[Glen]

sighhhhhh 45 in the factory

though my loss could have been avoided in a couple ways, so i learned a couple lessons which is good! im still mad though, obviously. so anyway, here is my warstory

my team:

767 | Swampert | Adamant | Rindo Berry | Earthquake | Aqua Tail | Avalanche | Mirror Coat | HP/Atk

482 | Tyranitar | Brave | Focus Band | Rock Slide | Payback | Avalanche | Curse | Atk/SpD

876 | Magnezone | Modest | Brightpowder | Thunderbolt | Flash Cannon | Tri Attack | Signal Beam | Def/SpA

i get a warning that the next trainer is good with the grass type. this concerns me, obviously. the 3 pokemon i just killed were all terrible, 2 of them were weak to grass and one of them was a skuntank with crunch, and no aftermath. so basically, i had a big decision to make. dare i swap for skuntank? it's one of these two:

791 | Skuntank | Jolly | Muscle Band | Poison Jab | Night Slash | Crunch | Explosion | Atk/Spe

519 | Skuntank | Jolly | Chesto Berry | Crunch | Toxic | Swagger | Double Team | HP/Spe

the former would be absolutely amazing against multiple grass pokemon, almost guaranteeing 2 or even 3 kills. the latter, however, would be terrible.

so basically i figured that a)if it were the toxic skuntank it would potentially be bad since a lot of grasses are also poison, and b) it would also be significantly worse than all 3 of my current pokemon. i suppose i could have swapped tyranitar out for it but honestly payback/avalanche/rock slide is amazing coverage, especially since around this time legends get extremely common. furthermore the fact that my other 2 mons support sandstorm seemed just too good to pass up. so i decide to leave swampert, ttar, and magnezone against this guy with 2 grass mons, which was ballsy as fuck, but the pert had rindo and mirror coat so i was thinking he could at least kill something.

opponent opens with meganium. a quick check tells me that there are no physical meganiums, so mirror coat is a safe bet. i can survive a leaf storm from any version thanks to rindo and ko back with mirror coat, but not a frenzy plant. however i figure if it's the frenzy plant version i can revenge kill without too much hassle. if it's the sunny day one then magnezone or tyranitar completely ruin its fun. it leaf storms, i survive with 30 hp and mirror coat for the kill. imagine if the AI had prediction and set up screens as i mirror coated? "lol"

out comes leafeon. i'm relieved that his other grass is something that magnezone has absolutely no issue with. not a single set can even scratch it. ordinarily i'd just sacrifice swampert to get zone in safely but since zone has no danger at all switching in i figured i may as well try to preserve him, since there's always a small chance he's faster than their last poke. in comes zone who takes a pittance from leaf blade, takes another leaf blade and ohkos with signal beam. so far so good.

last pokemon is....... sceptile. great, i was perfectly capable of handling 2 grass mons with my disadvantaged team but 3? come on.

357 | Sceptile | Jolly | Liechi Berry | Leaf Blade | Crunch | Quick Attack | Screech | Atk/Spe
493 | Sceptile | Timid | Leftovers | Giga Drain | Leech Seed | Toxic | Double Team | SpA/Spe
629 | Sceptile | Adamant | Scope Lens | Leaf Blade | X-Scissor | Night Slash | Aerial Ace | Atk/Spe
765 | Sceptile | Timid | Occa Berry | Leaf Storm | Dragon Pulse | Focus Blast | Hyper Beam | SpA/Spe

luckily for me, magnezone completely destroys 3 of the sceptile sets (though even without toxic, the double team/leech seed one could be a little irritating) but if it's the fourth i'm probably fucked. so i go for the signal beam. it focus blasts, meaning it is the one that can potentially do a lot of damage, but luckily focus blast misses. signal beam takes sceptile down to somewhere between 12% and 15%. i realized that this is not good. terrible play by me. anyways, i wasn't sure if it would be able to take 2 sandstorms or 3, so i thought keeping magnezone in was the right thing to do. it focus blasts to kill zone, tyranitar comes in and gets killed by an overgrow-boosted leaf storm (of course, it would have survived a non-overgrow leaf storm due to how specially bulky this version is) and i wasn't lucky enough to get a miss nor a focus band hang. in comes swampert with 30ish hp, i prayed for a random leaf storm miss but the sneaky bugger used dragon pulse, and i died.

so basically, i played against sceptile wrong in a lot of ways. first and foremost, i should not have used signal beam. i should have checked to make sure it was on ohko; it wasn't, and putting him into overgrow cost me the game. i should have thunderbolted! this would have done paltry damage but, unless it was version 4 i could kill it with nve tbolts before it could do anything to me, and even if it was version 4 i could still, if lucky, get 2 focus blast misses (good old brightpowder) and kill with tbolt then signal beam. a likelier scenario would have been magnezone dying right off the bat, which lets tyranitar comes in who survives both focus blast AND leaf storm, and ohkos with avalanche. that would have meant only a crit could have cost me the game, and i still had focus blast's shaky 70% accuracy, leaf storm's slightly less shaky 90% accuracy if it used that instead, and my good old focus band.

another likely scenario could have been the first focus blast missing, magnezone getting a tbolt off, and dying next turn to focus blast once against allowing tyranitar to clean up. so yes, i definitely should not have used signal beam. but even after using signal beam i still could have salvaged the situation! as i said, i wasn't sure if it would take 2 or 3 sandstorms to kill it. but that didn't matter! once signal beam hit, i should have switched to ttar who takes the focus blast and survives, deals 6.25% through sandstream. sceptils kills ttar next turn taking another 6.25%, which would either kill it, or allow swampert to take that final hit to let sceptile take another 6.25% and finally die.

so yeah, moral of the story is, even when you get extremely fucking unlucky with matchups, there's still a chance you can play out of it if you take the time to calculate and strategize! the other moral of the story is wow cursing tyranitar eats leaf storms like it's a fucking lawnmower, when it survived roselia's leaf storm my jaw kinda hit the floor a lil bit

oh and another thing, as for why the sceptile leaf stormed over focus blasting, does that mean the AI takes abilities and such into consideration? sorry if it's obvious, i'm just curious if mold breaker pinsir with eq levitators, or if it ever screws up and just programs every pinsir to use eq so sometimes itll use eq with hyper cutter. i guess sceptile is different since it always has overgrow, so presumably its programmed to factor that in when it's at <33%. which brings me to defensive abilities, does the AI just guess if your bronzong has levitate or heatproof, for example? once it realizes which one you have will it stop using ineffective moves?

of course this is with "perfect" AI which i think the factory starts to use after 21, but it might be after 28 (though thorton doesn't use random moves i so it'd make sense if 22+ did)