Replay of this battle
I decide to use Shadow Ball instead of Hydro Pump. 100% accuracy + the chance for a Special Defense drop is pretty nice. Gliscor uses Rock Polish. I stick with the strategy, but Technical Machine decides to go straight for the most important advantage:
Technical Machine goes to the best Pokemon to set up on special attackers: Mr. Mime. I use Surf for 23%.
I know that Mr. Mime is going to set up a Calm Mind, so my Surf will quickly do nothing. I decide to use Sludge Bomb instead. It's slightly weaker, but it has a chance to Poison, which is better than anything else I can do.
Technical Machine gets a little confused here, first using BP and going to Mr. Mime, then immediately BPing to Scizor, giving Celebi some free Calm Minds.
Technical Machine is not worried. We both have 4 Calm Minds, but Technical Machine's Scizor is behind a Substitute. I decide it's time to switch to the offensive...
My next hope is maybe I can take advantage of Technical Machine's random Baton Passes and set up Spikes. Technical Machine uses Baton Pass to Mr. Mime as I do so. I don't want to risk Psychic, so I flee to Blissey.
Astute observers may have noticed that Technical Machine only revealed 5 Pokemon: Gliscor, Smeargle, Mr. Mime, Vaporeon, and Scizor. The final Pokemon is Lucario. The problem is that Technical Machine assigns things like stat boosts higher points if the current Pokemon has Baton Pass, so passing to Lucario is always seen as a big loss unless it can guarantee a win. However, by the time it could see the guaranteed win, it already had its own win by just leaving in Vaporeon. Technical Machine's play could therefore be a lot stronger if I were to add a Pokemon that had Baton Pass in the last slot. For instance, Baton Pass, Air Slash, Aura Sphere, ??? Togekiss or Baton Pass, Thunderbolt, ???, ??? Zapdos. Even something like Baton Pass, Wish, Substitute / Taunt, Dark Pulse / Taunt / Mean Look Umbreon would be a huge benefit.
Hippowdon can't do anything against Gliscor since it has Taunt, so I go to Rotom-W. It can threaten Gliscor with Hydro Pump or Shadow Ball, and use Thunderbolt for other Pokemon. Gliscor Taunts.
I decide to use Shadow Ball instead of Hydro Pump. 100% accuracy + the chance for a Special Defense drop is pretty nice. Gliscor uses Rock Polish. I stick with the strategy, but Technical Machine decides to go straight for the most important advantage:
I went to Tentacruel because it was the only remaining Pokemon on my team with any real offense. I could go to Hippowdon, but with only Earthquake, it wouldn't do much to the likes of Scizor, Celebi, Gliscor, and Vaporeon, all common on BP teams.
Technical Machine goes to the best Pokemon to set up on special attackers: Mr. Mime. I use Surf for 23%.
I know that Mr. Mime is going to set up a Calm Mind, so my Surf will quickly do nothing. I decide to use Sludge Bomb instead. It's slightly weaker, but it has a chance to Poison, which is better than anything else I can do.
Finally! My relief was short-lived, however:
I don't know why I went to Blissey here. A smarter move would have been to go to Celebi and use Calm Mind to try and set up against Mr. Mime.
However, given that Blissey was in, I should have used Toxic. Mr. Mime can't stay in forever thanks to Sandstorm + Poison outdamaging Leftovers + Ingrain. Toxic would have at least had a chance to catch Vaporeon as it came in. Technical Machine was having none of that, however:
Well, time to abandon my failed strategy. I switch to Celebi as Technical Machine uses Baton Pass and brings out Gliscor. Due to all of those Calm Minds, Technical Machine gets cocky and uses Rock Polish. Celebi uses Calm Mind. Next turn is the same -- Rock Polish + Calm Mind. My only hope here is to set up along with Technical Machine and hope that Celebi's Psychic + Grass Knot can defeat everything via type advantages or that I get the first CH.
Technical Machine gets a little confused here, first using BP and going to Mr. Mime, then immediately BPing to Scizor, giving Celebi some free Calm Minds.
Technical Machine is not worried. We both have 4 Calm Minds, but Technical Machine's Scizor is behind a Substitute. I decide it's time to switch to the offensive...
... unfortunately, Technical Machine soon got the same idea.
Score is 4-6, Technical Machine.
My next hope is maybe I can take advantage of Technical Machine's random Baton Passes and set up Spikes. Technical Machine uses Baton Pass to Mr. Mime as I do so. I don't want to risk Psychic, so I flee to Blissey.
I'm a bit confused by this Baton Pass, but here's what happened:
Well, it's time to go back to Skarmory and set up more Spikes. Technical Machine saw it coming and countered with a switch (by way of Baton Pass) of its own, going to Vaporeon.
3-6 Technical Machine
Well, there is a positive of this. I got Vaporeon hit with Toxic. However, the reason Technical Machine didn't use Substitute to block it is because Blissey is now sitting at 33%, which is within Surf KO range. My plan was that Technical Machine might encounter a bug / logic error that it ran into several times in prior matches, which it leaves me at very low HP and just BPs along to something else. But TM was done playing around with set up moves, it was ready to finish it.
Down to a sleeping Rotom-W and Hippowdon.
Now that TM mostly understands the fundamentals of Baton Pass, I think I'll begin testing it with my 6 Choice item team that has 4 Pokemon with U-turn. This should help see how well it handles high-powered offense.
Astute observers may have noticed that Technical Machine only revealed 5 Pokemon: Gliscor, Smeargle, Mr. Mime, Vaporeon, and Scizor. The final Pokemon is Lucario. The problem is that Technical Machine assigns things like stat boosts higher points if the current Pokemon has Baton Pass, so passing to Lucario is always seen as a big loss unless it can guarantee a win. However, by the time it could see the guaranteed win, it already had its own win by just leaving in Vaporeon. Technical Machine's play could therefore be a lot stronger if I were to add a Pokemon that had Baton Pass in the last slot. For instance, Baton Pass, Air Slash, Aura Sphere, ??? Togekiss or Baton Pass, Thunderbolt, ???, ??? Zapdos. Even something like Baton Pass, Wish, Substitute / Taunt, Dark Pulse / Taunt / Mean Look Umbreon would be a huge benefit.
