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Battle Maison Discussion & Records
- Thread starter NoCheese
- Start date
Hello! Reporting an ongoing triples streak of 1000, using rain once again.
After the end of my subway doubles streak, I have been building up a save file in gen VI, and was looking for a quick way to get BPs with my limited resources. Triples seemed like a good place to start and had a “low stakes” feel I appreciated, but I might have gotten carried away since.
To be upfront, yes triples is easier and more forgiving. I wasn’t there in 201x when most of these posts were made, but it does feel like you can, let’s say, get away with a lot… There’s still value in it, of course; this was the opportunity to throw out my doubles team and rebuild it from scratch into hopefully something better. Therefore, most of this post will be about team construction; I like to believe that the building process and the opportunity to discuss rain more generally is interesting - if not to read, then at least to write about :)
Drizzle, Timid Nature
EVs: 4 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 244 Spe
Stats: 166 HP / 72 Atk / 96 Def / 142 SpA / 121 SpD / 133 Spe
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Protect
- Perish Song
Politoed is similar to the subway variant, with a few changes.
Lightningrod -> Intimidate, Timid Nature
EVs: 252 SpA / 12 SpD / 244 Spe
Stats: 145 HP / 72 Atk / 80 Def / 157 SpA / 82 SpD / 171 Spe -> 145 HP / 85 Atk / 100 Def / 187 SpA / 102 SpD / 204 Spe
- Thunder
- Volt Switch
- Protect
- Flamethrower
This Manectric set is largely straightforward. Thunder is strong and cannot miss, which is incredibly valuable for Walrein, Pinsir, Gothitelle, and even Tangrowth (deals 47% minimum). Volt Switch is another must both in general and in the context of a rain team that might need to switch Politoed in and out efficiency, and Protect is also good.
Flamethrower is usually terrible, but it becomes very useful for Sun and Hail. Specifically for Sun, instead of stubbornly fighting three grass types because they all might have Sunny Day (this often means keeping Politoed in for Ice Beam, by the way), I can calmly switch Politoed out for Scizor and invite the Sun to come up, where Flamethrower gets OHKOs on all relevant targets. Overall, though, I’m reminded of Turkstain’s Rotom-W for triples with 3 electric moves and HP Water; Manectric is basically the same… it has Electric moves and outsources Water coverage to Politoed/Greninja. Anything more is extra, in my opinion. However, unlike Rotom-W, Manectric is frail, and a good bait. It lures all the Earthquakes around, and water moves as well. It’s sad I don’t have a ground immunity on this team, but drawing ground moves over something else is still good.
Of course, I won’t go into it, but Lightningrod and giving your entire water-based team an electric/Twave immunity is amazing. The 12 SpDef EVs are to resist Scarf Heatran’s Earth Power (non-crit) after Mega, which can come into play in very niche but scary situations; read the threats section for more info.
Protean, Timid Nature
EVs: 4 Hp / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Stats: 148 HP / 101 Atk / 87 Def / 155 SpA / 91 SpD / 191 Spe
- Surf
- Dark Pulse
- Mat Block
- Grass Knot
I really wish Greninja could fit Ice Beam, not having it makes grass types on the right hard to take down, but it's more annoying than it is a genuine weakness. I'm surprised how long it can stick around, sometimes a lot longer than I want. With Intimidate, type shifting, a frail center, and a Focus Sash, I really wish sometimes it would faint and let me get something else in. I guess that’s not the worst problem in the world, though.
Swift Swim, Modest Nature
EVs: 44 Hp / 252 SpA / 12 SpD / 196 Spe
Stats: 156 HP / 90 Atk / 115 Def / 161 SpA / 117 SpD / 130 Spe
- Scald
- Dragon Pulse
- Protect
- Ice Beam
Kingdra is the same exact set as in the subway, with Scald over Surf. Manectric, Greninja, and Scizor that can't take water moves, so I can't afford my backups to deal spread damage. Besides, it's mostly overkill; Kingdra's job is to snipe away threats, without too much care for longevity. Dragon Pulse being cross-field ends up being a lot more valuable than I initially thought, and is enough for me to not consider backline Ludicolo for the time being.
The speed is for Scarf Manectric, though maybe there’s a case for Kingdra to go to 133 or 134 for rare cases where rain isn’t up? I’m thinking of Lati@s at 130 too.
Storm Drain, Quiet Nature (0 speed IV)
EVs: 164 Hp / 92 Def / 252 SpA
Stats: 207 HP / 88 Atk / 100 Def / 158 SpA / 102 SpD / 39 Spe
- Scald
- Earth Power
- Harden
- Ice Beam
Harden is laziness that might have turned into some forbidden tech. I wanted to eventually give it a fourth move, but I hadn't made my final decision (Surf? Clear Smog? Icy Wind? Rebreed and Hidden Power?) before I had a flight to take. Because this was on a fresh save, I figured I'd go through regular triples first and choose the last move after gaining some experience. Well, all those battles later… I still haven't bothered to change.
Clear Smog is probably the best for Calm Mind Lati@s and Zapdos, if I’m unable to pull Perish Song off for some reason. But! Through 1000 battles I have baited a number of Taunts, crucially from Bisharp-4, which is otherwise very, very strong and scares me. So do I even bother changing? If I put Clear Smog, I know it wouldn’t be used often anyway since I’ve come this far without it.
Outside of that, Gastrodon is amazing. It’s the main middle slot, it does well in sand, and baits Grass moves well. Assault Vest has done me a lot of good, but I must admit that the EVs are a little random. 100 defense just felt in the ballpark of “right”, and prevents SpA download boosts. Its main job is still tanking special hits. One last note: even with the minimum speed, Gastrodon is faster than Trevenant-4, which is nice.
Technician, Adamant Nature
EVs: 212 Hp / 252 Atk / 44 Spe
Stats: 172 HP / 200 Atk / 120 Def / 67 SpA / 100 SpD / 91 Spe
- Bullet Punch
- Bug Bite
- Protect
- Swords Dance
Scizor is this team’s only physical attacker. How big of a burden is this? Not that big, actually, but it requires a little more care than usual; depending on the matchup, it can often be the most precious member. It very rarely comes in the middle; usually you bring it on the side in front of something harmless, and let the other two slots make sure Scizor can setup safely.
I’ve seen faster Scizors, and I’m aware I could bump mine up, but 106 is probably too much. We’ll see.
I have a bunch of replays, it will give me something to talk about on the next post.
I’m confident this team is more consistent than then subway one, but I’m not sure how it performs in absolute. I’ll find out if I keep playing : )
After the end of my subway doubles streak, I have been building up a save file in gen VI, and was looking for a quick way to get BPs with my limited resources. Triples seemed like a good place to start and had a “low stakes” feel I appreciated, but I might have gotten carried away since.
To be upfront, yes triples is easier and more forgiving. I wasn’t there in 201x when most of these posts were made, but it does feel like you can, let’s say, get away with a lot… There’s still value in it, of course; this was the opportunity to throw out my doubles team and rebuild it from scratch into hopefully something better. Therefore, most of this post will be about team construction; I like to believe that the building process and the opportunity to discuss rain more generally is interesting - if not to read, then at least to write about :)
From first principles, there’s a case to be made that rain would benefit tremendously from going from doubles to triples, beyond the general uplift that every team gets in the format. I talked about it in the subway post, but rain teams have this fundamental tension when it comes to the role of Politoed. You would like to tuck it away to safety when possible, both to protect the weather setter and because there might be opportunity costs of staying with Politoed instead of a potentially stronger teammate. But at the same time, rain is usually very aggressive and tempo-driven, which encourages Politoed to stay in and keep momentum; it can be hard to “find time” to switch out when KOs require its damage assistance. In the subway, I tried to solve this with Eject Button; while the catalyst was the Abomasnow matchup, it was essentially a way to switch out while keeping the pressure on. When going from 4 to 6 members, however, a lead Politoed is now only one of three on the field, meaning its share of total damage contribution is smaller. It’s much, much easier to switch out without losing momentum when you have two other teammates staying and picking up the slack instead of one. Add to that Greninja’s Mat Block making switches more safe, and it now looks quite a bit easier to control the weather. Politoed having the freedom to switch out was also an opportunity to lean into Perish Song lines more, which is not only super consistent, but also sounds effective in triples.
Yes, rain lasts 5 turns only now, yes Surf deals less damage, yes there are more enemy weather setters, no there’s no dynamic speed or Pelipper yet, and no there aren’t obvious mega fits (Mega Scizor is the most straightforward I guess? But you lose status immunity), but I still think the rain “engine” is powerful enough where you can afford to only focus on threats and sources of disruption. So let’s list them out; here is every potential threat to the subway doubles team. They’re not all equally dangerous, but let’s be comprehensive:
I keep making references to the doubles team, but I’m not describing a “port” of the doubles team into triples where you add two middle slots and call it a day. There will be similar slots, of course, but let’s start from scratch.
Yes, rain lasts 5 turns only now, yes Surf deals less damage, yes there are more enemy weather setters, no there’s no dynamic speed or Pelipper yet, and no there aren’t obvious mega fits (Mega Scizor is the most straightforward I guess? But you lose status immunity), but I still think the rain “engine” is powerful enough where you can afford to only focus on threats and sources of disruption. So let’s list them out; here is every potential threat to the subway doubles team. They’re not all equally dangerous, but let’s be comprehensive:
- Hail through Snow Warning (now with Aurorus)
- Hail set up manually
- Blizzard, freeze
- Sand & Sun (now with Ninetales)
- Trick Room (now with Trevenant, notably)
- Tailwind
- Paralysis & Static
- Toxicroak (Fake Out, Dry Skin, Gunk Shot)
- Lax incense / Bright Powder (Walrein)
- Quick Claw (Muk, Ursaring, Escavalier, Donphan)
- Scarf Manectric (because of Static mostly)
- Grass types (especially those with bulk that randomly use Protect) (not really a threat, just annoying)
- Swift Swim Seismitoad (poison move crit on Ludicolo)
I keep making references to the doubles team, but I’m not describing a “port” of the doubles team into triples where you add two middle slots and call it a day. There will be similar slots, of course, but let’s start from scratch.
Step 1: I want Politoed leading on one side, and Greninja on the other. This is not particularly daring: Politoed should be on the side so it’s less exposed, and side Greninja is obvious too. What will shape my future decisions, however, is that I want both to have Surf; I don't intend to have a spread attacker in the middle, I want two spread attackers on the sides. There are three reasons for that:
Step 2: Not putting a Swift Swim set in the front means that you need one in the back; it's too strong not to include. Now, the question is, Kingdra or Ludicolo, maybe both? Let's start with choosing one.
Ludicolo has better staying power with Giga Drain (especially if you put a Life Orb on Kingdra), Kingdra has more enemies with the new fairy type, Dragon Pulse is now just 85bp, and backline Fake Out is very nice (I have very fond memories of Toxicroak), but Ludicolo also has problems. I know it won't be able to fit Protect, which is probably important. On top of that, it's slow, requiring 244 Speed EVs just for scarf Terrakion (not even thinking about Manectric). I wasn’t sure if I wanted my fast cleanup sweeper to sacrifice this much bulk just for Terrakion while also attracting all the cross-field flying moves, it felt inconsistent.
All this to say, I'm using Kingdra. It has a similar role to my subway Kingdra as a backline, somewhat frail sniper. It can easily go in the center as well to tank Surfs; I need a couple of those water resists / immunities if I want to be able to use Surf on the side freely enough, and Kingdra is a start.
Step 3: Scizor is just very, very good… I bent over backwards in doubles just to try to function without it, and I'm not doing it again. For grass types, ice types, and annoying psychics/ghosts (Calm Mind spam, Trick Room), Scizor is obviously the right thing for the job. Besides, if I want to not rely on rain too much, having a Toxicroak would be a big mistake. I already know I want a Bullet Punch / Bug Bite / Swords Dance / Protect set with Lum Berry, respectfully borrowed from Eisen's tower & subway teams.
2 slots left! I need
I could just add Ludicolo and call it a day, but this is instead the opportunity to hedge against some risks that are currently unaddressed. Big risks that remain include hail, Trick Room, and Electric moves/paralysis. There's also a new one: Swift Swim Floatzel. I've implied at the idea that the center lead won't necessarily be able to take ally Surfs well, meaning it will not take Floatzel's Life Orb Waterfall all that well either.
Luckily, we can patch the Trick Room, electric, and Floatzel risks while also fitting nicely with the existing gameplan with Gastrodon. What I learned to appreciate while playing is that Gastrodon doesn't rely on rain at all despite being put in the rain synergy bucket. It feeds on ally Surfs more than on the weather, and even that is just a bonus. Overall, it’s a good center backup with nice bulk, and a water immunity.
Step 5: Looking at the risks, I still want something more for electric types & Thunder Wave spam. Gastrodon is good at protecting one thing by switching in its place, but from my previous experience, Thunder Wave / Tbolt / Thunder targeting is very unpredictable, so Gastrodon can’t protect the entire team. I'm kind of forcing the argument here, but there are only 2 megas that can help: Mega Sceptile and Mega Manectric, both because of Lightning Rod. Let's look at their characteristics.
Mega-Sceptile:
But! How do you run a team with two Surf leads with a center that can't take Surf? Isn't this impractical? No, and the reason explains why Manectric is more than Raichu, which otherwise would be very nice: on T1, Manectric is protected by Mat Block, then if you mega evolved on T1, on T2 it will be faster than Greninja, and Volt Switch (for honest damage) before either Surfs are fired. And if you switch Gastrodon in (as you would often do), it gets 2 Storm Drain boosts right away. So yeah, Manectric can't take Surf, but it ends up working out. I know I'm repeating myself, but this really is the best outcome, as picking something that could actually take Surf would for sure increase the frontline's reliance on rain.
So, you can think of this team as two Surf users on the side, a pivot in the middle, Gastrodon as the main backup center, a pocket Kingdra like in doubles that could go in the center too, and a pocket Scizor.
Wait a minute, this is looking a bit familiar… let's take out the two centers…
I said before that this wasn't a port of a doubles team, and I never meant it to be, but isn't this basically a standard rain structure? It's so, so similar to Politoed/Ludicolo/Toxicroak/Kingdra when you consider that Greninja is basically Ludicolo (fast attacker with Surf and grass STAB). I am overplaying how fixed the roles and positions are for the sake of simplicity, but it's interesting how I have reverted to a tried-and-true doubles core.
- Relying on two side Surf users is less risky than relying on a single, big Surf spammer in the center, where it's more vulnerable and there's only one of them
- Hitting your own Greninja, which is often not even resisting water, is stupid if it's holding a Focus Sash (and it should)
- Related to that, having one big Surf spammer in the center would require 2 allies that can handle water type moves instead of 1. Finding 2 sets that can take Surfs would most likely mean a very rain-reliant lead, which I’m trying to avoid for consistency reasons.
- Kingdra
- Ludicolo
- Toxicroak
- Gastrodon
- Ludicolo: Fake Out sounds nice, but if you're going to use Mat Block anyway, it must be less useful (my mind has changed since). Also, the timing for activating Absorb Bulb is weird; T1 Mat Block blocks the activation from Politoed's Surf, and on T2 Ludicolo would be the fastest thing, so it would spend the first 2 turns unboosted… Overall, it feels like it can’t live up to its potential there.
- Kingdra: same Absorb Bulb missed opportunity as Ludicolo, plus having your center lead be a Dragon Pulse sniper sounds wrong
- Toxicroak: same Fake Out problem as Ludicolo, and your Focus Sash is taken by Greninja. This won't work unless I get comfortable with another item.
