#alakazam spam

[alakazamboni-blog]

My mantis is full grown now! Her front leg doesn't look like it molted right, but she's active and wiggling around. She drank some water and had some honey to snack on. She wasn't ready to eat a bug yet. I hope her deformity doesn't impact her ability to hunt.

[gaydryad]

started my soulsilver playthrough (since I am reaching the point of Must Trade Pokémon From Other Games to complete my dex in heartgold) and actually playing with sound on more to appreciate the music and wow Silver's theme kind of goes hard. sorry for muting and using speedup through all your scenes in heartgold man. also sorry for your fucked up backstory. your tunes slap

[teacasket]

psychic lover

genre: fluff au: gamer au, streamer au warnings: none word count: 0.3k   pairing: gn!reader x han jisung song: psychic lover by itzy

SO, I CAN READ YOUR MIND, NO LIE.

Judging from the way his eyes flicker back and forth from his monitor to your lips, Jisung wants to kiss you. The camera directed as his face is the only reason why he won’t.

Twitch streamer J1SUNG is a lot of things—loud, boisterous, occasionally smart—but openly affectionate with his partner is not one of them. It has been two years since you’ve made your first appearance on his stream, yet Jisung is rarely romantic with you. Despite your constant presence, the closest moment Chat has ever witnessed is him saying to you, “God, you’re a genius.”

In his defense, he’s usually too preoccupied with his hardcore Nuzlocke challenges to flirt with you, and you’re usually too busy pretending to work on your dissertation to pay attention to him. However, today is different since you have opted to take a break from writing. You watch him play Pokémon Emerald, convince him to make bad choices for entertainment, and gloat when your bad choices turn out to be good ones.

Which brings us to his Jisung’s current predicament.

He wants to kiss you because you were right that his Alakazam can take the hit, and now he can sweep the rest of the team.

“See? I knew it!” you say. Chat echoes your sentiments, spamming emotes and “CALCULATED,” as is tradition whenever your decisions pay off.

“Yeah, of course you did.”

“You know what else I know?”

“Everything” is the typical punchline, so Jisung answers accordingly, half sighing as he recalls all of the other times you were right. You’ll never let him forget the run where he accidentally killed his Ralts encounter.

Rather than smugly agreeing, you lean over and kiss him, making sure to block the camera with your hand. When you pull away, he’s bright red.

“What was that?” he stammers. He covers his face with two hands, peeking through his fingers to read the chat. As he does so, he sinks further out of the camera’s view.

You smile and wrap your arms around his shoulders. “I know everything, remember?”

I CAN BE YOUR PSYCHIC LOVER.

[kafus]

i’ve been working on my hardcore nuzlocke of firered while waiting for my friends to wake up and watch the new horizons episode with me, and i just swept sabrina with spell tag shadow ball persian lmao. only mon i had to swap out for was venomoth. incredible (charizard took it out w flamethrower and then i sacrificed a safari zone paras encounter to alakazam to get persian back in safely)

my current team! i recovered from those three stupid and painful deaths 😭 lost my gyarados, future arcanine, and future alakazam, but i’m still in it…

not shown is my hypno because i’m currently spamming thief on abras w butterfree on route 25 looking for a twistedspoon, but i’m gonna be replacing hypno with tentacruel or lapras soon anyway Soooo

also i’m aware persian isn’t the best encounter and charizard isn’t the best starter for FRLG etc etc but i’m just having fun since these games are easy to nuzlocke anyway :] somehow despite playing FRLG a million times i haven’t used persian in particular ever and i really wanted to, especially when it rolled a good nature for nuzlocke standards (naive which is +spe -spd)

[crystalelemental]

@patchun did it, so now I'm doing it. Apparently it's just a big grid of your favorites, if anyone else wants to play along. I tried to be more honest with myself about pre-evolutions, but we all know how that can go.

GEN 1 There were no Dark types, and only one Steel type, so that's a little lame. Otherwise, Gen 1 has a lot of "my favorite is a pre-evo." Eevee, yes Vulpix over Ninetales in this moment, and most critically, Kadabra over Alakazam. Kadabra is, at least at present, my favorite Gen 1 mon again. Just like when I was a lad. I loved Kadabra. One that I think might stand out is Nidoran-Male. There are plenty of Poison types, but truth be told? I always just thought Nidoran-Male was super cute. I love its big ears. It's not the same when it starts evolving.

GEN 2 I feel like none of this should be surprising, and I'm sleepy, so moving on.

GEN 3 Gen 3 has excellent Pokemon, I love them. Illumise is a bit of an odd pick, but I had a really fun AlphaSapphire run one time that ran Illumise and it did pretty well, endearing it to me. Otherwise...yeah, actually, Mega Mawile is preferred over Gardevoir at this time. I miss it so bad...

GEN 4 Despite my love of Gen 4, I feel like a large draw is its legends. A lot of these feel like filling in a box. That said, Mesprit. There are so many good legends, but I'm tired of pretending Mesprit isn't my favorite.

GEN 5 Lilligant Sweep. Honestly, looking back at how much I love so many Gen 5 designs, it's nuts to think that people hated on it. Also we're back to having pre-evos as favorites. Frillish is better than Jellicent, with the pink one being my favorite, while I also just like Dewott better than Samurott, and think it's the best starter form of the generation.

GEN 6 Okay, so at this point, I should mention: I decided to put something different in each box, to avoid just spamming certain favorites. That was ill advised when you get to gens 6-8, given how few new additions there really were. So much of this feels like picking something. That said, special shoutouts to Gourgeist, who is legitimately one of my favorites ever, but cannot compete with Lilligant.

