Final Submission
Name: Chill Pill
General Description: A pokemon that can slow down the pace of the game for the user's control
Justification: It's no doubt that BW2 is one of the fastest-paced metagames in existence. With "power creep" rising up as expected, the game speeds up when offense counters offense and bigger hitters fall to bigger hitters. One of the very reason stall can't function as well is because the game often moves too fast to get an advantage. However, offensive teams could also make use of a "reset" in terms of game pacing to further their own strategies.
Questions To Be Answered:
- How does negative momentum affect the flow of battle?
- What causes a slowdown in tempo during gameplay?
- How can a single pokemon work best to slow down an opponent's strategies?
- Will defensive playstyles operate better without constant pressure maintained on them?
- Can offensive playstyles make use of a slower tempo in gameplay?
- How can a team best capitalize on a loss of momentum by the opponent?
Explanation: At first glance, this seems like stall's dream pokemon. However, instead of just focusing on buffing up stall and defensive play, I thought it would be possible to take a stab at the metagame in general. Fast-paced offensive play is extremely common in the current metagame, and involves sharp, quick, decisive games. I'd like to see how things could develop if matches were given just a bit more time to play out; a bit more time to work with. I'd like to see what happens when things take a step back. The game could possibly get more interesting if battles could slow down and focus on a turn to turn basis rather than throwing the single most powerful moves at the opposing side.
There are numerous ways to turn your opponent's momentum against them. Ditto is a great example of this: it can steal an opponent's boosts and revenge kill an opponent. CB mamoswine also can work against a dragonite for example, and a scarfed keldeo versus a Kyurem-B. However, this results in what I call a net increase in offensive momentum, beating offense with offense. There are also ways to decrease the momentum of a match. Switching Gastrodon into a rotom on volt switch is a great example. Nobody has attacked, and nobody has a clear advantage, but the momentum of the match has been killed to zero. Switching a Landorus-T into terrakion is also one, albeit a bit of an advantage for the landorus due to the threat of an earthquake incoming. However, this is the capitalization on the loss of momentum. Now if this concept could be applied to a much larger scope of the metagame, think of what could happen. Hyper offense/rain hyper offense (keldeo+toxicroak and others)/sun hyper offense (venasaur+volcarona+victrebel, etc) could get stopped dead in their tracks by a poke that doesn't counter the opposition by revenge killing or putting powerful moves out there. Instead, CAP 5 would counter an opponent by decreasing the pace of the game back to an initial neutral standpoint, whereby CAP 5 would be designed to support its team when the momentum of the match is zero. While tomohawk was built around strictly its user's momentum and controlling, returning, and making use of its team's momentum, I propose CAP 5 be built around controlling and nullifying
both teams' tempo.
This would be quite a boon to stall, but offensively built teams could also make use of a reset in game momentum, through switching and boosting in other means. But that's left up to the later stages, and I think this concept can both increase defensive playstyles' usage and decrease the overall extremely offensive tone of the current metagame.