- Gastrodon: it looks strong, but in the lead it doesn’t accomplish much. The Storm Drain gimmick won't even work well anyway because T1 Mat Block blocks Storm Drain triggers.
Step 2: Not putting a Swift Swim set in the front means that you need one in the back; it's too strong not to include. Now, the question is, Kingdra or Ludicolo, maybe both? Let's start with choosing one.
Ludicolo has better staying power with Giga Drain (especially if you put a Life Orb on Kingdra), Kingdra has more enemies with the new fairy type, Dragon Pulse is now just 85bp, and backline Fake Out is very nice (I have very fond memories of Toxicroak), but Ludicolo also has problems. I know it won't be able to fit Protect, which is probably important. On top of that, it's slow, requiring 244 Speed EVs just for scarf Terrakion (not even thinking about Manectric). I wasn’t sure if I wanted my fast cleanup sweeper to sacrifice this much bulk just for Terrakion while also attracting all the cross-field flying moves, it felt inconsistent.
All this to say, I'm using Kingdra. It has a similar role to my subway Kingdra as a backline, somewhat frail sniper. It can easily go in the center as well to tank Surfs; I need a couple of those water resists / immunities if I want to be able to use Surf on the side freely enough, and Kingdra is a start.
Step 3: Scizor is just very, very good… I bent over backwards in doubles just to try to function without it, and I'm not doing it again. For grass types, ice types, and annoying psychics/ghosts (Calm Mind spam, Trick Room), Scizor is obviously the right thing for the job. Besides, if I want to not rely on rain too much, having a Toxicroak would be a big mistake. I already know I want a Bullet Punch / Bug Bite / Swords Dance / Protect set with Lum Berry, respectfully borrowed from Eisen's tower & subway teams.
2 slots left! I need
- A mega (not technically a constraint, but it would be nice I guess)
- At least 1 set that can tank ally Surfs (Kingdra shouldn't be the only one)
I could just add Ludicolo and call it a day, but this is instead the opportunity to hedge against some risks that are currently unaddressed. Big risks that remain include hail, Trick Room, and Electric moves/paralysis. There's also a new one: Swift Swim Floatzel. I've implied at the idea that the center lead won't necessarily be able to take ally Surfs well, meaning it will not take Floatzel's Life Orb Waterfall all that well either.
Luckily, we can patch the Trick Room, electric, and Floatzel risks while also fitting nicely with the existing gameplan with Gastrodon. What I learned to appreciate while playing is that Gastrodon doesn't rely on rain at all despite being put in the rain synergy bucket. It feeds on ally Surfs more than on the weather, and even that is just a bonus. Overall, it’s a good center backup with nice bulk, and a water immunity.
Step 5: Looking at the risks, I still want something more for electric types & Thunder Wave spam. Gastrodon is good at protecting one thing by switching in its place, but from my previous experience, Thunder Wave / Tbolt / Thunder targeting is very unpredictable, so Gastrodon can’t protect the entire team. I'm kind of forcing the argument here, but there are only 2 megas that can help: Mega Sceptile and Mega Manectric, both because of Lightning Rod. Let's look at their characteristics.
Mega-Sceptile:
- Disgustingly bad in hail
- No switch moves
- Giga Drain is weak for a main attacking move, Dragon Pulse got nerfed
- No good coverage
- Overlaps with Kingdra and Ludicolo in typing
- x4 resistance to water to take ally Surf
- Thunder is strong and can't miss(!)
- Volt Switch is incredible
- Flamethrower is a nice way to hedge for Sun and Abomasnow
- Intimidate is a nice bonus
But! How do you run a team with two Surf leads with a center that can't take Surf? Isn't this impractical? No, and the reason explains why Manectric is more than Raichu, which otherwise would be very nice: on T1, Manectric is protected by Mat Block, then if you mega evolved on T1, on T2 it will be faster than Greninja, and Volt Switch (for honest damage) before either Surfs are fired. And if you switch Gastrodon in (as you would often do), it gets 2 Storm Drain boosts right away. So yeah, Manectric can't take Surf, but it ends up working out. I know I'm repeating myself, but this really is the best outcome, as picking something that could actually take Surf would for sure increase the frontline's reliance on rain.
So, you can think of this team as two Surf users on the side, a pivot in the middle, Gastrodon as the main backup center, a pocket Kingdra like in doubles that could go in the center too, and a pocket Scizor.
Wait a minute, this is looking a bit familiar… let's take out the two centers…
I said before that this wasn't a port of a doubles team, and I never meant it to be, but isn't this basically a standard rain structure? It's so, so similar to Politoed/Ludicolo/Toxicroak/Kingdra when you consider that Greninja is basically Ludicolo (fast attacker with Surf and grass STAB). I am overplaying how fixed the roles and positions are for the sake of simplicity, but it's interesting how I have reverted to a tried-and-true doubles core.
Drizzle, Timid Nature
EVs: 4 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 244 Spe
Stats: 166 HP / 72 Atk / 96 Def / 142 SpA / 121 SpD / 133 Spe
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Protect
- Perish Song
Politoed is similar to the subway variant, with a few changes.
- There’s no need for underspeeding Tyranitar, so we can go back to the much more convenient 133 speed, which catches a lot of 132 set4, but specifically Braviary-4 with Tailwind (it never wants to click it anyway, but you never know), and the Lax Incense Latios/Latias at 130.
- No more Eject Button nonsense! I put Sitrus Berry without much thought, as I didn’t initially any particular need for more damage or anything else. So far, it’s served me well, but I’ll have to consider Rindo Berry too.
- Helping Hand wasn’t accomplishing much, and there’s a desperate need for ice coverage in the lead, so Ice Beam ends up being more useful.
Lightningrod -> Intimidate, Timid Nature
EVs: 252 SpA / 12 SpD / 244 Spe
Stats: 145 HP / 72 Atk / 80 Def / 157 SpA / 82 SpD / 171 Spe -> 145 HP / 85 Atk / 100 Def / 187 SpA / 102 SpD / 204 Spe
- Thunder
- Volt Switch
- Protect
- Flamethrower
This Manectric set is largely straightforward. Thunder is strong and cannot miss, which is incredibly valuable for Walrein, Pinsir, Gothitelle, and even Tangrowth (deals 47% minimum). Volt Switch is another must both in general and in the context of a rain team that might need to switch Politoed in and out efficiency, and Protect is also good.
Flamethrower is usually terrible, but it becomes very useful for Sun and Hail. Specifically for Sun, instead of stubbornly fighting three grass types because they all might have Sunny Day (this often means keeping Politoed in for Ice Beam, by the way), I can calmly switch Politoed out for Scizor and invite the Sun to come up, where Flamethrower gets OHKOs on all relevant targets. Overall, though, I’m reminded of Turkstain’s Rotom-W for triples with 3 electric moves and HP Water; Manectric is basically the same… it has Electric moves and outsources Water coverage to Politoed/Greninja. Anything more is extra, in my opinion. However, unlike Rotom-W, Manectric is frail, and a good bait. It lures all the Earthquakes around, and water moves as well. It’s sad I don’t have a ground immunity on this team, but drawing ground moves over something else is still good.
Of course, I won’t go into it, but Lightningrod and giving your entire water-based team an electric/Twave immunity is amazing. The 12 SpDef EVs are to resist Scarf Heatran’s Earth Power (non-crit) after Mega, which can come into play in very niche but scary situations; read the threats section for more info.
Protean, Timid Nature
EVs: 4 Hp / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Stats: 148 HP / 101 Atk / 87 Def / 155 SpA / 91 SpD / 191 Spe
- Surf
- Dark Pulse
- Mat Block
- Grass Knot
I really wish Greninja could fit Ice Beam, not having it makes grass types on the right hard to take down, but it's more annoying than it is a genuine weakness. I'm surprised how long it can stick around, sometimes a lot longer than I want. With Intimidate, type shifting, a frail center, and a Focus Sash, I really wish sometimes it would faint and let me get something else in. I guess that’s not the worst problem in the world, though.
Swift Swim, Modest Nature
EVs: 44 Hp / 252 SpA / 12 SpD / 196 Spe
Stats: 156 HP / 90 Atk / 115 Def / 161 SpA / 117 SpD / 130 Spe
- Scald
- Dragon Pulse
- Protect
- Ice Beam
Kingdra is the same exact set as in the subway, with Scald over Surf. Manectric, Greninja, and Scizor that can't take water moves, so I can't afford my backups to deal spread damage. Besides, it's mostly overkill; Kingdra's job is to snipe away threats, without too much care for longevity. Dragon Pulse being cross-field ends up being a lot more valuable than I initially thought, and is enough for me to not consider backline Ludicolo for the time being.
The speed is for Scarf Manectric, though maybe there’s a case for Kingdra to go to 133 or 134 for rare cases where rain isn’t up? I’m thinking of Lati@s at 130 too.
Storm Drain, Quiet Nature (0 speed IV)
EVs: 164 Hp / 92 Def / 252 SpA
Stats: 207 HP / 88 Atk / 100 Def / 158 SpA / 102 SpD / 39 Spe
- Scald
- Earth Power
- Harden
- Ice Beam
Harden is laziness that might have turned into some forbidden tech. I wanted to eventually give it a fourth move, but I hadn't made my final decision (Surf? Clear Smog? Icy Wind? Rebreed and Hidden Power?) before I had a flight to take. Because this was on a fresh save, I figured I'd go through regular triples first and choose the last move after gaining some experience. Well, all those battles later… I still haven't bothered to change.
Clear Smog is probably the best for Calm Mind Lati@s and Zapdos, if I’m unable to pull Perish Song off for some reason. But! Through 1000 battles I have baited a number of Taunts, crucially from Bisharp-4, which is otherwise very, very strong and scares me. So do I even bother changing? If I put Clear Smog, I know it wouldn’t be used often anyway since I’ve come this far without it.
Outside of that, Gastrodon is amazing. It’s the main middle slot, it does well in sand, and baits Grass moves well. Assault Vest has done me a lot of good, but I must admit that the EVs are a little random. 100 defense just felt in the ballpark of “right”, and prevents SpA download boosts. Its main job is still tanking special hits. One last note: even with the minimum speed, Gastrodon is faster than Trevenant-4, which is nice.
Technician, Adamant Nature
EVs: 212 Hp / 252 Atk / 44 Spe
Stats: 172 HP / 200 Atk / 120 Def / 67 SpA / 100 SpD / 91 Spe
- Bullet Punch
- Bug Bite
- Protect
- Swords Dance
Scizor is this team’s only physical attacker. How big of a burden is this? Not that big, actually, but it requires a little more care than usual; depending on the matchup, it can often be the most precious member. It very rarely comes in the middle; usually you bring it on the side in front of something harmless, and let the other two slots make sure Scizor can setup safely.
I’ve seen faster Scizors, and I’m aware I could bump mine up, but 106 is probably too much. We’ll see.
I want to emphasize how much more consistent this team is than the doubles version. Let's go back to the list of threats I showed earlier, and how this team can deal with them.
The main Quick Claw threats are Leafeon, Muk, Ursaring, and Donphan. They all go from easy to handle (Leafeon is very predictable), to ok (Ursaring is frail, Muk usually ends up exploding), to annoying (Donphan, because of EQ+Seed Bomb, especially if it’s under the sand). These are helped by Intimidate, and the fact that Ursaring and Donphan like Earthquake, but overall, I miss Fake Out.
Grass types are mostly annoying when they’re alone, since if there’s a critical mass (2 or 3) Scizor can come in and feast. But alone, they can restrict your options by preventing Politoed/Gastrodon from coming in. The most annoying grass type is Virizion, since it’s fast, it has very good special bulk, and its fighting moves hit Scizor. Serperior also has to be respected (Choice Specs Leaf Storm / Lax Incense ambiguity), and I’ve had some trouble with slower, bulkier, Protect spamming grass types as well (Venusaur, Roserade, etc.), though I suspect it’s more on me playing incorrectly than a genuine threat.
Finally, I have to mention Tailwind, specifically Articuno and Moltres. I've never had to fight the enemy under Tailwind, but I'm assuming that if I let it go off against a Veteran, there's a high chance I'll lose. There are clear KO patterns: Moltres is OHKOed by either Thunder or Greninja's Surf (Politoed is too slow), and Articuno has is a 13/16 range for Thunder, so Thunder + Greninja should be good. However, there are slight openings that could be devestating:
**This wouldn't have been a problem if Thunder hadn't been nerfed :(
Of course, the odds are in my favor. For 12 veterans, the only way I lose is by rolling Moltres-1 + in the left slot + Terrakion-1 or Landorus-1 + Terrakion/Landorus crits + Moltres clicks Tailwind. 34 and 1234 Veterans have a few more outs.
To see what are the odds of clicking Tailwind, I only have 3 recorded encounters of Moltres-1 and Articuno-4 combined (maybe I saw them when I just started?, but haven't recorded the video. I know the battle 50 Chatelaine has Moltres-1). Moltres-1 is rare because of White Herb, which Latios-2, Latias-2, and Heatran-2 all carry + Landorus-4 on 1234 veterans. Here are their behaviors on turn 1 after rebattling them a bunch of times:
Moltres-1
Used Tailwind 24% of the time, sample size of 50
Lead: Terrakion-2, Landorus-1, Moltres-1
This was harmless because Moltres wasn't on the left
Moltres-1
Used Tailwind 6% of the time, sample size of 100
Lead: Suicune, Latios-1, Moltres-1 (Moltres has the highest damage move!)
This was harmless because Moltres wasn't on the left, and there were no scarf sets
Articuno-4
Used Tailwind 16% of the time, sample size of 50
Lead: Moltres-4, Heatran-3, Articuno-4
This isn't super scientific, but it gives an idea that even if the matchup is very bad and the enemy gets their crit, you would only be punished a fraction of the time. Articuno is the most annoying because it used Protect 75% of the time, which is bad if Greninja didn't use Mat Block.
Having to fear Quick Claw and Tailwind really show how much Fake Out was holding rain together in doubles. Maybe Raichu would be good after all? It would be a hard decision, 135 base speed and Intimidate are so, so convenient. Or... Ludicolo is always there. Now that I think about it, with Ludicolo, it would be possible to fit U-turn on Greninja to bring Politoed back in and change the weather, and Fake Out would would help offset the fact there's no Mat Block anymore... Anyway, I'll have to think about this some more.
- Snow Warning: Volt Switch + Mat Block to bring rain on T1, Scizor, Flamethrower for Abomasnow
- Manual Hail: same as Snow Warning. Also, it's easy to kill the hail setters on sight, especially with Dark Pulse and Thunder (Articuno)
- Blizzard / Freeze: Mat Block, 3/6 members have freeze immunity
- Sand & Sun: Sun boosts Flamethrower, Volt Switch + switch to bring back rain T1, 2 sand immunities
- Trick Room: Gastrodon, Scizor, Greninja's Dark Pulse, 4/6 members have Protect
- Tailwind: KO pattern for every setter (thanks to Thunder, notably), but there are tail risks (fitting huh)
- Paralysis & static: Lightning Rod + Gastrodon, Lum Berry, no Fake Out triggering Static
- Toxicroak: Toxicroak-4 doesn't even have Fake Out, Thunder takes care of it, and no poison-weak Ludicolo to bully
- Lax incense / Bright Powder: Thunder, Perish Song
- Quick Claw: Nothing on paper
- Scarf Manectric: Lightning Rod
- Grass types: Flamethrower (if sun), Scizor. Remains a problem
The main Quick Claw threats are Leafeon, Muk, Ursaring, and Donphan. They all go from easy to handle (Leafeon is very predictable), to ok (Ursaring is frail, Muk usually ends up exploding), to annoying (Donphan, because of EQ+Seed Bomb, especially if it’s under the sand). These are helped by Intimidate, and the fact that Ursaring and Donphan like Earthquake, but overall, I miss Fake Out.