GEN 7 UB Sweep. Also, I love Pikipek. I love Trumbeak. I don't really love Toucannon. I loved woodpeckers, and was really excited by having one, but then it evolves and it's like sure, this makes sense. Morelull was the worse outcome, but the short is Gen 7 really did not endear itself to me with the evolution decisions. It did, however, endear itself via Moon Bat and the Ultra Beasts. Nihilego being the easy favorite. Like, come on.

GEN 8 Man, thank god for Legends Arceus, am I right? If it's from legends, safe to assume it's actually my favorite. If it's from Galar, it's like a 50/50 I was just filling a spot. That said, I am here to pick fights right now. Thievul is cute, y'all are just mean, and I fucking love Indeedee. Great shit.

GEN 9 I happen to like Paldea quite a lot. That said, wow do Ice and Bug not have much going on. Ice is especially painful, but I actually do like Frigibax. I saw it first in the evolution line and was like oh hey, that's a pretty cool dragon thing, and it's Ice type that's crazy! And then I saw its pre-evo form and was like oh, that's not so good. And then I saw its final form and was like "well that's not too bad" until I saw it move. It's not great. But the rest I legitimately love. Arboliva, Ceruledge, Espathra, Glimmora, Bellibolt, and yes all of the Meowscarada line. They're really good.

MISCELLANEOUS Not a ton to mention in the special section, but I'll comment on a bit. Spearow line is great, they're just vilified because of the anime. But if you think about it, Pidgey spams Sand Attack and is a little punk-ass bitch with Whirlwind when it evolves, while Spearow is an honorable warrior. Chingling is probably my favorite baby? I briefly debated Smoochum solely for being not-Jynx, before decided I didn't really like that one either. Flareon is my favorite Eeveelution but couldn't win over Vulpix, so it just...never got to appear. I'm sorry, I just love the Vulpix line so much.

OVERALL I assume none of these final decisions are surprising, so instead, here's the official ranking of each within the favorites (just the 18 types):

Lilligant - Absolute favorite, I adore Lilligant.

Nihilego - Very, very close second, I love this space jellyfish that deletes your personality.

Gardevoir - I can't help myself, I just love Gardevoir. It's such a good design.

Mawile - While Mega Mawile won out over Gardevoir overall, I think that's as much sadness over losing it as actually preferring it. They're pretty evenly matched, but without the mega, I think Gardevoir pulls ahead.

Mesprit - Emotion gremlin, I love you Mesprit, it's so cute and I am instantly drawn to emotion things.

Kingdra - I actually really love Kingdra. I think it's the Johto thing, and the strong association with Clair, who is a favorite. It's also just a cool dragon, like look at that thing.

Glaceon - Eeveelutions suck so bad, and I'm so mad about it, but I love you Glaceon, you and Flareon are hot garbage but you're my favorites.

Iron Valiant - Iron Valiant is so goddamn cool, what a good Paradox Pokemon. I just...wish I had more time with it, you know? Maybe over time it'll climb up, but I think it's just too...locked to one of the very last things you can do to attach.

Mismagius - Super cool ghost witch. Love this thing.

Milotic - It's very pretty, and it's one of the few Water types I stronly respect. I'm sorry, I don't love Water types.

Indeedee - Look, Indeedee's my girl. It's such a cute little design, I love that it got Psychic Terrain on entry, I'm dying for Pokemon Masters to give Caitlin or Darach one of these things. It's so good.

Braixen - Fennekin is the best starter ever designed, and Braixen is therefore the best by virtue of being the best iteration within that evolutionary line. REALLY wish it were Psychic type.

Krookodile - It's just a really cool thing. I wind up using Krookodile like every time I play Gen 5, it's just such a cool thing.

Diancie - You should be higher, but Pokemon is terrible with how mythic Pokemon are distributed so I just don't have enough direct engagement with it.

Vespiquen - This is the coolest bug. And it's also one of the shittiest. Life's not fair, is it?

Meowscarada - I actually do really like Meowscarada. I think it's a cool concept, and for a humanoid creature like we feared, it actually didn't turn out as bad as I expected.

Ampharos - Electric is one of my least favorites types, but Ampharos line is just so cute. Look at this thing. That is a friend.

Noctowl - I just think it's the coolest regional bird, and deserves more respect.

[thalassomania]

you know what they say: you win some, you lose some… you do stupid bullshit off-type clears on some…

1. “sync buffs more effective” round against lorelei. she had that stupid look alive passive skill this time so i needed something with piercing gaze (or equivalent) and settled on my good ol’ electric team. it may have been off-type, but it was a good clear. sorry i couldn’t use you this time, bea

2. “stat changes have greater effect” round against lance. with champ iris and alt leon this one was a no-brainer. they crushed everything in their paths, as expected, and hop’s crit-rate buffs helped iris quite a bit

3. “infinite field effects” round against bruno. first time using neo champ serena since i got her on saturday and it felt wicked good. sygna green and sygna kris make an excellent support combo, even if kris’s special defense buffing wasn’t really needed this time

4. “physical damage reduction” round against agatha. honestly i had no strat going in here so i scrounged up enough 5-star power-ups to EX fall morty… and it didn’t work out so great. which SUCKS because i really like him! after a few attempts i decided to cheese this one with flinch and freeze spam. red and lyra are awful together and i love it so much

5. “status condition buff” and “infinite field effects” round against green. i was so excited to use sygna hilbert for this but in a panic i took out the center ‘mon first, and the ally attacks knocked out genesect pretty brutally. so while hilbert got the win against green’s alakazam, it was actually sygna morty and aaron who teamed up to whittle the allies down to nothing. sygna morty continues to impress me tbh, i’m so glad i have him

and there you go! 12.5k clear once again. i should draw some of these combinations because i love them ^_^

[rapifessor]

Pokéchronology, Volume I: Yellow

Day 12

We're nearing the end of the first volume of Pokéchronology. I beat not just one, but two gyms today: the final two. Which just leaves the Elite Four, the Champion, and whatever postgame Pokémon Yellow has to offer. Depending on the level of grinding required, that could only be two or three more days.

