects tells you how much the fish deserves respect. If you want a true, passive Basculegion counter, Heliolisk — immune to both of its STABs thanks to typing and Dry Skin — technically walls it better. But Heliolisk barely does anything else. Samurott's pitch is different: it's the answer that also breaks Archaludon, Kingambit, Incineroar, and Farigiraf, brings priority to every game, and hits like a truck the moment it's on the field.

That's what makes it a meta-definer rather than a one-trick pick. A format bent around Basculegion changes shape the moment a flexible, offensive, priority-wielding answer becomes standard — teams have to respect the Sucker Punch, which means the fish can no longer freely fish for Last Respects late. Hisuian Samurott doesn't just check Basculegion. It taxes the entire archetype built around it.

If you've been losing to the fish, this is the Pokémon to test next. Full stats and movepool live in the Pokémon database, and you can map its coverage against the field with the type chart.