Grass types are mostly annoying when they’re alone, since if there’s a critical mass (2 or 3) Scizor can come in and feast. But alone, they can restrict your options by preventing Politoed/Gastrodon from coming in. The most annoying grass type is Virizion, since it’s fast, it has very good special bulk, and its fighting moves hit Scizor. Serperior also has to be respected (Choice Specs Leaf Storm / Lax Incense ambiguity), and I’ve had some trouble with slower, bulkier, Protect spamming grass types as well (Venusaur, Roserade, etc.), though I suspect it’s more on me playing incorrectly than a genuine threat.
Finally, I have to mention Tailwind, specifically Articuno and Moltres. I've never had to fight the enemy under Tailwind, but I'm assuming that if I let it go off against a Veteran, there's a high chance I'll lose. There are clear KO patterns: Moltres is OHKOed by either Thunder or Greninja's Surf (Politoed is too slow), and Articuno has is a 13/16 range for Thunder, so Thunder + Greninja should be good. However, there are slight openings that could be devestating:
- Moltres-1 in the left slot if a Scarf set OHKOs* Manectric before Mat Block goes off
- Articuno in any slot if a Scarf set OHKOs* Manectric before Greninja and Manectric can move
- Articuno in any slot if Greninja didn't click Mat Block (to not take a chance on the 13/16 range**) and a set with >172 speed OHKOs Manectric (2 Latios sets, 1 Latias set, plus a few more if crit)
**This wouldn't have been a problem if Thunder hadn't been nerfed :(
Of course, the odds are in my favor. For 12 veterans, the only way I lose is by rolling Moltres-1 + in the left slot + Terrakion-1 or Landorus-1 + Terrakion/Landorus crits + Moltres clicks Tailwind. 34 and 1234 Veterans have a few more outs.
To see what are the odds of clicking Tailwind, I only have 3 recorded encounters of Moltres-1 and Articuno-4 combined (maybe I saw them when I just started?, but haven't recorded the video. I know the battle 50 Chatelaine has Moltres-1). Moltres-1 is rare because of White Herb, which Latios-2, Latias-2, and Heatran-2 all carry + Landorus-4 on 1234 veterans. Here are their behaviors on turn 1 after rebattling them a bunch of times:
Moltres-1
Used Tailwind 24% of the time, sample size of 50
Lead: Terrakion-2, Landorus-1, Moltres-1
This was harmless because Moltres wasn't on the left
Moltres-1
Used Tailwind 6% of the time, sample size of 100
Lead: Suicune, Latios-1, Moltres-1 (Moltres has the highest damage move!)
This was harmless because Moltres wasn't on the left, and there were no scarf sets
Articuno-4
Used Tailwind 16% of the time, sample size of 50
Lead: Moltres-4, Heatran-3, Articuno-4
This isn't super scientific, but it gives an idea that even if the matchup is very bad and the enemy gets their crit, you would only be punished a fraction of the time. Articuno is the most annoying because it used Protect 75% of the time, which is bad if Greninja didn't use Mat Block.
Having to fear Quick Claw and Tailwind really show how much Fake Out was holding rain together in doubles. Maybe Raichu would be good after all? It would be a hard decision, 135 base speed and Intimidate are so, so convenient. Or... Ludicolo is always there. Now that I think about it, with Ludicolo, it would be possible to fit U-turn on Greninja to bring Politoed back in and change the weather, and Fake Out would would help offset the fact there's no Mat Block anymore... Anyway, I'll have to think about this some more.
I’m confident this team is more consistent than then subway one, but I’m not sure how it performs in absolute. I’ll find out if I keep playing : )
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That's five; I've gone on record several times that I'd never even attempt this, but I can't be trusted I suppose. Posting a streak of 60 wins in Omega Ruby Super Multi with AI, with Brendan. Time to call bingo on this for real this time.
(receptionist photo)
First things first, let's take a look at what he's bringing.
and, well, my heart sank when I first saw these sets eleven years ago, my heart reflexively sank just now despite literally having won with him already, and I'm sure your heart is doing its share of sinking too.
Even the quality of the Pokemon aside I just honestly truly don't understand it, when all of Maxie/Archie/Wally/Steven have decidedly offensive teams featuring their known ace as a Mega paired with another Pokemon they also are known for, and here we have Brendan shattering that pattern as hard as he can. Like, my starter on this file was Treecko, Brendan canonically has a Mega Blaziken in my game, I probably could get that to work idk, and even other Mega Hoenn starters should have enough potential for us to work with as well. Of course that is a joke and I get that giving him starters let alone variable starters would not have been practical for a handful of reasons, but even with the other Pokemon on his in-game roster being uhhh let's leave it at questionable... unless the anime has a thing here that idk of, where are these two coming from suddenly? Fair enough and no arguments here if Raichu + Swellow is considered beyond saving for working towards an in-game achievement, but if you are gonna deviate from "canon" then, rather than engineer something tailor-made for the format, why just functionally pull two new ones from a tombola anyway? What we end up with is a roster that just reminds us of a generic Route 121 Trainer, certainly nothing more than that and also not the Brendan or May we have come to know elsewhere, and it makes no sense.
Lore and consistency aside, though, the main reason for the aforementioned heart sinking is of course the quality of the Pokemon in question, as well as their usability in a multis context, or rather lack thereof. Rather than comparing to the other partners or complaining about the lack of Mega Evolutions, let's reiterate what makes a good multi partner:
- Predictability: if we need to work with them, then it's kind of convenient if we have a credible hunch on the move they are picking. Generally this means that attacking moves are good news, Choice items come with upside beyond their native effect on account of uhhh making the guesses on turns 2 and beyond very clear, and status or support moves are questionable at best even if they'd be good in the hands of a human pilot, think the AI's tendency to waste turns with Protect or Thunder Wave rather than just playing for a 2HKO or a focus fire KO;
- Damage output: of course them being able to kill things is good, but this also kind of doubles as a side function of predictability when of course access to guaranteed KOs helps a lot with clicking the right moves. It's also why e.g. Steven's Aerodactyl is the worst thing ever when it will e.g. click Thunder Fang into Bronzong over targeting Braviary because it's not tickling either one either way in the end. Inability to properly switch only makes "kill them before they kill you" even more important as well;
and then let's take another look at these sets and cry in solitude as this is one of those cases where the atrocity is so obvious and intense that we can make do with leaving it unspoken. We are still yapping though, and while certain other partners had some shaky elements on their sets, Brendan really does, without exaggeration, get absolutely everything wrong here. This is most clear on dual support move full defensive investment Claydol, but Exploud is not it either, which in addition to well. being Exploud is prone to being made a sitting duck even more often thanks to its lack of Speed investment and also, despite all-out attacking sets being acceptable for multis purposes, between its lack of a boosting item and its main STAB move's spread penalty and lack of super effective coverage throws in so many variables for it to mess up its move choice on that a lot of the time it feels like Brendan must have accidentally reverse calibrated his touchscreen in the same way as Steven's Aerodactyl. At least in theory, you really can't count on either of these to do anything at all reliably, and they don't even have the raw stats to make up for it either. Claydol's screens and Exploud's spread-moves-for-the-sake-of-spread-moves are also not in fact assets with the way they go against the core tenets of predictability and damage output, not to mention screens in particular being kind of a noob trap even when piloted by humans; I've honestly wondered if Brendan's sets are like. intentionally bad for the sake of teaching new players the hard way that these are not in fact good doubles strategies, and I'm still not sure I'm actually wrong on that one.
This is where it's time for a history lesson, since I very much ended up standing on the shoulders of giants here, or rather shoulders of a giant (singular), namely the only and only turskain i.e. among many other things the only one (until now I guess) on record with a trophy-winning run with Brendan in this community, pairing him up with Choice Scarf Sawk + Mega Salamence after initially failing with a Snarl Arcanine + Mega Slowbro setup that aimed to take advantage of Claydol's screens. Check out his report in the middle section of the post here, but the important part and the main thing I kept in mind for myself was that he just kind of gave up on cooperating with Brendan thus ended up taking an approach that was basically self-sufficient balls to the wall hyper offense and Brendan gets to come along for the ride if he is so inclined.
For my own starting point, we're using... not exactly that since that would imply I had made "Brendan" a genuine goal even before finding an idea of what to pair up with him, but the idea first popped into my head when another Choice Scarf-using Sturdy Pokemon ended up on my wishlist of things to use: Magnezone, with one of the coolest moves available in Doubles in Volt Switch. Said coolness is very much the kind of thing that's much easier to grasp in practice than in theory, but for an attempt at putting it into words, we can take a look at earlier teams using it like turskain's Triples LukeNinja / my Triples Mega Manectric for examples pairing it with Mat Block Greninja and my Tree KangaKoko for one pairing it with Fake Out. What makes those teams tick is Volt Switch's ability to make the opening into a two-turn setup by mitigating otherwise questionable matchups on the spot. Think of it like this: it gives you access to not just Rotom-W but to all of Rotom-W, Rotom-W + Garchomp, Rotom-W + Talonflame, Rotom-W + Scizor; not just Mega Manectric but all of Mega Manectric, Mega Manectric + Blaziken, Mega Manectric + Hydreigon, Mega Manectric + Azumarill; not just Tapu Koko but all of Tapu Koko, Tapu Koko + Latios, Tapu Koko + Celesteela, all the while attacking at the same time, so rather than losing momentum on a matchup not ideal for Electrics by having to hard switch out, you actually get to gain momentum here while potentially just positioning yourself for the win on the spot. Sturdy would give Magnezone in particular another leg up over these specifically in the Volt Switch department by letting it assuredly tank one hit and still pivot out even in situations where it can't avoid these, which is of course a very real scenario with frickin base 60 Speed.
Another way of looking at this if you think about it hard enough (but not too hard) is that Volt Switch doubles as some sort of Ultra Burst / Relic Song / whichever analogy you want to use by genuinely turning Magnezone into a different Pokemon without any major loss of momentum, thus also substantially expanding the toolkit of the "Pokemon" you're deploying when we almost get to use all of them in the same slot. This is also where we can refocus on Multis and also Brendan, since pairing a Volt Switch user with him just kind of makes a lot of sense with the crappy hand he deals us. Volt Switch in Multi is probably weaker than in other formats but also not really, since while of course we have to make do without Fake Out or Mat Block positioning support here and only have a single potential recipient, the additional strain put on switching also makes the ability to do so without momentum loss even more valuable. This is also where Brendan, and turskain's observation about him, comes in: when the entire crux of using him as a partner is that he almost forces us to fight our battles 1v2, would it not make sense to, rather than try to have our two Pokemon cover "everything" but still only be able to have one of them at the field at the same time, give ourselves the option to let them seamlessly "Ultra Burst" into each other depending on matchup?
So that is a lot of words convincing myself that Magnezone could at least be part of the solution here, but of course we'll also still need a Volt Switch recipient to go with it. With the whole 1v2 situation still hanging over our heads we are also restricted by the fact that it'll pretty much have to be an absolute juggernaut; while Magnezone of course will get the job done fine in terms of deploying its backup, it will for obvious reasons be significantly worse at handling the majority of a 1v2 on its own, so said backup will have a lot of ground to cover there. Maybe there is something shameless about plugging a pre-nerf Mega Salamence in this slot, but I mean let's be honest surely it's not unfair to feel like the end justifies the means when a trophy with Brendan is what we'd be going for here, and more importantly this was not an autopilot broken for the sake of broken choice and had enough genuine thought going into it. Specifically, you want a Volt Switch recipient to have clean defensive synergy with Magnezone, where the main box to tick right away is of course an Earthquake immunity to allow Magnezone to cleanly zipline out of that weakness. With resistances to all of Salamence's weaknesses, Magnezone also does a good job making sure Salamence never has to switch into any of those, but with Magnezone's STAB types, it doesn't stop there; Electric/Steel is honestly perfect from an offensive synergy pov, sniping all of enemy Ice-, Fairy-, and Rock-types and even covering the Water-types that commonly run Ice coverage to mess with Salamence after all. In turn, Salamence also does a good job switching in on the types of attacks Magnezone tends to bait, with the exception of Fire being a bit suspect for obvious common 10% odds reasons (though with the ultimately goal being at 50 wins here rather than infinity, this one too is a bit of a matter of perspective compared to the sort of challenges we usually engage in), which especially in tandem with Intimidate makes getting it on the field even more painless, and of course Fighting-types pretty much invariably being Aerilate fodder only amplifies our ability to keep up momentum here. While not remotely as important as their ability to support each other, Magnezone / Salamence's ability to protect Brendan's side is not the worst thing to point out either, with the pair of them handling Water and Grass for Claydol and Salamence additionally covering Fighting for Exploud. As much as the bar for their ability to contribute offensively is obviously on the floor, and even if supporting them is not exactly the right thing to focus on, there is still a lot to be said for what's basically keeping your meatshields alive; as long as they are on the field, the enemy is not fully focusing on Magnezone/Salamence, which even if we're embracing the whole 1v2 situation is still a thing that the longer we can avoid it the better.
I'll discuss set details for both in one go, since they genuinely couldn't be more straightforward.
We're running Scarf Magnezone as mentioned earlier to be able to snipe weaknesses and/or pivot out as quickly as possible; nature-wise, Timid is the only choice, since missing out on the Starmie tier would all but defeat the point of the whole Choice Scarf Electric situation we're going for here. Three out of Choice Magnezone's four moves are locked in from the get-go, with the only variation coming from the choice of Hidden Power; Fire is not exactly what it is in competitive without any use for trapping Scizors not to mention the IV drop would have closed the door on the Starmie Speed tier after all, so Ice it is instead for some reassurance against the standard gauntlet of Dragons, as well as who knows a certain Ground/Flying Genie if a certain battle were to play out that way. I also considered Ground as always with how nasty some of those targets can get, but this was the one point where I felt it might be reasonable to actually count on a little bit of help from Brendan after all, not to mention I was going to have an Earthquake Salamence in the back; however, on other teams it is an option I could understand. Grass might have been an option as well, but I felt like those targets would be easier to play around, and I guess so far at least I've had it right there.