I've been looking at what it will take to complete the Pokédex as well. Between my copy of Yellow and Crystal, it should be possible to obtain every Generation I Pokémon in both versions. However, due to some complexities, I can't do that while maintaining my save files on both. There are certain Pokémon that you can miss out on depending on your decisions in-game, which means I'd have to create new saves to get Pokémon I would otherwise miss. I don't particularly want to do that, so I'm looking into some alternatives.

With that preamble out of the way, I'll go over what happened today. Spoilers ahoy, obvs.

Sea Route 21

This is the final route before I complete the tour around Kanto and start revisiting areas to clean up and get ready for Victory Road. I've used my Thunderbolt TM on Holy now so I kept them in front to deal with most of the Water types I was being spammed with on the way up the route. I tried to give Mycoboss some action as well, since they were going to be my weapon against Sabrina's gym.

There's nothing really of note here, though I do have to give a shoutout to the guy who just has six Magikarp on his team. He's the only trainer outside of presumably the Elite Four and the Champion who has six Pokémon, and they're all just fucking Magikarp. What a chad.

The route ends back at Pallet Town, and I do a little battling in the patch of grass at the very end. There doesn't seem to be anything new in there though, just some Pidgey. I drop by my house to heal and get my items sorted. Maxed out the item storage again, so I tried to clean it up a bit but for some reason you can't get rid of items like the S.S. Ticket which are literally useless now. That was annoying, but I'll have to make do, I guess. I withdraw a couple of TMs that I can buy at the Celadon Department Store anyway so I can sell them.

After that I do a quick restock in Celadon, buying a bunch of Lemonades and selling those TMs before I have Pear Fly me to Saffron City.

Fighting Dojo

Before challenging the gym I just have one thing I need to do, which is challenge the Fighting Dojo. I could have done this much earlier as the trainers inside only have their Pokémon at level 30 or so, but I figured I would deal with it when I challenged Sabrina. Holy plows through essentially the whole dojo with raw Special, and earns me a Hitmonchan, who I name Star Plat. If you're looking for a strong Fighting type, Hitmonchan isn't a bad way to go since they learn Fire, Ice, and Thunder Punch, which gives them great type coverage and their stats are arguably better than Hitmonlee. Hitmonlee has higher Attack, but most of the moves they learn don't have 100% accuracy, which REALLY sucks.

I don't really have a need for a Fighting type on my team though, and getting Star Plat. up to speed would take some time anyway. So I won't be using them, and I head straight for Saffron Gym instead.

Saffron Gym

It's basically just a teleporter maze like the Silph Building was, though much less complex thanks to its single floor and nine rooms. The trainers here have a variety of Pokémon, but as you'd expect they're mostly Psychic types. I brought out Miles to deal with the occasional Ghost type and Prinzessin for the few Poison types that I encountered.

Now, Sabrina's fight is kind of gimmicky. She has three Pokémon, all level 50: Abra, Kadabra, and Alakazam. My strategy here was to tank up Mycoboss with a full set of X Specials, because the Abra line has extremely high Special and I can't rely on not being explicitly weak to Psychic to tank attacks. This would enable Mycoboss, with their high Attack stat, to decimate Sabrina's team with Leech Life.

That didn't stop Sabrina from throwing a wrench into my plans though. The only move her Abra seems to know is Flash, which isn't very threatening but it does reduce your accuracy. No matter, I still manage to land the Leech Life and take out Abra with one attack.

Sabrina's other Pokémon aren't much different. Mycoboss took substantial damage at one point during the battle, but easily healed it back. I pretty much just spammed Leech Life until it managed to connect, because all of her Pokémon faint to a single hit. Yeah, the Abra line's HP and Defense stats are literally fucking garbage. The textbook definition of a glass cannon. That's why a move with only 20 Base Power, albeit 2x effective and on a 'mon with a pretty good Attack stat, is able to OHKO them.

So I got the TM for Psywave and beat another gym. But why stop there? I could go straight to the final gym from there, and it didn't take long to beat Sabrina so I might as well.

Viridian Gym

Here it is, the final gym. Humorously, one of the least threatening. The trainers here use a lot of different Pokémon though, not most of which are Ground type. There were a lot of Fighting types actually. But because they have low Special and Holy is a decent Special attacker, they all pretty much get wiped out by Ice Beam or Surf.

By the way, this gym has a sort of maze thing going on too, where you have to take a specific route to get to the end. Beyond that there isn't much really to say, you can pick up a Revive here I guess but otherwise it's pretty standard without much of a gimmick to it. I will say the layout is fairly interesting, and the trainers themselves to physically block you from taking certain routes.

On to Giovanni. He's back once again, stronger than ever. Well, as strong as a trainer whose team is mostly Ground type can be, anyway. That said, he opens the battle with a level 50 Dugtrio, who's faster than Holy and OHKO's them with Fissure. Figures, the ONE TIME I actually get hit with a 30% accuracy OHKO move, it's on Holy who I was going to use to sweep most of Giovanni's team. So much for that, I guess.