Salamence runs a physical set for the maximum take on ultimate wrecking ball, with Aerilate Return being much better suited to this than Aerilate Hyper Voice, and Claydol also gets bonus point here with Levitate to make Earthquake pretty painless to use and its overall survivability to keep the non-immune Exploud out of the adjacent slot for as long as possible. The main half interesting choice to make about the set is Adamant versus Jolly, where the latter is kind of the only choice for a backup. Especially without any support for setting up a Dragon Dance cleanly, Adamant's Speed tiers are just not really good enough overall especially with the pre-Mega Speed also being a factor, and the power drop is much less of a factor when Salamence inherently comes in on chipped enemies much more often. Otherwise, Return was chosen over Double-Edge on a hunch that even with the Jolly nature it was surely strong enough that I did not have to dip into the pool of treating basically my one Pokemon versus the world as a kamikaze, and surely I could change it later should the hunch somehow be wrong. Also saving me the extra levels of grinding and stuff. The final two moveslots are also standard, with physical Mega Salamence's other attacking options being redundant at best and pointless at worst anyway, but with the lack of support from allies, Dragon Dance and Protect end up being kind of filler in practice as well. The latter in particular doesn't serve a real purpose other than safely reaching the Mega Speed, with its usual ability of buying space for a partner being wholly wasted on Brendan's Pokemon and its purpose as a positioning tool versus enemies that might otherwise beat Mega Salamence falling flat in practice as a result. Dragon Dance also went relatively unused due to a combination of lack of space (especially with Brendan's Pokemon not doing a good job baiting neutral attacks) and +0 Return honestly being strong enough most of the time anyway lol, but it still came in handy versus the likes of stallers and predictable Protect users, with the main one I remember being an otherwise sticky late-game situation versus Eelektross4. Preemptive positioning is also somewhat of a thing, with Salamence actually being a bit treatened by the base 120+ crowd; while screens certainly help with this, squeezing in a boost versus a not so offensively threatening lineup is always worth considering, and there was also that one instance where an Earthquake-locked Aerodactyl switched out when Salamence got on the field and I had to do at least something to anticipate a faster Choice Band Stone Edge getting back on the field later in the battle.
For formality's sake, I also should say a few words about how Brendan's Pokemon played beyond theory, but there is simply nothing relevant I can say about Exploud that I haven't yet ngl lol. It's really just kind of there, trying to contribute some chip damage with semi-random moves so it gets to say "look mum I'm helping", and realistically MenceZone has softened the opposition up enough by the time it gets to come in that it usually gets to live to see the end of the battle, but aside from very specific niche synergies just about any pointless bulky attacker could have been swapped into this slot and I wouldn't have noticed the difference. I do have to give it a shoutout for one battle in the 40s when I though I had thrown away the run by misplaying Salamence against Kingdra but it managed to solo Bastiodon4 by clicking Fire Blast consistently, getting a quick burn, and also having enough luck with Bastiodon picking non-Metal Burst moves when I needed it to. Otherwise though it was the most forgettable Pokemon I've ever used, which in this context yes very much offense. Claydol on the other hand does probably deserve credit for (expectedly) the vast majority of the time clicking its screens first. Which one it actually goes for is not something that can really be predicted as far as I've seen and not something where I have been able to detect actual intelligence, but I suppose that's where the whole "unreliable partner don't count on them for anything" comes back in anyways, and at the very least one way or another it certainly is a better contribution to the whole MenceZone vs the world situation than generic chip from Earth Power / Psychic would have been.
The way things ended up playing in practice was kind of weird. It worked as expected in theory but at the same time was also almost insultingly simple, where most battles did in fact turn into a properly positioned Salamence just wiping the floor with everything as if I was facing random Route 121 Trainers. Of course it's good at just killing things as is, but with Intimidate and Claydol's screens it really was almost an unkillable wrecking ball. Seriously just look at this, sneak preview to the misplay-littered loss:
Battle "video" time! First there is of course the Chatelaine battle, which went surprisingly clean--in part thanks to a little bit of luck but it should at least show that this team does not fully flounder in neutral matchups.
#50: vs. Morgan / Nita
#61: vs. Cyril / Stanislaw
No warstory for the loss because it's honestly kind of embarrassing. Clicking Earthquake into the Cobalion + Drifblim board despite Return being the harder hit on Cobalion did not actually matter in the sense that it was put into Earth Power range either way, but critical misplays involved taking enemy Salamence's Outrage to the face (for like 45% lol, see aforementioned calc but yea...) due to spacing out on the pre-Mega Speed tie and also forgetting to run my calcs to see that Return actually one-shots Drifblim while Thunderbolt does not. Getting either of those right would realistically have won, but this time I put myself into an auto-checkmate against Entei1 with its Flame Charge and Drifblim in Custap Destiny Bond range. So yea that could have been a pretty painless 2v1 with also a very favourable matchup into the Veteran's side and I can only apologise for throwing this one away and cheating the world out of seeing Brendan's true potential. I have no excuse other than the obvious one of focus really just dropping that hard once the only real goal has been met and the sane way of mitigation via pausing the streak for a couple days not being an option thanks to functionally-forcing-a-single-sitting ORAS multis; at least uhhhhh Brendan having a true potential at all to cheat the world out of seeing is quite a significant thing to prove in its own right I suppose?
I don't really have more battle videos than this; I avoided saving them liberally because limited slots, and I also went into this expecting that close calls and wacky escapes would be more the norm than I'm used to even for multis anyways. More than anything else, though, this... was done on first try, I mean I'll take it but no I can't really believe it either. This is also your explanation for this writeup probably being a bit shallow in places if that's what it felt like with only 61 battles worth of experience (no I was not gonna do new runs just for the sake of more thorough research), but of course it also makes for a bunch of complicated feelings for obvious "Brendan was supposed to be lunacy" reasons. Without making too much of the whole first try situation, which would lead to a landslide of fallacies if we end up factoring it into actual conclusions, at least the comparison with Maxie is one where I have a few things to say. For context, my record with him is exactly 50, which was gotten on the fifth try (third or second idr which if we only count the ones where I got the natures/EVs right; I lost to the Chatelaines once plus had another two runs into the 40s before I got the winning one) with Mega Lopunny + Gastrodon to complement Maxie's Crobat + Mega Camerupt. Of course Maxie is better (read: less bad but yea) than Brendan not just in theory, but... while the whole "first try" thing is quite obviously the dice happening to fall right quickly and Maxie just as easily could have been a second try trophy while Brendan could have been the one to take five attempts instead, 60 wins with Maxie is something I am not capable of believing I could make without genuinely absurd matchup luck. This is not just based in statistical extrapolation of the other scores I'd set with him; I'll keep it short, but the tl;dr is that earlier attempts without Gastrodon left Camerupt so easy to overrun that I lost in the single digits and felt forced to employ Storm Drain, where Gastrodon did a good job protecting Camerupt and keeping me out of 1v2 states but at the same time only exacerbated Crobat / Camerupt's awful matchups into a range of threatening enemies such as Veterans (with Morgan's Latias as possibly the worst offender lol) and others where Crobat's base stats in particular ended up falling short--and being left to rely on just a single slot to try and fix that that also has to synergise with Crobat properly is of course not sustainable. This was exactly the reason why I consistently made it into the 40s without major trouble but struggled comparatively with making the final step, and making that final step essentially twice in a row is quite a lot to ask. Of course it's also possible if not outright likely that 60 with Brendan was a lucky run, but especially with the context of the loss I don't think it was a full-on ceiling either; I am not going to be so arrogant as to believe I managed to catch lightning in a bottle on my very first try, and at the very least this Brendan configuration should have an easier time re-approaching these numbers than Maxie should have getting to them outright. Maybe that just means the Pokemon I paired with Brendan were better than the team I ran with Maxie? Well, yes, as a start lol, of course it does, but that's also exactly the point I'm trying to make: we're not just building these teams from scratch but trying to complement existing cores, and certain Pokemon have better natural synergy with the ones the AI provides us with than others do. And if Maxie closes the door on certain all-around strong Pokemon in this way that Brendan does not, and Brendan does not constrict building in the same ways as Maxie's Camerupt, then if nothing else that is a relevant factor for the question which one of them can make it to the trophy more easily. Multis being an exercise in teambuilding more than any other format only makes this more pertinent in terms of evaluating partner usability too.
Definitely don't take this as an attempt to defend Brendan as an underrated partner though, because yes of course he sucks and again this run was just outright awkward to play. I've found myself struggling to find the best way to put this into words, but I think the gist is: you know how storymode despite being 99% singles always has the odd double battle, either just with your team in doubles mode or paired up with a random NPC whose team makes uhhhh maybe not quite Brendan but let's say Archie look competent, and since your team is obviously built with just singles in mind you just kind of shuffle things around to make it work sort of, and you win not through competency as a doubles player or synergy of the team but entirely through having your Pokemon just outmatch the enemy's? That was pretty much how this run felt start to finish, and while yes I suppose that was kind of the idea in the first place, a me against the world approach just feels weird and unrewarding to play compared to a team where everyone cooperates on even footing. Like, I think I managed to make all other partners feel competent in their own way--of course intentionally nerfed compared to what I'd usually play, but with a clear intended synergy across both sides that also ended up playing out the way I wanted to. Brendan, not so much. Salamence also exacerbated this feeling for what it's worth, since quite blatantly playing it as just "click Return, probably win" was not a good way to make me feel like a competent player, but maybe I also don't really get it as a Pokemon (yet?). Odds also are though that it's not just unfamiliarity but Brendan genuinely putting him in the position where that was the best way of playing him. Who is to say.
I don't... really know how to continue this writeup... but I feel like I should still say more things, since it feels wrong to treat the genuine completion of the ORAS AI partner set, all five of them, without any "100% of 114%" loopholes or any other ifs or buts to explain away the omission of Brendan or anyone else, especially when I did not at all phone in my partner choices either, as just another team report. Let's go over all the other partners again real quick, for a proper recap of what can be/has been done in this mode over the years, I suppose?
Starting off with the, for worse not better, face of this mode, Steven, where our teams were the following:
writeup (score 73)
At face value, this team follows a significant core tenet of good multi partners, namely "reliability" via avoidance of status moves to make sure it'll always attempt to land damage, and of course there is no denying that having a Mega Metagross's sheer stats on your side is always a tempting prospect. In practice, though, the simple fact is that Steven is a textbook noob trap; and since in this mode we are all noobs by default, everyone, and I do mean literally everyone, flocked towards him after ORAS's initial release. Without tearing him apart too much, the reliability of full attacking moves is more than offset by its horrendous accuracy across the board and its inability to use Bullet Punch properly, and Aerodactyl similarly is completely incapable of clicking the right moves because one way or another it's not really doing damage anyway. While it's hard to ruin Metagross's stats, the game also does a great attempt at that via the obvious fantasy EV spread that makes it clear they should have used a better metric there than just "invest in highest base stats". It's important to stress Steven's noob trap-ness, since a look at the leaderboard would suggest that he's the strongest partner of the lot by far; nothing of that though, and it's genuinely little more than just a matter of him having the power of probability on his side, where yea if you roll the dice thousands more times you are gonna roll more sixes than otherwise; but that doesn't really mean a whole lot if the world never gave the other partners a fair shot.
For my own take, "literally everyone" flocking towards him unfortunately includes me as well, so he was the partner I used to first get the trophy eleven years ago, and one single glimpse at the babyraging paragraphs from the five trophy post should make it clear that no I did not have a good time, pretty much entirely on him. Encouraged by rave reviews from early ORAS multi players (which were probably just fuelled by contrast with more unlucky XY partners), I thought I could get away with being creative before being rudely punished in practice; I don't actually remember what I tried, other than a Greninja + Gastrodon where the idea was to protect Aerodactyl from enemy Water-types but that failed miserably in practice due to Steven just not handling Grass-types with any sort of consistency. I then switched to a more standard lineup with the goal of operating more independently, where I'm sorry if my memory of my rationale is not exactly on point with an 11 year time gap + PTSD to block it out not being very helpful, but it went kind of like this: Greninja and Mega Metagross were a sensible lead pairing for Mat Block support to activate Mega Metagross's wasted-but-still-better-than-base-forme Speed stat and offensive synergy against the likes of Fighting-types and offensive Ghosts, while Gardevoir in turn made sense as a backliner for being very hard to KO to special attackers at least and access to a spread nuke for the ability to clean up multiple enemies at the same time after they'd been chipped by the leads. The resulting team was... good enough, making it to a streak of 73 in the end; the loss was about what you'd expect, with Metagross trading itself with enemy Destiny Bond Drifblim via incompetent Bullet Punch usage (when I was actually trying to trade Greninja) for absolutely no reason at all, letting in Scarf Braviary to sweep non-Sash Greninja and Gardevoir while Aerodactyl was entirely useless against the other side as is unfortunately often the case. This still leaves Steven as my second-best performing partner numerically, but I can't stress enough that this proves nothing whatsoever other than that something with Mega Metagross's stats is still pretty hard to sink within 50 battles even in the face of a triple sabotage attempt in Steven's teambuilder. turskain did in fact have a much better time with this exact same lineup, so odds are 73 is not where my peak with him would be either if I give RNG some more chances to do its thing, but of course RNG being a thing like that is exactly the issue. More importantly, nothing of that can undo the fact that playing with Steven is just a heinously aggravating and nerve-wracking experience beginning to end for no reason. We play this game to have fun, so if any other partner can make 50 reliably while giving the player a better time in the process, then Steven should never have had any business being considered "the only choice", unlike what unfortunately happened when the generation was active.
So, on that note, let's look at Wally...
writeup (score 145)
I tried out Wally on a whim once when I was bored and felt like using Doubles Kangaskhan, where the trick I had in mind was removing enemy Fighting-types via Fake Out + ally STAB Psychic move. When Steven's Metagross popped into my head as someone who technically met criteria here but at the same time I had had enough of to last several lifetimes, the pivot to Wally's Mega Gallade happened pretty much automatically, and while of course "literally everyone" had collectively written him off before, especially with this being multis the worst that could happen was that I'd burn a couple hours I'd otherwise waste on something else unproductive anyways to see firsthand that he did indeed suck. He very much did not suck though--Gallade is still by far the best multis partner I've paired with, where the instantaneous red flag in Swords Dance ended up being fine in practice thanks to base 165 Attack STAB Close Combat in particular being strong enough that Gallade almost always went for unboosted attacks just fine. At that point, what we have is a genuinely very solid fast and strong attacker, with the right secondary STAB move to handle the main threats to Kangaskhan and a coverage move that, while not technically optimal in a vacuum, handles a common range of tricky enemies in the landslide of Water / Ground tyoes that might otherwise Curse boost over a dual physical lead pair as well. The Adamant nature is the main hiccup, but giving Kangaskhan turn initiative is not a bad tradeoff, allowing it to save Gallade from itself when it surely would want to click Close Combat into a lot of Sturdy users otherwise that now Kangaskhan can simply snipe first, as well as just generally redirect its attacks a lot more easily as I think is wise. The status moves on Magnezone are, uh, considerably less unproblematic than those on Gallade, but at least if it's used as a backup it'll have more enemies in Flash Cannon range--and hopefully Flash Cannon range it is, since Thunder is not exactly a choice that helps with its reliability either. While Magnezone is certainly a stereotypical "what were they thinking" multis Pokemon, the fact that it at least has usable STAB moves that enemies can be chipped into makes it better than the likes of Aerodactyl, but more than anything else Gallade is just good at carrying it. Gengar was an autopilot addition for extra help against Ghost-types, but it kind of ended up working out in practice, with Levitate having helpful synergy with Magnezone as well and Destiny Bond pairing well with Magnezone's much greater defensive presence in case I need to simplify late-game situations.
Maybe Wally's consistency still needs a bit of work, but the main praise I can sing about him is that for the most part battles including him just aren't stressful, with Gallade's power and reliability meaning that it actually just beats the enemies it's supposed to beat lol, and the Pokemon I've been able to pair him with do a good job complementing this reliability, to the point that I will very much die on the hill that this is the optimal setup to win the trophy in this mode--which is of course the only thing that really matters here in the end. The actual scores I've gotten with him are almost secondary at this point, but they're very much good enough to match the quality of the team.
Archie was next, mostly for the challenge of completing the bingo sheet where he was the one square left at the time on account of the very few odd souls not fully subscribing to the Steven bandwagon all having played on Omega Ruby during the current generation.
writeup (score 65)
Somehow more painless than it would seem on account of at least both Crobat and Sharpedo being functional attackers in their own right; the main downside is the obvious weakness stack between Crobat and Sharpedo, where the likes of Jolteon and Manectric just sweeping Archie's side on cue is just as fun as it sounds, and Sharpedo's somewhat questionable Speed makes for a bleh cocktail with its frailty too when Crobat is not good at breaking through attackers on lead that it can't easily clear with Brave Bird. My hunch at the time was, rather than try to go out of my way to mitigate this, just accept it as a reality to deal with and at least try to salvage offensive momentum by overloading on Fake Out users (suppose that logic is not too unlike pairing Brendan with a standalone offensive board??), with Weavile being a great dedicated user with decent synergy with Crobat and Kangaskhan being the best option for the me against the world late-game scenarios that surely would end up being a thing too with a partner like this. It worked out surprisingly decently, with the team clicking instantly and the final score of 65 happening after an acceptable number of brute force attempts. I don't think there is a secret sauce to Archie that is gonna push him too much closer to triple digits, when one way or another relying on double Fake Out to support a partner that gets swept on sight by fast Electrics is still asking for your luck to run out sooner rather than later, but at the very least it seems like it's good enough at postponing the fatal matchup roll long enough for a trophy with Archie to be more than reasonable. Fun stuff.
Where there's... water, there is fire, but despite his team following the same template as Archie's, Maxie was one I initially had in "never happening" category.
writeup (score 50)
Crobat still does Crobat things, but between heinous Speed plus major vulnerability to common threatening attacking types and reliance on inaccurate moves (or outright sabotage in the case of Yawn), Camerupt is a textbook case of how not to build an AI multis Pokemon, and Maxie was also the only non-Steven partner where I did not get my own team right on the first try. See the linked post for a more in-depth breakdown, but the first attempt involved using After You Mega Lopunny to counteract Camerupt's Speed, which unfortunately did not work out in practice at all since I was giving up Lopunny's turn in order to salvage Camerupt's plus it did nothing to actually defeat the Camerupt checks that were on the field to outspeed it, not to mention Camerupt ordinarily getting on the field before Lopunny being another reason for it falling flat in practice. Lopunny got to stay on account of good synergy with Crobat, but the partnership with Camerupt got constricted into Gastrodon as the only real proactive way I saw of fixing the Water issue, where the Ground vulnerability was at least mitigated a little bit by only being a 2x weakness plus its most common move by far having a spread penalty to deal with. This was fine for making it into the 40s very consistently, and barely fine for beating the Chatelaines with a final score of literally 50; again read the initial post for more commentary on this, but like I mentioned earlier, in the end Maxie's main issue turned out to be not inability to fit in an overall synergistic team, but rather just a sketchy matchup against Veterans and other enemies where Crobat loses the BST race for good, combined with Gastrodon actually exacerbating this vulnerability and trying to get the final Pokemon to patch up all of that on its own not being a reasonable ask. The fact that one of those all but unbeatable enemies in Latias1 is actually on the Chatelaine's roster is certainly a thing lol and kind of forces people to just hope they won't bring it (or be me and get an instantaneous Scald burn plus connect every single Fire Blast of course) and also is the reason why I think even 60 is a stretch with him; at least he was surprisingly more apt for having a good time in the first 40 battles than one would think.
That also makes for a nice bridge back into the thing no one was looking for but I probably can't get out of, namely the actual power rankings between partner options. Brendan getting a better score than Maxie here, and more importantly a better score than I realistically foresee being in the cards for Maxie at all, is certainly a thing, but rather than Claydol / Exploud being a better team than Crobat / Mega Camerupt I think this more just means that Brendan leaves more room to run Pokemon on the team that can handle the enemies that x / Gastrodon + Crobat / Mega Camerupt can't keep up with. So there is... that, but at the same time Brendan is noobish agony to play while Maxie feels synergistic, and with building constraints, potential Pokemon power level, and just enjoyment of play to be able to commit to the trophy grind properly without wanting to smash your 3DS that's just so many variables here where I feel like this is the best case in point that an outright ranking just gets too subjective. So, rather than that, let's just leave a few words on all of them with those criteria in mind.
- Wally: Gallade is the best Pokemon across all these rosters; easy to support in multiple good and enjoyable ways and weaknesses that are very doable to cover; potential to unravel if Magnezone needs to take centre stage unexpectedly; peace of mind in neutral matchups, which is most of them; very pleasant pick for going for 50.
- Steven: A+ power level even with nerfed Pokemon; slightly constrained building in terms of finding good options to support Metagross; potential to beat almost enemy lineup with neutral luck; substantial consistency issues in-game that are never not there and can also throw away almost any matchup; plausible but consistently stressful pick for going for 50.
- Archie: two perfectly serviceable Pokemon with good offensive synergy; acceptable synergy with strong Pokemon for your own partners; comfortable pilot in neutral matchups; deplorable defensive synergy that makes for consistency issues in terms of matchup and capable of losing on preview in several cases; plausible pick for reaching 50 but just as capable of losing around 30.
- Maxie: very possible to build a synergistic team across both halves of the board; Camerupt is a liability in the end despite getting the job done for the role it's trying to be; extremely constrained building that comes with major matchup issues in later round; consistent and enjoyable pilot in earlier rounds; sane pick for reaching 40, Russian roulette-level one for 50.
- Brendan: absolutely deplorable in terms of offensive presence; know that you'll be fighting 1v2 in practice a lot of the time and that this will catch up with you at some point; somewhat okay in terms of keeping enemies occupied; barely acceptable in terms of enabling highly offensive partner setups; demands very specific playstyle that is both highly alien compared to conventional high-level play and outright not enjoyable; better at reaching 50 than it would appear but insanity pick to touch outright.
I think my personal power rankings does still shine through here a little bit lol, but at least it should be more helpful than a raw ranking. For the ride home, have a sixth partner, or at least a thought experiment.
since... yes, for all the obvious hype this Pokemon has gotten compared to a lot of other Megas, this has in fact ended up being a bring your own Mence format, and there also is an obvious character who would have brought theirs; the person with arguably the best theme in the franchise and possibly video game history outright is actually kind of a notable omission as well when we do get to pair up with most prominent characters in the game (wow, it's also now occurring to me that we're actually 5 out of 5 on male partner options... sexism much??? in my Pokemon games???). Leaving aside the question of what her other Pokemon would be (Aster might honestly be a more logical fit than Dragon spam, and there's no love lost about Brendan having to ditch Exploud anyways...), how Salamence would perform in the hands of the CPU is actually a bit more complicated than it would seem. Let's assume a set like this:
Zinnia's hypothetical Salamence (Salamence) @ Salamencite
Ability: Intimidate -> Aerilate
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Nature: Adamant (?)
- Double-Edge
- Dragon Claw
- Earthquake
- Crunch / Fire Fang / ????
Thankfully there should be no Metagross-like BST noob traps about Salamence that would change the EV investment away from max Attack / Speed, and for the nature I would of course welcome Jolly more but keeping in line with the "boost highest base stat lol" pattern from elsewhere I assume they'd roll with Adamant instead. Moveset-wise, I'm choosing to be an optimist and trust they won't let Salamence walk into the AI's Return bug and go with Double-Edge instead for its Aerilate move. Dragon STAB and Earthquake would have uhhh probably been surprising omissions I suppose, and while you really don't need any extra coverage at this point and Salamence does have enough sensible non-attacking moves for that final slot, that would have to be the likes of Protect which is still as risky as ever and Dragon Dance which thanks to Speed tiers entering the AI's thought process is a much bigger wildcard than Gallade's Swords Dance; thankfully though GF has historically had enough of a fetish for all-out attacking Salamence set that a fourth attacking move would probably be realistic. I honestly have no clue which one they would actually roll with, but let's be real it's probably not clicking it anyways in practice right...
So there we have a set that would draw players like moths to a flame even quicker than Steven's Metagross, but the Return bug is not the only unhelpful AI behaviour we have to contend with here, since them not knowing they'll be gaining Aerilate when they're starting the turn as base Salamence is yet another thing in practice. It's why GF assuredly including Dragon STAB is honestly not too bad despite it absolutely being redundant with Flying / Ground so that Zinnia at least has a good move to click turn 1; and let's once again be optimistic and assume Dragon Claw here, since Outrage in addition to being Doubles Outrage locking her out of going for Aerilate STAB at least turn 2 would be all the wrong kinds of funny. So there we have an awkward turn 1 to deal with thanks to the AI not understanding Mega Evolution mechanics, and while that is fixed come turn 2 the Return bug also pretty much forces Double-Edge on the set, which is overkill powerwise and mostly just adds a kamikaze mode. As a result, we're also all but forced to run Salamence in the lead position, for the extra board control turn 1 when it's not clicking a good move yet as well as having a Pokemon able to swap in once Salamence has burned through its own health--and when said switch-in might honestly end up being literally Exploud, then, well, that is one we have some slightly mixed experiences with.
My subtext here is probably at least a little bit misleading, because like even with all of these asterisks Zinnia would probably still be better than Steven lol, we're still being carried by a Salamence here that is hard to mess up as much as they messed up Metagross. I'm not sure she'd be better than Wally though, but that is also a testament of how great a job they did there. Mostly though it's just fun to think about how it would actually work, especially when Steven has been right there for 11 years to teach us the hard way that we should know better than broken Mega = guaranteed trophy; and of course me really being dead serious in terms of Zinnia being a glaring omission from the partner roster that we should have been able to partner up with, not just for girl power reasons but also because as a character she's just prominent enough to warrant it. Let's not forget that theme of hers either, especially with the added context of this crazy mission of mine having come to mean a lot to me; with her theme being an absolute masterpiece in particular in terms of capturing melancholy and finality, I could not have asked for a better backdrop to see me off.
On that note, I'm still writing because I don't want this post to end... since it also realistically represents the end of ORAS multi from me. I can surely still mess around in other generations, but they don't have the same clean "five partners" challenge built in, and the only thing I can still think of here is unironically going for Starf with Wally, which I am not fully ruling out but is uhhhh limited by practicality in addition to sanity thanks to the stupid random lead thing. It's not really the right way to play anyways, since yea triple digit multi streaks are certainly possible but with the extra variance outright going for them is almost setting oneself up for failure, and going for more modest goals except with more teams just kind of works better here; the lower stakes help a lot to offset the more than occasional frustration, and it's also just a radically different challenge than we're used to, being more focused on building to make the most out of an intentionally suboptimal unit than on truly approaching perfect consistency. And it's much much much more fun than it's given credit for if you play it for what it's trying to be. I hope I'll still get to play it, and get stories to share about it, in the future, but even if this is all I get to do out of it, surely this has to be the perfect note to end on after, shoutouts Steven, where I came from initially. Mission complete, for real this time and in more ways than one.
(receptionist photo)
First things first, let's take a look at what he's bringing.
 Claydol @ Light Clay Ability: Levitate EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpD IVs: 31/31/31/31/31/31 Nature: Calm - Reflect - Light Screen - Earth Power - Psychic |  Exploud @ Assault Vest Ability: Soundproof EVs: 252 SpA / 252 SpD IVs: 31/31/31/31/31/31 Nature: Modest - Hyper Voice - Fire Blast - Blizzard - Shadow Ball |
and, well, my heart sank when I first saw these sets eleven years ago, my heart reflexively sank just now despite literally having won with him already, and I'm sure your heart is doing its share of sinking too.
Even the quality of the Pokemon aside I just honestly truly don't understand it, when all of Maxie/Archie/Wally/Steven have decidedly offensive teams featuring their known ace as a Mega paired with another Pokemon they also are known for, and here we have Brendan shattering that pattern as hard as he can. Like, my starter on this file was Treecko, Brendan canonically has a Mega Blaziken in my game, I probably could get that to work idk, and even other Mega Hoenn starters should have enough potential for us to work with as well. Of course that is a joke and I get that giving him starters let alone variable starters would not have been practical for a handful of reasons, but even with the other Pokemon on his in-game roster being uhhh let's leave it at questionable... unless the anime has a thing here that idk of, where are these two coming from suddenly? Fair enough and no arguments here if Raichu + Swellow is considered beyond saving for working towards an in-game achievement, but if you are gonna deviate from "canon" then, rather than engineer something tailor-made for the format, why just functionally pull two new ones from a tombola anyway? What we end up with is a roster that just reminds us of a generic Route 121 Trainer, certainly nothing more than that and also not the Brendan or May we have come to know elsewhere, and it makes no sense.
Lore and consistency aside, though, the main reason for the aforementioned heart sinking is of course the quality of the Pokemon in question, as well as their usability in a multis context, or rather lack thereof. Rather than comparing to the other partners or complaining about the lack of Mega Evolutions, let's reiterate what makes a good multi partner:
- Predictability: if we need to work with them, then it's kind of convenient if we have a credible hunch on the move they are picking. Generally this means that attacking moves are good news, Choice items come with upside beyond their native effect on account of uhhh making the guesses on turns 2 and beyond very clear, and status or support moves are questionable at best even if they'd be good in the hands of a human pilot, think the AI's tendency to waste turns with Protect or Thunder Wave rather than just playing for a 2HKO or a focus fire KO;
- Damage output: of course them being able to kill things is good, but this also kind of doubles as a side function of predictability when of course access to guaranteed KOs helps a lot with clicking the right moves. It's also why e.g. Steven's Aerodactyl is the worst thing ever when it will e.g. click Thunder Fang into Bronzong over targeting Braviary because it's not tickling either one either way in the end. Inability to properly switch only makes "kill them before they kill you" even more important as well;
and then let's take another look at these sets and cry in solitude as this is one of those cases where the atrocity is so obvious and intense that we can make do with leaving it unspoken. We are still yapping though, and while certain other partners had some shaky elements on their sets, Brendan really does, without exaggeration, get absolutely everything wrong here. This is most clear on dual support move full defensive investment Claydol, but Exploud is not it either, which in addition to well. being Exploud is prone to being made a sitting duck even more often thanks to its lack of Speed investment and also, despite all-out attacking sets being acceptable for multis purposes, between its lack of a boosting item and its main STAB move's spread penalty and lack of super effective coverage throws in so many variables for it to mess up its move choice on that a lot of the time it feels like Brendan must have accidentally reverse calibrated his touchscreen in the same way as Steven's Aerodactyl. At least in theory, you really can't count on either of these to do anything at all reliably, and they don't even have the raw stats to make up for it either. Claydol's screens and Exploud's spread-moves-for-the-sake-of-spread-moves are also not in fact assets with the way they go against the core tenets of predictability and damage output, not to mention screens in particular being kind of a noob trap even when piloted by humans; I've honestly wondered if Brendan's sets are like. intentionally bad for the sake of teaching new players the hard way that these are not in fact good doubles strategies, and I'm still not sure I'm actually wrong on that one.
This is where it's time for a history lesson, since I very much ended up standing on the shoulders of giants here, or rather shoulders of a giant (singular), namely the only and only turskain i.e. among many other things the only one (until now I guess) on record with a trophy-winning run with Brendan in this community, pairing him up with Choice Scarf Sawk + Mega Salamence after initially failing with a Snarl Arcanine + Mega Slowbro setup that aimed to take advantage of Claydol's screens. Check out his report in the middle section of the post here, but the important part and the main thing I kept in mind for myself was that he just kind of gave up on cooperating with Brendan thus ended up taking an approach that was basically self-sufficient balls to the wall hyper offense and Brendan gets to come along for the ride if he is so inclined.