Good thing I have two Water types on my team. Out goes Ominous, who drains most of Dugtrio's HP in one Bubble Beam. They survive to get in a cheeky Sand Attack before Ominous finishes them off with a Bite. The next Pokémon is Persian, who I figure Prinzessin is the best match for. They do some pretty heavy damage though, and of course Persian knows Slash so Prinzessin takes a ton of damage and I can't keep her in for a second turn.

Maybe Mycoboss can take a hit. Well, yes, they can, but there's no way they're outspeeding Persian, so keeping them in seems like a bad move as well. I decide that Miles is my best bet, aiming for raw Special and Speed stats. Fortunately, Persian decides not to do anything meaningful on the turn I bring out Miles, so he gets to knock it out with a single Psychic.

Up next is Giovanni's own Nidoqueen, who again decides to do something useless as I nearly OHKO her with another Psychic. I have Miles use Confusion to finish the job. Nidoking is very similar. Which just leaves Rhydon. They miss their Rock Slide, leaving Miles to clean them up and win me the battle.

It was a decently fun fight, although it might just have been because I didn't get to use Holy thanks to some RNG bullshit. Either way, I'm glad Giovanni put up a bit more of a fight than Blaine and Sabrina. He gives me the TM for that silly move Fissure, and with all eight gym badges in hand, I close things out for the day.

One thing I haven't done yet is play at the Rocket Game Corner. I'm not sure it'll be of much use to me, but I know there are a couple of TMs you can only obtain from there. I'll probably give it a go just to see what it's all about, though I'm not expecting much besides a very basic die roll of a gambling minigame.

Then it's off to Victory Road, where I intend to train before I make my move for the championship.

[coolwali]

Dream of a DarkviperAU and PChall Collab

I had a dream last night that DarkviperAU and Jan from Pokemon challenges did a collab where they’d try doing each other’s game. So DarkviperAU was doing a hardcore nuzlocke and Jan was doing a GTAV speedrun.

DarkviperAU, during his nuzlocke, was having a bit of a hard time since he hadn’t played a Pokemon game in a while. So he was trying to get as much knowledge as possible. I remember he was on the Smogon analysis page for Alakazam and the damage calculator page, reading them and then said “I have no idea what the f@$k any of this means. But I know it will help me succeed so I gotta figure it out. What are these numbers mean, chat? How does Jan use this?”. But he was having fun and making good progress. He was nicknaming his Pokemon after Gen 1 mons and GTA V characters. So his Chikorita was named “Bulbasaur”, his Starly was named “Pidgey”, his Quagsire was named “Wade” etc.

When he reached Cynthia, he said to his chat: “Chat, we’re screwed here. We have nothing that can brute force this. We only have 2 options left. We either seduce Cynthia and become her boyfriend and then ask her to go easy on us. Or we repent for our sins, start worshipping Arceus now and pray for a divine intervention”. 

One of the people in his chat mentioned he did also have a chance if he sacked everything to paralyze and captivate the Spirtomb, and then sweep with Growth Substitute Roserade.

Meanwhile, Jan was speedrunning GTA V while wearing his sunglasses. He called the game cringe when he messed up the train skip. And then called the game based when he could shoot the biker in Repossession. Then, time seemed to fast forward and then Jan said “Guys. I’m throwing the run for content. We’re doing Blimp Strat Baby!”. His Chat all began to spam “BLIMP STRAT, BLIMB STRAT” and “DAVEY” for some reason.

[2oul2ilver]

Edit: after calming down some, I'm Pretty sure this is from a fight with Alpha Alakazam like. Maybe a week or so ago and had forgotten about, tl;dr a game glitch and not a brain glitch. I'm still curious to hear if others's games have done this too but have been successfully reality checked in the meantime so no urgency anymore

-----

Ok. I don't really know how to show this and I'm assuming it's either a glitch, or Maybe a system thing?? But this is the second time now where I've had research tasks to report, that I Very Distinctly Didn't Do, and I'm writing this out on the off chance it's not me but a game issue

For full context, I pretty much Always, ALWAYS, report to the prof and go back to Jubilife between game sessions. This is from my most recent and Very Short session, because all I was gonna do was do some massive mass outbreaks and stop there. And my distinct sequence of events was:

I went shopping in Jubilife (for pokeball materials and for clothes), and left for the fieldlands where the outbreaks were. I asked Mai and Munchlax to check the outbreaks for me. I saw chimchar, munchlax, and monferno all in the heartwoods and I Needed munchlax, so I went there. I fumbled with the munchlax horde and caught a few of those and snorlax, and then after went to the chimchar horde bc it had a chance of spawning a monferno horde after.

Took time feeding them berries before catching them to clear the horde, generated Monferno. Battled monferno for practice with my shiny Floatzel, and by then the outbreak was over. I went back to the camp to report to the professor, before realizing that maybe I should wait before doing so, and work on filling out pages I didn't have done yet? So I organized my pokedex to see which ones needed done, and it landed on this at the top of the page.

I don't have an Alakazam, or at least not one that I use. (I mean it even says 0 caught so-) I was NOWHERE near the Alpha Alakazam, and none of the hordes I battled were connected. And again, unless I dissociated and did more without realizing, I Shouldn't have gone anywhere near them in this sequence of events I Just went through.

Can someone please verify this is some sort of glitch they've seen or heard of, maybe even one where somehow tasks I did ages ago get 'reset' for some reason? bc this is just weird in a way I highly dislike.

[luvevee]

Ok I'm gonna bitch: I'm so tired of seeing "this sucks just bring back megas" spammed on everything when it comes to the new gen like holy shit let it go

[alakazamboni-blog]

Reigen is so ace coded to me.

Like, he /seems/ to desire closer human connections, but just cannot seem to trust himself in a situation like that. And I think it matches with his whole 'fraud' mindset. Where he feels somehow less than or defective compared to everyone else.

I wonder if he avoids relationships because he doesn't think anyone would accept him as he is? He would definitely put up a front, too. Be all like: Oh! Sex!? Yeah, I know A LOT about that. Obviously. And I want it, too! Ha hah! Yep! I am the internet sex symbol, y'know? THE MOST reliable sex source IN THE 21st CENTURY. Now, is this consultation cash or card?

Of course, I think this can be translated to aro, trans, or really any other kind of lgbtqa that gets an especially bad rep. But I'm ace so I'm just gonna project my problems onto him :)

[katestrophic]

FINALLY I managed to get a put together 12 teams to use and farm in Legendary Gauntlet! First gauntlet I could only go up to 3, second gauntlet I managed to go up to 10, but this time I achieved a 12 win streak!

I shoved all my team comps and links to the builds I used under cut, click "read more" if you like to read about my innate rambling

Round 1 - Tornadus

Team Comp: 5/5 EX Sabrina & Alakazam, 5/5 Sophocles & Togedemaru, 5/5 Hau & Raichu

Here's a link to their sync grids

Easy win with Hau and Sabrina hard carrying this round. I literally only gridded Sophocles because I remembered Togedemaru had nuzzle so I threw together a whatever sustainability grid.

Round 2 - Latios

Team Comp: 5/5 Liza & Lunatone, 5/5 Roxanne & Probopass, 5/5 EX Cyrus & Palkia

Here's a link to their sync grids

Budget Cyrus team. I know there are better units to use but I needed to save them to help support other mediocre teams. In exchange, I gridded Cyrus with Healthy Healing so he can get some chip healing in.

Round 3 - Regirock

Team Comp: 3/5 EX Skyla & Swanna, 5/5 Hop & Zamazenta, 2/5 EX Steven & Metagross

Here's a link to their sync grids

Hop helps buff Steven's crit rate and Skyla helps make the stage not move at the speed of molasses

Round 4 - Tornadus

Team Comp: 3/5 Erika & Vileplume, 5/5 Lyra & Meganium, 2/5 EX N & Zekrom

Here's a link to their sync grids

It took me...an embarrassingly bit of time until I remembered that OG Erika can buff her def and sp. def to +6 and therefore would make a better tank and last longer than Lyra, so I swapped their spots and bam! I managed to get N to 2/5 before the gauntlet, and if SS Giovanni comes home, I may try my hand at the trio elemental pull and see if I can get him to 3/5.

Round 5 - Latios

Team Comp: 5/5 EX Falkner & Swellow, 3/5 Lucas & Dialga, 4/5 Lisia & Altaria

Here's a link to their sync grids

I love that Lisia can function as a dual tank and striker, gives her more utility in gauntlet. I rarely use her in Champion Stadium so it's nice that here, she can shine.

Round 6 - Regirock

Team Comp: 3/5 EX Sygna Suit Blue & Blaistoise, 5/5 EX Leaf & Eevee, 3/5 EX Red & Charizard

Here's a link to their sync grids

The RBG team! ...if only Leaf was in her SS outfit. Then it would really be an RBG team, but that's ok! I had to off-type one of the Regirock stages as I don't have that many steel units that I haven't used to gauntlet already outside of *checks notes* a 1/5 OG Jasmine that I pulled from the Johto tickets from the villain arc, and Thorton who I currently only have gridded as a tank and don't have the time and don't want to put in the effort for to figure out an offensive sync grid. So I put together the kantrio and called it a day.

Round 7 - Tornadus

Team Comp: 5/5 BP LT. Surge & Raichu, 5/5 Player & Support Eggmon Chansey, 5/5 Elesa & Zebstrika

Here's a link to their sync grids

First time 5-starring an Eggmon. The things I do for gauntlet. I honestly thought about swapping Chansey out with Sonia as although she only 1/5, she does buff speed whenever she gets hit and can lower the defense of Tornadus, but I already invested too much into this darn Chansey and my stubborn pride says I need to make the most of it.

I ended up using a backup team of Misty & Starmie, Player & Tech Eggmon Parasect, SS Elesa & Rotom for cleanup as that team left Tornadus with just a little bit over half HP before they all died. I gridded SS Elesa on a Thunder damage build but it was smooth sailing from there. I didn't need a backup team for the rest or my runs.

Round 8 - Latios

Team Comp: 2/5 Evelyn & Entei, 3/5 Raihan (Anniversary 2022) & Flygon, 5/5 Zinnia & Rayquaza

Here's a link to their sync grids

Decided on a whim to grab Evelyn with the two master pair sync pair tickets I got and honestly? No regrets. I have her gridded as a sun support while using Raihan to continuously spam Sandstorm until the end of time, but it does come in handy when Sandstorm inevitably stops MPR. Wish I could grid Zinnia with Clearheaded on top of being a sync nuke but oh well.