For my own starting point, we're using... not exactly that since that would imply I had made "Brendan" a genuine goal even before finding an idea of what to pair up with him, but the idea first popped into my head when another Choice Scarf-using Sturdy Pokemon ended up on my wishlist of things to use: Magnezone, with one of the coolest moves available in Doubles in Volt Switch. Said coolness is very much the kind of thing that's much easier to grasp in practice than in theory, but for an attempt at putting it into words, we can take a look at earlier teams using it like turskain's Triples LukeNinja / my Triples Mega Manectric for examples pairing it with Mat Block Greninja and my Tree KangaKoko for one pairing it with Fake Out. What makes those teams tick is Volt Switch's ability to make the opening into a two-turn setup by mitigating otherwise questionable matchups on the spot. Think of it like this: it gives you access to not just Rotom-W but to all of Rotom-W, Rotom-W + Garchomp, Rotom-W + Talonflame, Rotom-W + Scizor; not just Mega Manectric but all of Mega Manectric, Mega Manectric + Blaziken, Mega Manectric + Hydreigon, Mega Manectric + Azumarill; not just Tapu Koko but all of Tapu Koko, Tapu Koko + Latios, Tapu Koko + Celesteela, all the while attacking at the same time, so rather than losing momentum on a matchup not ideal for Electrics by having to hard switch out, you actually get to gain momentum here while potentially just positioning yourself for the win on the spot. Sturdy would give Magnezone in particular another leg up over these specifically in the Volt Switch department by letting it assuredly tank one hit and still pivot out even in situations where it can't avoid these, which is of course a very real scenario with frickin base 60 Speed.
Another way of looking at this if you think about it hard enough (but not too hard) is that Volt Switch doubles as some sort of Ultra Burst / Relic Song / whichever analogy you want to use by genuinely turning Magnezone into a different Pokemon without any major loss of momentum, thus also substantially expanding the toolkit of the "Pokemon" you're deploying when we almost get to use all of them in the same slot. This is also where we can refocus on Multis and also Brendan, since pairing a Volt Switch user with him just kind of makes a lot of sense with the crappy hand he deals us. Volt Switch in Multi is probably weaker than in other formats but also not really, since while of course we have to make do without Fake Out or Mat Block positioning support here and only have a single potential recipient, the additional strain put on switching also makes the ability to do so without momentum loss even more valuable. This is also where Brendan, and turskain's observation about him, comes in: when the entire crux of using him as a partner is that he almost forces us to fight our battles 1v2, would it not make sense to, rather than try to have our two Pokemon cover "everything" but still only be able to have one of them at the field at the same time, give ourselves the option to let them seamlessly "Ultra Burst" into each other depending on matchup?
So that is a lot of words convincing myself that Magnezone could at least be part of the solution here, but of course we'll also still need a Volt Switch recipient to go with it. With the whole 1v2 situation still hanging over our heads we are also restricted by the fact that it'll pretty much have to be an absolute juggernaut; while Magnezone of course will get the job done fine in terms of deploying its backup, it will for obvious reasons be significantly worse at handling the majority of a 1v2 on its own, so said backup will have a lot of ground to cover there. Maybe there is something shameless about plugging a pre-nerf Mega Salamence in this slot, but I mean let's be honest surely it's not unfair to feel like the end justifies the means when a trophy with Brendan is what we'd be going for here, and more importantly this was not an autopilot broken for the sake of broken choice and had enough genuine thought going into it. Specifically, you want a Volt Switch recipient to have clean defensive synergy with Magnezone, where the main box to tick right away is of course an Earthquake immunity to allow Magnezone to cleanly zipline out of that weakness. With resistances to all of Salamence's weaknesses, Magnezone also does a good job making sure Salamence never has to switch into any of those, but with Magnezone's STAB types, it doesn't stop there; Electric/Steel is honestly perfect from an offensive synergy pov, sniping all of enemy Ice-, Fairy-, and Rock-types and even covering the Water-types that commonly run Ice coverage to mess with Salamence after all. In turn, Salamence also does a good job switching in on the types of attacks Magnezone tends to bait, with the exception of Fire being a bit suspect for obvious common 10% odds reasons (though with the ultimately goal being at 50 wins here rather than infinity, this one too is a bit of a matter of perspective compared to the sort of challenges we usually engage in), which especially in tandem with Intimidate makes getting it on the field even more painless, and of course Fighting-types pretty much invariably being Aerilate fodder only amplifies our ability to keep up momentum here. While not remotely as important as their ability to support each other, Magnezone / Salamence's ability to protect Brendan's side is not the worst thing to point out either, with the pair of them handling Water and Grass for Claydol and Salamence additionally covering Fighting for Exploud. As much as the bar for their ability to contribute offensively is obviously on the floor, and even if supporting them is not exactly the right thing to focus on, there is still a lot to be said for what's basically keeping your meatshields alive; as long as they are on the field, the enemy is not fully focusing on Magnezone/Salamence, which even if we're embracing the whole 1v2 situation is still a thing that the longer we can avoid it the better.
I'll discuss set details for both in one go, since they genuinely couldn't be more straightforward.
Magnezone @ Choice Scarf Ability: Sturdy EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe IVs: 31/2/30/31/31/31 Nature: Timid - Thunderbolt - Flash Cannon - Hidden Power Ice - Volt Switch | Salamence @ Salamencite Ability: Intimidate -> Aerilate EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe IVs: 31/31/31/x/31/31 Nature: Jolly - Return - Earthquake - Dragon Dance - Protect |
We're running Scarf Magnezone as mentioned earlier to be able to snipe weaknesses and/or pivot out as quickly as possible; nature-wise, Timid is the only choice, since missing out on the Starmie tier would all but defeat the point of the whole Choice Scarf Electric situation we're going for here. Three out of Choice Magnezone's four moves are locked in from the get-go, with the only variation coming from the choice of Hidden Power; Fire is not exactly what it is in competitive without any use for trapping Scizors not to mention the IV drop would have closed the door on the Starmie Speed tier after all, so Ice it is instead for some reassurance against the standard gauntlet of Dragons, as well as who knows a certain Ground/Flying Genie if a certain battle were to play out that way. I also considered Ground as always with how nasty some of those targets can get, but this was the one point where I felt it might be reasonable to actually count on a little bit of help from Brendan after all, not to mention I was going to have an Earthquake Salamence in the back; however, on other teams it is an option I could understand. Grass might have been an option as well, but I felt like those targets would be easier to play around, and I guess so far at least I've had it right there.
Salamence runs a physical set for the maximum take on ultimate wrecking ball, with Aerilate Return being much better suited to this than Aerilate Hyper Voice, and Claydol also gets bonus point here with Levitate to make Earthquake pretty painless to use and its overall survivability to keep the non-immune Exploud out of the adjacent slot for as long as possible. The main half interesting choice to make about the set is Adamant versus Jolly, where the latter is kind of the only choice for a backup. Especially without any support for setting up a Dragon Dance cleanly, Adamant's Speed tiers are just not really good enough overall especially with the pre-Mega Speed also being a factor, and the power drop is much less of a factor when Salamence inherently comes in on chipped enemies much more often. Otherwise, Return was chosen over Double-Edge on a hunch that even with the Jolly nature it was surely strong enough that I did not have to dip into the pool of treating basically my one Pokemon versus the world as a kamikaze, and surely I could change it later should the hunch somehow be wrong. Also saving me the extra levels of grinding and stuff. The final two moveslots are also standard, with physical Mega Salamence's other attacking options being redundant at best and pointless at worst anyway, but with the lack of support from allies, Dragon Dance and Protect end up being kind of filler in practice as well. The latter in particular doesn't serve a real purpose other than safely reaching the Mega Speed, with its usual ability of buying space for a partner being wholly wasted on Brendan's Pokemon and its purpose as a positioning tool versus enemies that might otherwise beat Mega Salamence falling flat in practice as a result. Dragon Dance also went relatively unused due to a combination of lack of space (especially with Brendan's Pokemon not doing a good job baiting neutral attacks) and +0 Return honestly being strong enough most of the time anyway lol, but it still came in handy versus the likes of stallers and predictable Protect users, with the main one I remember being an otherwise sticky late-game situation versus Eelektross4. Preemptive positioning is also somewhat of a thing, with Salamence actually being a bit treatened by the base 120+ crowd; while screens certainly help with this, squeezing in a boost versus a not so offensively threatening lineup is always worth considering, and there was also that one instance where an Earthquake-locked Aerodactyl switched out when Salamence got on the field and I had to do at least something to anticipate a faster Choice Band Stone Edge getting back on the field later in the battle.
For formality's sake, I also should say a few words about how Brendan's Pokemon played beyond theory, but there is simply nothing relevant I can say about Exploud that I haven't yet ngl lol. It's really just kind of there, trying to contribute some chip damage with semi-random moves so it gets to say "look mum I'm helping", and realistically MenceZone has softened the opposition up enough by the time it gets to come in that it usually gets to live to see the end of the battle, but aside from very specific niche synergies just about any pointless bulky attacker could have been swapped into this slot and I wouldn't have noticed the difference. I do have to give it a shoutout for one battle in the 40s when I though I had thrown away the run by misplaying Salamence against Kingdra but it managed to solo Bastiodon4 by clicking Fire Blast consistently, getting a quick burn, and also having enough luck with Bastiodon picking non-Metal Burst moves when I needed it to. Otherwise though it was the most forgettable Pokemon I've ever used, which in this context yes very much offense. Claydol on the other hand does probably deserve credit for (expectedly) the vast majority of the time clicking its screens first. Which one it actually goes for is not something that can really be predicted as far as I've seen and not something where I have been able to detect actual intelligence, but I suppose that's where the whole "unreliable partner don't count on them for anything" comes back in anyways, and at the very least one way or another it certainly is a better contribution to the whole MenceZone vs the world situation than generic chip from Earth Power / Psychic would have been.
The way things ended up playing in practice was kind of weird. It worked as expected in theory but at the same time was also almost insultingly simple, where most battles did in fact turn into a properly positioned Salamence just wiping the floor with everything as if I was facing random Route 121 Trainers. Of course it's good at just killing things as is, but with Intimidate and Claydol's screens it really was almost an unkillable wrecking ball. Seriously just look at this, sneak preview to the misplay-littered loss:
I don't assume I need to provide reference calcs for pre-nerf Aerilate Return, but yea those things combined to make most battles so that I was just clicking unboosted neutral attacks and winning without even caring too much about taking damage between attacks, with as mentioned before actual setup definitely being a luxury. This also makes for a nice bridge to discussing the only reference point I have in terms of trophy-winning Brendan teams with turskain's attempts from ten years ago in a bit more depth, since yea I would not have been able to make the "just ignore Brendan's side" click myself. Salamence is another thing we ended up sharing; while his Sawk provided maximum wreckage and I ended up taking the positioning angle with Magnezone, and Magnezone was in fact the first Pokemon I chose, this of course is something where "creativity claim" and sportswomanship mandate a quick apology on my end. I do think I've at least argued why Salamence is genuinely the best fit behind Magnezone here, not to mention that the list of viable me against the world Pokemon is short enough to the point that it was kind of inevitable, but yea is what it is. We can actually also discuss turskain's failed earlier attempt here, which involved attempting a Mega Slowbro setup with support from Claydol's screens and Arcanine's Snarl but ultimately fell short due to things like Slowbro getting overwhelmed and Brendan unhelpfully taking out Slowbro's intended setup bait; the thing that is worth mentioning is that this Slowbro was actually more like Mega Salamence than it would seem, in that it too was an attempt at leaving Brendan's offensive support optional by setting up a me against the world Pokemon. The (honestly only relevant) difference? Salamence makes do without setup a lot of the time, while Slowbro does, well, not. I've mentioned a few times before that the number 1 to 500 core tenet of picking your Pokemon for AI multis should be "keep it simple", for the sake of accepting our inability to ever rely on the AI to do more than striking its killing blows, and it's easy to see that Salamence does a much better job checking that box than Slowbro does. Too bad that it has not left us with more distinct flavours of Brendan teams, but I guess that's the lunacy of going for Brendan trophy runs at all for ya.
Battle "video" time! First there is of course the Chatelaine battle, which went surprisingly clean--in part thanks to a little bit of luck but it should at least show that this team does not fully flounder in neutral matchups.
#50: vs. Morgan / Nita
Turn 1
vs.
Too bad Volt Switch is not a KO on Tornadus, but either way obvious target is obvious here.
- Magnezone uses Thunderbolt on Tornadus--KO;
- Terrakion uses Earthquake--Claydol immune, Magnezone 1 HP;
- Claydol uses Light Screen;
- Nita sends out Landorus.
Turn 2
vs.
We all know what this is gonna do, at least plausibly enough that preserving Magnezone is safe.
- Switch out Magnezone for Salamence;
- Landorus uses Earth Power on Salamence--immune;
- Terrakion uses Earthquake--nice move;
- Claydol uses Reflect.
Turn 3
vs.
Dead slot Landorus, fully according to plan, as long as Salamence actually well. stays alive lol but that's kind of the point of this team. Terrakion is enough of a threat to not quite focus on 1v2ing this just yet anyways, let's get the Speed tier jump first.
- Salamence Mega Evolves and uses Protect;
- Landorus uses Earth Power on Salamence--immune;
- Terrakion uses Rock Slide; Salamence Protect, Claydol like 5% chip;
- Claydol uses Earth Power on Terrakion--Sitrus Berry range, like 70% or so after recovery.
Turn 4
vs.
Claydol being genuinely helpful, with Terrakion now being in Return range. Time to click the obvious move and see what Morgan is giving us to deal with last.
- Morgan switches out Terrakion for Latias;
- Landorus uses Earth Power on Claydol--immune;
- Salamence uses Return on Latias--50%;
- Claydol uses Psychic on Latias--chip.
Turn 5
vs.
LOL that is one of the nicer Levitate switches I have seen in my time, since Morgan just fully threw this. Latias is the main one she could have brought that could still have made things awkward (outside of Cobalion making very smart Metal Burst choices but that's what Dragon Dance is for I guess), but at this point both Latias and Terrakion are in Return range and Landorus is still a sitting duck, so I literally can't lose anymore outside of hax on the level of back-to-back Lax Incense misses.
- Landorus uses Earth Power on Salamence--immune;
- Salamence uses Return on Latias--KO;
- Claydol uses Psychic on Landorus--chip;
- Morgan sends out Terrakion.
Turn 6
vs.
victory lap time lol
- Landorus uses Earth Power on Salamence--immune;
- Salamence uses Return on Terrakion--KO;
- Claydol uses Psychic on Landorus--chip.
Turn 7
vs.
- Landorus uses Earth Power on Salamence--immune;
- Salamence uses Return on Landorus--KO;
- I win.