Round 9 - Regirock

Team Comp: 5/5 Misty (Swimsuit) & Psyduck, 5/5 Bugsy & Scyther, 5/5 Player & Solgaleo

Here's a link to their sync grids

I didn't grid Solgaleo to be a sync nuke so this allowed me to alternate between syncing with Solgaleo and Psyduck as needed. Just pray for no Earthquake crit or else I will cry.

Round 10 - Tornadus

Team Comp: 4/5 Kiwae & Marowak, 5/5 Volkner & Luxray, 2/5 Gladion & Silvally

Here's a link to their sync grids

Random BS go. I really need to EX either Kiwae or Gladion, but even without that they're both fine.

Round 11 - Latios

Team Comp: 5/5 Professor Sycamore & Xerneas, 5/5 Meylene & Medicham, 5/5 Ghetsis & Kyurem

Here's a link to their sync grids

Xerneas buffs all stats needed for Kyurem, Medicham provides crit, and Kyurem gently applies Noble Roar on everyone before nuking and killing everything. I may try a fulll sync nuke build but last time I did he had no sustainability and died, but with a bit of playing around I may figure something out.

Round 12 - Regirock

Team Comp: 3/5 Morty & Mismagius, 5/5 EX Silver & Ho-Oh, 5/5 Wikstrom & Aegislash

Here's a link to their sync grids

Again, like Sophocles, only gridded and 5-starred Wikstrom because I remembered that he is a steel tech unit that got a sync grid. I was originally going to use Sawyer but decided to be bold and run a double DPS team with Morty as a support. Just be sure to activate King's Shield whenever you clear each bar so Wikstrom won't crumble to a rock slide immediately.

[askkrenko]

Krenko’s Guide to Pokemon: Abra Line

Some Pokemon ebb and flow through generations, becoming stronger or weaker as the Meta changes, sometimes being powerful sometimes being unusable. Alakazam is not one of those Pokemon. Alakazam has always been strong. And Alakazam will probably always be strong. DESIGN:  I have no idea what these things are supposed to be. It’s sort of rat-ish but not really. Maybe a possum? I have no idea. Is it a mammal? Is it scaly? Is it chitinous? I think it’s chitinous.   But you know what? This is a good thing. It’s such a unique creature that it really stands out among those derived from real and mythological things.  Kadabra looks like a reasonable bigger Abra. It stands upright, it has a moustache, it has psychic symbols on its head and stomach, its chest armor thickens, and it has that huge, meaty tail. It also has a bendy spoon, popularized by famous magical Jew ‘Uri Geller,’ who Kadabra takes his Japanese name, Yungerer, from.  Him suing their asses is why Kadabra tends not to show up much outside of the games. 

Kadabra to Alakazam is less pronounced but still interesting. The moustache becomes huge and majestic, the ‘armor’ adds bracers and kneepads, the feet thicken, and the tail... falls off? Where does its tail go?  It’s a weird design decision, but all three look great and interesting.

And then at the extreme end is Mega Alakazam. Mega Alakazam looks exactly what you’d expect it to look like.  It’s head is spikier, its facial hair is more majestic, and it has so many spoons.  It also gives off a very Hindu vibe, seated in meditation like a classic guru.  EVOLUTIONS:  Abra to Kadabra at level 16 is pretty standard, as both forms are overall about on par with those of starters. Then Kadabra to Alakazam is a trade evolution. I’m of very mixed feelings about Trade Evolutions, because Trade Evolutions don’t really do what the’re supposed to do. Yes, they require a friend to help you, but it’s always trade and trade back, never ‘new owner gets to use the evolved form.’ Back in the early days of Pokemon this was actually a big part of getting people together, but now with online trading it feels a bit outdated.  Still, it’s grandfathered in and I can’t really complain, I just wish there was a way they could rework it to still be ‘you need help from a friend’ without having to do the ‘trade/trade back.’

Mega Alakazam is cool but so viciously unnecesarry. Alakazam was already a very powerful Pokemon, and it really, really didn’t need a Mega Evolution. Sure, Uber Tiers are a thing people want to do, and if you want to fight against Mewtwo and Arceus you need Mega Alakazam, but Legendaries tend to be banned from tournament play anyway. TYPING: Pure psychic is technically a sub-par type, as more things resist it than are weak to it, and it’s weak to more things than it resists. Still, these aren’t major drawbacks. More of a drawback is that Psychic is a very common type, so Alakazam has a lot of competition among its type.

STATS: Alakazam’s stat total is a perfectly average 500... Except it’s stat distribution is amazing.  With garbage HP, Attack, and Defense, Alakazam has 135 Special and 120 Speed, both incredible.  Alakazam is more than capable of one-shotting a lot of pokemon with special attacks, and it’s usually going to go first. It’s special defense is decent, though not enough to make it want to eat an attack with such low HP. Overall, this is a great distribution for an all out attacker. Mega Alakazam’s got 175 Special Attack and 150 speed. Because it totally needed that.

ABILITIES: Synchronize, Alakazam’s first ability, is not helpful. If Alakazam becomes afflicted by a status effect, the opponent gets it, too, but because this only applies to effects inflicted by the opponent and not self-inflicted ones, there’s really no way to take advantage of this. Inner Focus prevents Flinching and Intimidate. As Alakazam has no Attack worth noting, being intimidated doesn’t matter. As Alakazam is hella fast, Flinching only matters against Fake Out. Immunity to Fake Out isn’t nothing, especially in doubles, but this is not Alakazam’s best option. Magic Guard, Alakazam’s hidden ability, prevents Alakazam from taking damage from anything that isn’t an attack. This includes burn, poison, weather, leech seed, Life Orb, Spikes, and any form of recoil. This is just super good, and basically means any Alakazam not planning to go Mega gets Life Orb no questions asked. Mega Alakazam gets Trace, which copies an opponent’s ability at first opportunity. This is a serious downgrade from Alakazam, but +40 Special Attack and +30 Speed so shut up and enjoy your Mega Alakazam.

MOVES: Alakazam has ONE JOB and that’s to spam Psychic with STAB and Life Orb and 135 base special and max Special EVs so everything dies. Steel, Dark, and Psychic types are resistant to Psychic.  Fortunately, Focus Blast is good against both Steel and Dark, and other Psychic types are weak to Shadow Ball.

There, you’ve got an Alakazam. With one slot to spare. You could pick up Psyshock to deal with enemies with high Special Defense, or Energy Ball or Dazzling Gleam for more coverage. 

Nasty Plot’s pretty great. If you manage to get a free turn to use it, it basically guarantees Alakazam’s downing anything in one shot. Thunder Wave is always useful. Encore can trap an opponent in a sub-optimal move choice. In the event of Mega Alakazam (but not so much normal Alakazam), Recover’s a reasonable option. With higher defenses and a lack of Magic Guard, spending a turn to clean up damage can be useful.  General frailty also means it might benefit Alakazam to set up a Substitute if it has a moment. It doesn’t need it to protect from status conditions and such, but having that shield up for if something does outspeed with a physical attack can be very important.  Every Alakazam should have Psychic and Focus Blast. After that, it’s all based on personal strategy. 

OVERALL: Alakazam was one of the best pokemon back in Gen 1 and is still great for all the same reasons. When you’re fast and do a lot of damage, you have a competitive place. Magic Guard is just gravy.  

I still have no idea if its chitinous, mammalian, or what an I love that I don’t know that. 

[jaybug-jabbers]

And so the all-bug run of gen 1 finally comes to an end!

Of the Elite Four, it was actually Lorelei that was toughest for my team to face. Especially Lorelei’s Lapras with Blizzard. Not sure why I kept putting my Flying and Grass types out against her Lapras. XD But yeah, her pokes have bulk, dude, and took a while to mow down. Pinsir’s fighting moves helped.

Bruno was of course the easiest, as he always is– besides, I have a team with strong Psychic moves and Parasect has Solar Beam.

Agatha wasn’t as annoying as she usually is. My two pokes with Psychic (Butterfree and Venomoth) took care of things easily enough. It helps that in Gen 1, Poison is weak to Bug type moves as well.

Lance was easy as well. As you may already know, the AI for some trainer classes (such as the Elite Four) is a bit stupid sometimes, and will spam “super-effective” moves even if they’re status moves. So if I have a Venomoth out against a Dragonite, it will spam Agility or Barrier because they’re classed as Psychic type moves, and Venomoth is part Poison type. Aerodactyl and  Gyarados were the trickiest, but I didn’t have too much difficulty with them. (Aerodactyl just spammed Bite and Supersonic, going for scummy tactics of flinch confusion, I guess, lol)

The Champion fight was admittedly tough! I let Tik Tok take out Pidgeot with a couple Double-Edges, but then unfortunately he was too weak to finish off Alakazam on his own. Fortunately, Hunter’s Slash critted and went through the Reflect that was up. Rhydon was easy prey to Parasect’s Solar Beam, but I had a little trouble with Gyarados’ Hyper Beam. Largely because when he KO’d a poke and I brought in somebody new, he didn’t have to recharge! I cursed Gen 1 for that little quirk. With Arcanine, I tried the old tox-stall with Janeway, who has Substitute (I paid a pretty penny to get it. that TM is a very expensive Game Corner prize in this gen), but I couldn’t stall quite long enough with Venomoth and Butterfree and had to finish it with Hunter. Finally, there was Venusaur vs. my Beedrill. Fortunately, despite Beedrill’s not super-great stats, this was a good matchup. I got up a Swords Dance (while Venusaur got up a Growth) and then took him out with the awesome Twineedle (the strongest bug-type move in gen 1, which helps make up for Beedrill’s low stats).

All in all, not bad for a team of gen1 bugs that are around ten levels lower than the teams being faced. Had a really fun time!

This is a repost on a new blog. The original post was on Mar 1, 2017.

[crystalelemental]

"megazardx2: I am of the firm belief that, aside from gimmick ‘mons like Unown or whatever, there shouldn’t be a single Pokemon that’s virtually useless in-game. Competitively, you can’t really avoid it, but in-game, you definitely can. I want to see major improvements to ‘mons like that for Gen X. Let me use Ledian without it feeling like a drag, Game Freak (and also Spinda)!"

It's tough, because "useless in general gameplay" is a wildly variable condition. Like...is Spinda useless?

It has some decent options to use in its arsenal, its stats are just low, and that can be overcome. Ledian isn't great, but it does have Baton Pass and Agility, and Dual Screens, all naturally. Most options, even without raw power and stats, have some solid tools. The bigger frustrations, and the things that drive me absolutely insane, are when Pokemon should have access to something they don't. Like, why does Houndoom, a Dark type focused on special attack, not have Dark Pulse naturally? Why does Drowzee, the Dream Eating Pokemon, not learn Dream Eater naturally in any generation? Why is the best Ice move that Mamoswine every learns naturally Ice Fang? Why did it take to Gen 6 for options like Sandslash to get natural access to Earthquake? Hell, why is the only Ground move it learned naturally prior Sand Tomb?