#61: vs. Cyril / Stanislaw
No warstory for the loss because it's honestly kind of embarrassing. Clicking Earthquake into the Cobalion + Drifblim board despite Return being the harder hit on Cobalion did not actually matter in the sense that it was put into Earth Power range either way, but critical misplays involved taking enemy Salamence's Outrage to the face (for like 45% lol, see aforementioned calc but yea...) due to spacing out on the pre-Mega Speed tie and also forgetting to run my calcs to see that Return actually one-shots Drifblim while Thunderbolt does not. Getting either of those right would realistically have won, but this time I put myself into an auto-checkmate against Entei1 with its Flame Charge and Drifblim in Custap Destiny Bond range. So yea that could have been a pretty painless 2v1 with also a very favourable matchup into the Veteran's side and I can only apologise for throwing this one away and cheating the world out of seeing Brendan's true potential. I have no excuse other than the obvious one of focus really just dropping that hard once the only real goal has been met and the sane way of mitigation via pausing the streak for a couple days not being an option thanks to functionally-forcing-a-single-sitting ORAS multis; at least uhhhhh Brendan having a true potential at all to cheat the world out of seeing is quite a significant thing to prove in its own right I suppose?
I don't really have more battle videos than this; I avoided saving them liberally because limited slots, and I also went into this expecting that close calls and wacky escapes would be more the norm than I'm used to even for multis anyways. More than anything else, though, this... was done on first try, I mean I'll take it but no I can't really believe it either. This is also your explanation for this writeup probably being a bit shallow in places if that's what it felt like with only 61 battles worth of experience (no I was not gonna do new runs just for the sake of more thorough research), but of course it also makes for a bunch of complicated feelings for obvious "Brendan was supposed to be lunacy" reasons. Without making too much of the whole first try situation, which would lead to a landslide of fallacies if we end up factoring it into actual conclusions, at least the comparison with Maxie is one where I have a few things to say. For context, my record with him is exactly 50, which was gotten on the fifth try (third or second idr which if we only count the ones where I got the natures/EVs right; I lost to the Chatelaines once plus had another two runs into the 40s before I got the winning one) with Mega Lopunny + Gastrodon to complement Maxie's Crobat + Mega Camerupt. Of course Maxie is better (read: less bad but yea) than Brendan not just in theory, but... while the whole "first try" thing is quite obviously the dice happening to fall right quickly and Maxie just as easily could have been a second try trophy while Brendan could have been the one to take five attempts instead, 60 wins with Maxie is something I am not capable of believing I could make without genuinely absurd matchup luck. This is not just based in statistical extrapolation of the other scores I'd set with him; I'll keep it short, but the tl;dr is that earlier attempts without Gastrodon left Camerupt so easy to overrun that I lost in the single digits and felt forced to employ Storm Drain, where Gastrodon did a good job protecting Camerupt and keeping me out of 1v2 states but at the same time only exacerbated Crobat / Camerupt's awful matchups into a range of threatening enemies such as Veterans (with Morgan's Latias as possibly the worst offender lol) and others where Crobat's base stats in particular ended up falling short--and being left to rely on just a single slot to try and fix that that also has to synergise with Crobat properly is of course not sustainable. This was exactly the reason why I consistently made it into the 40s without major trouble but struggled comparatively with making the final step, and making that final step essentially twice in a row is quite a lot to ask. Of course it's also possible if not outright likely that 60 with Brendan was a lucky run, but especially with the context of the loss I don't think it was a full-on ceiling either; I am not going to be so arrogant as to believe I managed to catch lightning in a bottle on my very first try, and at the very least this Brendan configuration should have an easier time re-approaching these numbers than Maxie should have getting to them outright. Maybe that just means the Pokemon I paired with Brendan were better than the team I ran with Maxie? Well, yes, as a start lol, of course it does, but that's also exactly the point I'm trying to make: we're not just building these teams from scratch but trying to complement existing cores, and certain Pokemon have better natural synergy with the ones the AI provides us with than others do. And if Maxie closes the door on certain all-around strong Pokemon in this way that Brendan does not, and Brendan does not constrict building in the same ways as Maxie's Camerupt, then if nothing else that is a relevant factor for the question which one of them can make it to the trophy more easily. Multis being an exercise in teambuilding more than any other format only makes this more pertinent in terms of evaluating partner usability too.
Definitely don't take this as an attempt to defend Brendan as an underrated partner though, because yes of course he sucks and again this run was just outright awkward to play. I've found myself struggling to find the best way to put this into words, but I think the gist is: you know how storymode despite being 99% singles always has the odd double battle, either just with your team in doubles mode or paired up with a random NPC whose team makes uhhhh maybe not quite Brendan but let's say Archie look competent, and since your team is obviously built with just singles in mind you just kind of shuffle things around to make it work sort of, and you win not through competency as a doubles player or synergy of the team but entirely through having your Pokemon just outmatch the enemy's? That was pretty much how this run felt start to finish, and while yes I suppose that was kind of the idea in the first place, a me against the world approach just feels weird and unrewarding to play compared to a team where everyone cooperates on even footing. Like, I think I managed to make all other partners feel competent in their own way--of course intentionally nerfed compared to what I'd usually play, but with a clear intended synergy across both sides that also ended up playing out the way I wanted to. Brendan, not so much. Salamence also exacerbated this feeling for what it's worth, since quite blatantly playing it as just "click Return, probably win" was not a good way to make me feel like a competent player, but maybe I also don't really get it as a Pokemon (yet?). Odds also are though that it's not just unfamiliarity but Brendan genuinely putting him in the position where that was the best way of playing him. Who is to say.
I don't... really know how to continue this writeup... but I feel like I should still say more things, since it feels wrong to treat the genuine completion of the ORAS AI partner set, all five of them, without any "100% of 114%" loopholes or any other ifs or buts to explain away the omission of Brendan or anyone else, especially when I did not at all phone in my partner choices either, as just another team report. Let's go over all the other partners again real quick, for a proper recap of what can be/has been done in this mode over the years, I suppose?
Starting off with the, for worse not better, face of this mode, Steven, where our teams were the following:
writeup (score 73)
Metagross @ Metagrossite Ability: Clear Body Nature: Adamant IVs: 31/31/31/31/31/31 EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Def - Meteor Mash - Zen Headbutt - Hammer Arm - Bullet Punch | Aerodactyl @ Focus Sash Ability: Rock Head Nature: Jolly IVs: 31/31/31/31/31/31 EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe -Rock Slide -Fire Fang -Ice Fang -Thunder Fang |
 By-Tor (Greninja) @ Focus Sash Ability: Protean Nature: Timid IVs: 31/X/31/31/31/31 EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe - Mat Block - Ice Beam - Grass Knot - Dark Pulse |  Gardevoir @ Gardevoirite Ability: Trace -> Pixilate Nature: Timid IVs: 31/X/31/30/30/31 EVs: 4 HP / 4 Def / 248 SpA / 252 Spe - Hyper Voice - Psyshock - Hidden Power Ground - Protect |
At face value, this team follows a significant core tenet of good multi partners, namely "reliability" via avoidance of status moves to make sure it'll always attempt to land damage, and of course there is no denying that having a Mega Metagross's sheer stats on your side is always a tempting prospect. In practice, though, the simple fact is that Steven is a textbook noob trap; and since in this mode we are all noobs by default, everyone, and I do mean literally everyone, flocked towards him after ORAS's initial release. Without tearing him apart too much, the reliability of full attacking moves is more than offset by its horrendous accuracy across the board and its inability to use Bullet Punch properly, and Aerodactyl similarly is completely incapable of clicking the right moves because one way or another it's not really doing damage anyway. While it's hard to ruin Metagross's stats, the game also does a great attempt at that via the obvious fantasy EV spread that makes it clear they should have used a better metric there than just "invest in highest base stats". It's important to stress Steven's noob trap-ness, since a look at the leaderboard would suggest that he's the strongest partner of the lot by far; nothing of that though, and it's genuinely little more than just a matter of him having the power of probability on his side, where yea if you roll the dice thousands more times you are gonna roll more sixes than otherwise; but that doesn't really mean a whole lot if the world never gave the other partners a fair shot.
For my own take, "literally everyone" flocking towards him unfortunately includes me as well, so he was the partner I used to first get the trophy eleven years ago, and one single glimpse at the babyraging paragraphs from the five trophy post should make it clear that no I did not have a good time, pretty much entirely on him. Encouraged by rave reviews from early ORAS multi players (which were probably just fuelled by contrast with more unlucky XY partners), I thought I could get away with being creative before being rudely punished in practice; I don't actually remember what I tried, other than a Greninja + Gastrodon where the idea was to protect Aerodactyl from enemy Water-types but that failed miserably in practice due to Steven just not handling Grass-types with any sort of consistency. I then switched to a more standard lineup with the goal of operating more independently, where I'm sorry if my memory of my rationale is not exactly on point with an 11 year time gap + PTSD to block it out not being very helpful, but it went kind of like this: Greninja and Mega Metagross were a sensible lead pairing for Mat Block support to activate Mega Metagross's wasted-but-still-better-than-base-forme Speed stat and offensive synergy against the likes of Fighting-types and offensive Ghosts, while Gardevoir in turn made sense as a backliner for being very hard to KO to special attackers at least and access to a spread nuke for the ability to clean up multiple enemies at the same time after they'd been chipped by the leads. The resulting team was... good enough, making it to a streak of 73 in the end; the loss was about what you'd expect, with Metagross trading itself with enemy Destiny Bond Drifblim via incompetent Bullet Punch usage (when I was actually trying to trade Greninja) for absolutely no reason at all, letting in Scarf Braviary to sweep non-Sash Greninja and Gardevoir while Aerodactyl was entirely useless against the other side as is unfortunately often the case. This still leaves Steven as my second-best performing partner numerically, but I can't stress enough that this proves nothing whatsoever other than that something with Mega Metagross's stats is still pretty hard to sink within 50 battles even in the face of a triple sabotage attempt in Steven's teambuilder. turskain did in fact have a much better time with this exact same lineup, so odds are 73 is not where my peak with him would be either if I give RNG some more chances to do its thing, but of course RNG being a thing like that is exactly the issue. More importantly, nothing of that can undo the fact that playing with Steven is just a heinously aggravating and nerve-wracking experience beginning to end for no reason. We play this game to have fun, so if any other partner can make 50 reliably while giving the player a better time in the process, then Steven should never have had any business being considered "the only choice", unlike what unfortunately happened when the generation was active.
So, on that note, let's look at Wally...
writeup (score 145)
Gallade @ Galladite Ability: Steadfast Nature: Adamant IVs: 31/31/31/31/31/31 EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe - Close Combat - Psycho Cut - Leaf Blade - Swords Dance | Magnezone @ Air Balloon Ability: Magnet Pull Nature: Modest IVs: 31/31/31/31/31/31 EVs: 252 SpA / 252 SpD - Thunder - Flash Cannon - Thunder Wave - Reflect |
 Kangaskhan @ Kangaskhanite Ability: Scrappy Nature: Jolly IVs: 31/31/31/X/31/31 EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe - Fake Out - Double-Edge - Sucker Punch - Low Kick |  Gengar @ Focus Sash Ability: Levitate Nature: Timid IVs: 31/X/31/31/31/31 EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe - Shadow Ball - Sludge Bomb - Destiny Bond - Protect |
I tried out Wally on a whim once when I was bored and felt like using Doubles Kangaskhan, where the trick I had in mind was removing enemy Fighting-types via Fake Out + ally STAB Psychic move. When Steven's Metagross popped into my head as someone who technically met criteria here but at the same time I had had enough of to last several lifetimes, the pivot to Wally's Mega Gallade happened pretty much automatically, and while of course "literally everyone" had collectively written him off before, especially with this being multis the worst that could happen was that I'd burn a couple hours I'd otherwise waste on something else unproductive anyways to see firsthand that he did indeed suck. He very much did not suck though--Gallade is still by far the best multis partner I've paired with, where the instantaneous red flag in Swords Dance ended up being fine in practice thanks to base 165 Attack STAB Close Combat in particular being strong enough that Gallade almost always went for unboosted attacks just fine. At that point, what we have is a genuinely very solid fast and strong attacker, with the right secondary STAB move to handle the main threats to Kangaskhan and a coverage move that, while not technically optimal in a vacuum, handles a common range of tricky enemies in the landslide of Water / Ground tyoes that might otherwise Curse boost over a dual physical lead pair as well. The Adamant nature is the main hiccup, but giving Kangaskhan turn initiative is not a bad tradeoff, allowing it to save Gallade from itself when it surely would want to click Close Combat into a lot of Sturdy users otherwise that now Kangaskhan can simply snipe first, as well as just generally redirect its attacks a lot more easily as I think is wise. The status moves on Magnezone are, uh, considerably less unproblematic than those on Gallade, but at least if it's used as a backup it'll have more enemies in Flash Cannon range--and hopefully Flash Cannon range it is, since Thunder is not exactly a choice that helps with its reliability either. While Magnezone is certainly a stereotypical "what were they thinking" multis Pokemon, the fact that it at least has usable STAB moves that enemies can be chipped into makes it better than the likes of Aerodactyl, but more than anything else Gallade is just good at carrying it. Gengar was an autopilot addition for extra help against Ghost-types, but it kind of ended up working out in practice, with Levitate having helpful synergy with Magnezone as well and Destiny Bond pairing well with Magnezone's much greater defensive presence in case I need to simplify late-game situations.
Maybe Wally's consistency still needs a bit of work, but the main praise I can sing about him is that for the most part battles including him just aren't stressful, with Gallade's power and reliability meaning that it actually just beats the enemies it's supposed to beat lol, and the Pokemon I've been able to pair him with do a good job complementing this reliability, to the point that I will very much die on the hill that this is the optimal setup to win the trophy in this mode--which is of course the only thing that really matters here in the end. The actual scores I've gotten with him are almost secondary at this point, but they're very much good enough to match the quality of the team.
Archie was next, mostly for the challenge of completing the bingo sheet where he was the one square left at the time on account of the very few odd souls not fully subscribing to the Steven bandwagon all having played on Omega Ruby during the current generation.
writeup (score 65)
Crobat @ Life Orb Ability: Inner Focus Nature: Jolly IVs: 31/31/31/31/31/31 EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe - Brave Bird - Cross Poison - Super Fang - Roost | Sharpedo @ Sharpedonite Ability: Rough Skin Nature: Jolly IVs: 31/31/31/31/31/31 EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe - Waterfall - Crunch - Poison Fang - Aqua Jet |
 Catweazle (Weavile) @ Focus Sash Ability: Pressure Nature: Jolly IVs: 31/31/31/x/31/31 EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe - Fake Out - Knock Off - Ice Punch - Protect | Kangaskhan @ Kangaskhanite Ability: Scrappy Nature: Jolly IVs: 31/31/31/X/31/31 EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe - Fake Out - Double-Edge - Sucker Punch - Low Kick |
Somehow more painless than it would seem on account of at least both Crobat and Sharpedo being functional attackers in their own right; the main downside is the obvious weakness stack between Crobat and Sharpedo, where the likes of Jolteon and Manectric just sweeping Archie's side on cue is just as fun as it sounds, and Sharpedo's somewhat questionable Speed makes for a bleh cocktail with its frailty too when Crobat is not good at breaking through attackers on lead that it can't easily clear with Brave Bird. My hunch at the time was, rather than try to go out of my way to mitigate this, just accept it as a reality to deal with and at least try to salvage offensive momentum by overloading on Fake Out users (suppose that logic is not too unlike pairing Brendan with a standalone offensive board??), with Weavile being a great dedicated user with decent synergy with Crobat and Kangaskhan being the best option for the me against the world late-game scenarios that surely would end up being a thing too with a partner like this. It worked out surprisingly decently, with the team clicking instantly and the final score of 65 happening after an acceptable number of brute force attempts. I don't think there is a secret sauce to Archie that is gonna push him too much closer to triple digits, when one way or another relying on double Fake Out to support a partner that gets swept on sight by fast Electrics is still asking for your luck to run out sooner rather than later, but at the very least it seems like it's good enough at postponing the fatal matchup roll long enough for a trophy with Archie to be more than reasonable. Fun stuff.