That's where the stupid lies. Because these Pokemon can be good, they can have access to useful tools that are extremely good...but only conditionally, based on having access to the TM at a reasonable point in the game, rather than the end. Like okay, I want to run Sandslash in HGSS. In order for that to be meaningful, I'd have to learn Dig first, because oops, Earthquake is in Victory Road. Or god forbid, you opted for Umbreon as a slow, tanky sack of shit that can barely attack at all. Your options are (1) Toxic (post-game with Janine's gym), (2) healing support (Wish is breed only, Moonlight is level 71, Heal Bell is tutor with BP), or (3) copy Karen's Curse deal for boosting (Breed only). All of these options are frustrating and shitty, and rely on putting up with something being unnecessarily bad until it can suddenly become good. Or, in extreme cases like Platinum, which I love dearly but oh my god, you have the entire game working its best to lock entire playstyles out of player access. Oh you need boosting moves or any kind of status? Yeah, that's BP gated to post-game, sorry. Even with infinite reuse TMs these problems still exist in legion. ORAS transitioned access to Thunderbolt, a staple, to effectively just before the League; Wattson isn't around for this quest until after you beat Wallace. You want to run Calm Mind Audino? Then I hope you have a plan until post-game or someone who's got the TM already, because that's something you only get after finding one of the Sages, and it's one you have to battle, too!

It's just...endlessly frustrating that in a game about customizing your team, they lock so many decisions out of consideration. I get that some of these tools are considered super strong (although Toxic is useless in main game, given the Full Restore spam you get), but if boosting is such a problem, design your fights better. Emerald had this shit figured out easy, every fight in that game has a lead with hard counterplay to setup sweepers, and it rules. Meanwhile in Gen 4, Cynthia is incredibly weak to setup. But that game effectively removed all setup TMs from the game, so when are you ever going to be able to use that? Well, Gardevoir and Alakazam learn Calm Mind so-oh right they're weak to Spiritomb and have nothing to significantly threaten it.

Oddly, one of the things that modern gens have done a little better is ease the access to TMs, but nothing is given without something of equal value being taken away, so we're back to single-use Technical Records, and you need to farm watts or random encounter materials to make it work. The materials are at least smarter than the watts; anyone who's ever used an action replay or GameShark back in the day can tell you how quickly the main game crumples when you get early access to Ice Beam/Thunderbolt/Flamethrower shit. Having more staggered release makes sense in some cases, but it also disproportionately hits certain Pokemon because they're not learning basic moves for their type. And that's a massive goddamn problem. TMs should be for supplemental coverage, not the basics of your STABs. Yet consistently, they're essential just to round out what should be there. Even modern gens have this learnset problem. Hey Coalossal, what's your best physical Rock-type move? Oh, Rock Blast? Which you learn at level 54? So if I want a real move I have to hunt down watts for Rock Slide or Stone Edge, otherwise your Rock-type STAB just sucks ass forever? Radical. There's no reason for it! Things should learn a ton of moves within their types, starting small and building up to powerful endgame stuff. I should never have to use a TM to learn the basics. Even if they only learned STAB moves, that's better than what we have now. I'd rather Swampert actually just learn a physical Water move like Liquidation, than get Rock Slide in its movepool for coverage, because at least Liquidation for its basic function and Rock Slide for something to build with TMs feels intentionally designed.

[pokemon-card-of-the-day]

Pokemon Card of the Day #1866: Dusknoir (Flashfire)

Dusknoir was a different take on a concept used in the past by Base Set Alakazam and Black & White Reuniclus. It allowed you to move damage counters, but this time they could only go onto Dusknoir. This was a serious downgrade, though there was the advantage of Dusknoir having actual bulk where the previous Reuniclus didn’t. Not being Lysandre bait was the one reason this Dusknoir still held some interest for this role.

130 HP wasn’t going to stand out among Stage 2 Pokemon, to be fair, but it was enough that quite a few decks would have to rely on damage boosts to be able to bring Dusknoir in with Lysandre and KO it in a single turn. There was, sadly, that Darkness Weakness to consider. Darkrai EX and Yveltal were both quite popular and successful and provided some obvious terrible match-ups for Dusknoir to overcome. The positive news came in the form of a Fighting Resistance, which could at least cancel out a bit of those Strong Energy boosts the type was known for. If Dusknoir was dragged to the front, it needed 3 Energy to retreat, meaning that you also needed to pack Switch, Float Stone, or whatever to get around that.

Shadow Void was the type of Ability you built a deck around. It let you move damage counters from your Pokemon to Dusknoir as much as you wanted during your turn. It would have been really nice if the direction wasn’t limited like some past cards could do, and there was the threat of not only Darkness-types but Item or Ability locking shutting things down, meaning that Seismitoad-EX and Trevenant were also problems. On the other hand, if it got into a match-up with a deck that didn’t have these things and wasn’t routinely doing more than 120 damage per turn, you could spam Max Potion and get several extra turns out of whatever you paired with Dusknoir. It was really good in the moments where it actually worked.

Pain Pellets was meant to work with Shadow Void, as it placed damage counters on the Defending Pokemon equal to how much Dusknoir had taken. That could be 120 for 3 Energy, though it wasn’t compatible with most damage boosting and Dusknoir would easily fall during the next turn. It wasn’t so great after all.

Dusknoir had a good concept but was just a bit too restricted to find the success that Reuniclus or even Alakazam had. The fact that it was stopped by some of the best Pokemon in the game at the time was too much to overcome. It was also the type of card that, when put in front of something that didn’t lock or deal enough damage, could dominate a game. This made it prime casual deck material.