Where there's... water, there is fire, but despite his team following the same template as Archie's, Maxie was one I initially had in "never happening" category.
writeup (score 50)
Crobat @ Life Orb Ability: Inner Focus Nature: Jolly IVs: 31/31/31/31/31/31 EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe - Brave Bird - Cross Poison - Super Fang - Roost | Camerupt @ Cameruptite Ability: Magma Armor EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA IVs: 31/31/31/31/31/31 Modest Nature - Fire Blast - Earth Power - Flash Cannon - Yawn |
 Lopunny @ Lopunnite Ability: Limber -> Scrappy EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe IVs: 31/31/31/x/31/31 Jolly Nature - Fake Out - Return - Low Kick - Protect |  Gastrodon @ Sitrus Berry Ability: Storm Drain EVs: 164 HP / 108 Def / 220 SpA / 16 SpD IVs: 31/x/31/31/31/31 Modest Nature - Scald - Earth Power - Clear Smog - Protect |
Crobat still does Crobat things, but between heinous Speed plus major vulnerability to common threatening attacking types and reliance on inaccurate moves (or outright sabotage in the case of Yawn), Camerupt is a textbook case of how not to build an AI multis Pokemon, and Maxie was also the only non-Steven partner where I did not get my own team right on the first try. See the linked post for a more in-depth breakdown, but the first attempt involved using After You Mega Lopunny to counteract Camerupt's Speed, which unfortunately did not work out in practice at all since I was giving up Lopunny's turn in order to salvage Camerupt's plus it did nothing to actually defeat the Camerupt checks that were on the field to outspeed it, not to mention Camerupt ordinarily getting on the field before Lopunny being another reason for it falling flat in practice. Lopunny got to stay on account of good synergy with Crobat, but the partnership with Camerupt got constricted into Gastrodon as the only real proactive way I saw of fixing the Water issue, where the Ground vulnerability was at least mitigated a little bit by only being a 2x weakness plus its most common move by far having a spread penalty to deal with. This was fine for making it into the 40s very consistently, and barely fine for beating the Chatelaines with a final score of literally 50; again read the initial post for more commentary on this, but like I mentioned earlier, in the end Maxie's main issue turned out to be not inability to fit in an overall synergistic team, but rather just a sketchy matchup against Veterans and other enemies where Crobat loses the BST race for good, combined with Gastrodon actually exacerbating this vulnerability and trying to get the final Pokemon to patch up all of that on its own not being a reasonable ask. The fact that one of those all but unbeatable enemies in Latias1 is actually on the Chatelaine's roster is certainly a thing lol and kind of forces people to just hope they won't bring it (or be me and get an instantaneous Scald burn plus connect every single Fire Blast of course) and also is the reason why I think even 60 is a stretch with him; at least he was surprisingly more apt for having a good time in the first 40 battles than one would think.
That also makes for a nice bridge back into the thing no one was looking for but I probably can't get out of, namely the actual power rankings between partner options. Brendan getting a better score than Maxie here, and more importantly a better score than I realistically foresee being in the cards for Maxie at all, is certainly a thing, but rather than Claydol / Exploud being a better team than Crobat / Mega Camerupt I think this more just means that Brendan leaves more room to run Pokemon on the team that can handle the enemies that x / Gastrodon + Crobat / Mega Camerupt can't keep up with. So there is... that, but at the same time Brendan is noobish agony to play while Maxie feels synergistic, and with building constraints, potential Pokemon power level, and just enjoyment of play to be able to commit to the trophy grind properly without wanting to smash your 3DS that's just so many variables here where I feel like this is the best case in point that an outright ranking just gets too subjective. So, rather than that, let's just leave a few words on all of them with those criteria in mind.
- Wally: Gallade is the best Pokemon across all these rosters; easy to support in multiple good and enjoyable ways and weaknesses that are very doable to cover; potential to unravel if Magnezone needs to take centre stage unexpectedly; peace of mind in neutral matchups, which is most of them; very pleasant pick for going for 50.
- Steven: A+ power level even with nerfed Pokemon; slightly constrained building in terms of finding good options to support Metagross; potential to beat almost enemy lineup with neutral luck; substantial consistency issues in-game that are never not there and can also throw away almost any matchup; plausible but consistently stressful pick for going for 50.
- Archie: two perfectly serviceable Pokemon with good offensive synergy; acceptable synergy with strong Pokemon for your own partners; comfortable pilot in neutral matchups; deplorable defensive synergy that makes for consistency issues in terms of matchup and capable of losing on preview in several cases; plausible pick for reaching 50 but just as capable of losing around 30.
- Maxie: very possible to build a synergistic team across both halves of the board; Camerupt is a liability in the end despite getting the job done for the role it's trying to be; extremely constrained building that comes with major matchup issues in later round; consistent and enjoyable pilot in earlier rounds; sane pick for reaching 40, Russian roulette-level one for 50.
- Brendan: absolutely deplorable in terms of offensive presence; know that you'll be fighting 1v2 in practice a lot of the time and that this will catch up with you at some point; somewhat okay in terms of keeping enemies occupied; barely acceptable in terms of enabling highly offensive partner setups; demands very specific playstyle that is both highly alien compared to conventional high-level play and outright not enjoyable; better at reaching 50 than it would appear but insanity pick to touch outright.
I think my personal power rankings does still shine through here a little bit lol, but at least it should be more helpful than a raw ranking. For the ride home, have a sixth partner, or at least a thought experiment.
since... yes, for all the obvious hype this Pokemon has gotten compared to a lot of other Megas, this has in fact ended up being a bring your own Mence format, and there also is an obvious character who would have brought theirs; the person with arguably the best theme in the franchise and possibly video game history outright is actually kind of a notable omission as well when we do get to pair up with most prominent characters in the game (wow, it's also now occurring to me that we're actually 5 out of 5 on male partner options... sexism much??? in my Pokemon games???). Leaving aside the question of what her other Pokemon would be (Aster might honestly be a more logical fit than Dragon spam, and there's no love lost about Brendan having to ditch Exploud anyways...), how Salamence would perform in the hands of the CPU is actually a bit more complicated than it would seem. Let's assume a set like this:
Zinnia's hypothetical Salamence (Salamence) @ Salamencite
Ability: Intimidate -> Aerilate
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Nature: Adamant (?)
- Double-Edge
- Dragon Claw
- Earthquake
- Crunch / Fire Fang / ????
Thankfully there should be no Metagross-like BST noob traps about Salamence that would change the EV investment away from max Attack / Speed, and for the nature I would of course welcome Jolly more but keeping in line with the "boost highest base stat lol" pattern from elsewhere I assume they'd roll with Adamant instead. Moveset-wise, I'm choosing to be an optimist and trust they won't let Salamence walk into the AI's Return bug and go with Double-Edge instead for its Aerilate move. Dragon STAB and Earthquake would have uhhh probably been surprising omissions I suppose, and while you really don't need any extra coverage at this point and Salamence does have enough sensible non-attacking moves for that final slot, that would have to be the likes of Protect which is still as risky as ever and Dragon Dance which thanks to Speed tiers entering the AI's thought process is a much bigger wildcard than Gallade's Swords Dance; thankfully though GF has historically had enough of a fetish for all-out attacking Salamence set that a fourth attacking move would probably be realistic. I honestly have no clue which one they would actually roll with, but let's be real it's probably not clicking it anyways in practice right...
So there we have a set that would draw players like moths to a flame even quicker than Steven's Metagross, but the Return bug is not the only unhelpful AI behaviour we have to contend with here, since them not knowing they'll be gaining Aerilate when they're starting the turn as base Salamence is yet another thing in practice. It's why GF assuredly including Dragon STAB is honestly not too bad despite it absolutely being redundant with Flying / Ground so that Zinnia at least has a good move to click turn 1; and let's once again be optimistic and assume Dragon Claw here, since Outrage in addition to being Doubles Outrage locking her out of going for Aerilate STAB at least turn 2 would be all the wrong kinds of funny. So there we have an awkward turn 1 to deal with thanks to the AI not understanding Mega Evolution mechanics, and while that is fixed come turn 2 the Return bug also pretty much forces Double-Edge on the set, which is overkill powerwise and mostly just adds a kamikaze mode. As a result, we're also all but forced to run Salamence in the lead position, for the extra board control turn 1 when it's not clicking a good move yet as well as having a Pokemon able to swap in once Salamence has burned through its own health--and when said switch-in might honestly end up being literally Exploud, then, well, that is one we have some slightly mixed experiences with.
My subtext here is probably at least a little bit misleading, because like even with all of these asterisks Zinnia would probably still be better than Steven lol, we're still being carried by a Salamence here that is hard to mess up as much as they messed up Metagross. I'm not sure she'd be better than Wally though, but that is also a testament of how great a job they did there. Mostly though it's just fun to think about how it would actually work, especially when Steven has been right there for 11 years to teach us the hard way that we should know better than broken Mega = guaranteed trophy; and of course me really being dead serious in terms of Zinnia being a glaring omission from the partner roster that we should have been able to partner up with, not just for girl power reasons but also because as a character she's just prominent enough to warrant it. Let's not forget that theme of hers either, especially with the added context of this crazy mission of mine having come to mean a lot to me; with her theme being an absolute masterpiece in particular in terms of capturing melancholy and finality, I could not have asked for a better backdrop to see me off.
On that note, I'm still writing because I don't want this post to end... since it also realistically represents the end of ORAS multi from me. I can surely still mess around in other generations, but they don't have the same clean "five partners" challenge built in, and the only thing I can still think of here is unironically going for Starf with Wally, which I am not fully ruling out but is uhhhh limited by practicality in addition to sanity thanks to the stupid random lead thing. It's not really the right way to play anyways, since yea triple digit multi streaks are certainly possible but with the extra variance outright going for them is almost setting oneself up for failure, and going for more modest goals except with more teams just kind of works better here; the lower stakes help a lot to offset the more than occasional frustration, and it's also just a radically different challenge than we're used to, being more focused on building to make the most out of an intentionally suboptimal unit than on truly approaching perfect consistency. And it's much much much more fun than it's given credit for if you play it for what it's trying to be. I hope I'll still get to play it, and get stories to share about it, in the future, but even if this is all I get to do out of it, surely this has to be the perfect note to end on after, shoutouts Steven, where I came from initially. Mission complete, for real this time and in more ways than one.
One of my first posts on here was about my absurd alomomola-cm pass sylveon-mega aggron maison team. Mola was great wish, that's not the weird. The weird was the main thing was cm pass to an otherwise normal Fire Blast aggron. 140 is a much higher atk than 50 SpA, but iirc I did great. Would love to find that post with the evs. Anyways, was fun for a grind-y reward thing. Anyone think anything of this? Like in terms of unusual mixed sets in general? It really helped to get SpD and shore up the SpA, obviously, and strong ish fire special can save you when burned.or tangrowth, skarms, other misc steels, or like something shows up. Fire dang isn't always stronger with no and pass. It was fun, main thing. Woulda tried eventually in ranked oras
Okay, operative word "at least" one final post I guess, since here is the followup and the Cloyster / Gliscor / Chansey streak is still ongoing at 2400 straight wins.
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Imprisoned (Cloyster) @ Focus Sash Ability: Skill Link Nature: Naughty EVs: 252 Atk / 12 SpA / 244 Spe - Icicle Spear - Surf - Shell Smash - Rock Blast | Deadwing (Gliscor) @ Toxic Orb Ability: Poison Heal Nature: Impish EVs: 212 HP / 4 Atk / 36 Def / 164 SpD / 92 Spe - Earthquake - Toxic - Protect - Substitute | Full Circle (Chansey) @ Eviolite Ability: Natural Cure Nature: Bold EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 Spe - Seismic Toss - Toxic - Soft-Boiled - Growl |
For more detailed descriptions check out the report from last year's 787 run and the initial post about this run; I (thankfully, at this point) don't have any hugely new insights about how the team plays compared to the most recent post in particular, so I'll just get right into the videos.
#2400: vs. Backpacker Perdido
As uneventful as any generic milestone proof video; this time Altaria4 is the poor sap that guarantees a +6 Cloyster sweep simply by being in the lead spot, with Gliscor + Chansey easily stalling out Moonblast and Hypnosis for Cloyster to set up on Dream Eater and Cotton Guard.
#2373: vs. Pokemon Breeder Teppei
The closest call and the most loseable matchup at least in the last several hundreds of battles. For set 4 Trainers, the go-to Empoleon strategy is go to Empoleon to Growl stall its attacking moves, then in the final handful of Whirlpool PP (once Blizzard is gone too of course...) go to Gliscor and use Substitute to break the trapping effect so that I can immediately go to Cloyster for setup once attacking PP are gone; this is important since, with even +6 Spear realistically being a 3HKO here with a Substitute that usually takes three hits to break in the way, Empoleon can actually cheat me out of full setup here if I still need to wait out a handful of Whirlpool turns with Chansey first. Now of course since this a starter Breeder, we can have any Empoleon set here:
219 | Empoleon1 | Lax | Sitrus Berry | Yawn | Swords Dance | Aqua Jet | Metal Claw | HP/Def
394 | Empoleon2 | Lonely | Muscle Band | Drill Peck | Aqua Jet | Metal Claw | FeatherDance | HP/Atk/SpD
569 | Empoleon3 | Quiet | Lum Berry | Surf | Ice Beam | Signal Beam | Icy Wind | HP/SpA
744 | Empoleon4 | Calm | Petaya Berry | Surf | Substitute | Blizzard | Whirlpool | HP/SpA
where for set 3 the Chansey switch works just fine too of course, same for set 2 where Gliscor should be able to win as well. Set 1 is obviously a much more major problem though, with Swords Dance and basically infinite attacking PP ruling out any Gliscor stalling; Swords Dance + Yawn (+ Sitrus Berry) also pretty much shutting down Chansey from muscling through it; and Cloyster itself being an obviously lol tier answer in the first place. However, set 4 requiring all three team members to handle and creative ways to account for set 1 without shooting myself in the foot for other sets pretty much not existing, combined with basic expected value logic, means that turn 1 still remains a Chansey switch and just winging it if it does turn out to be the feared set. With it showing up here, I decided to brute force through it and hope that, between Aqua Jet's lack of power and the AI's general lack of prioritisation on Swords Dance, I'd have enough time to take it down before it would boost over me. Things did not go fantastically on that front; after Chansey got hit by Yawn on the switch I went for a Seismic Toss to take both the Sitrus Berry and plausible Torrent range (which barring miracle rolls Empoleon would be in after two immediate Earthquakes) out of the equation, but just for once the AI was actually smart and, rather than click Yawn again on my Seismic Toss, went for Swords Dance, and another one right after on the Gliscor switch. At this point I kinda didn't see any other option than just try to take it out with two Earthquakes, which is kinda sorta Focus Blast level odds but went my way here. Sceptile comes in:
214 | Sceptile1 | Timid | Focus Sash | Quick Attack | Endeavor | Detect | Leaf Storm | Spd/SpA
389 | Sceptile2 | Hasty | Scope Lens | Leaf Blade | Night Slash | Earthquake | Swords Dance | Atk/Spd
564 | Sceptile3 | Timid | White Herb | Leaf Storm | Dragon Pulse | Energy Ball | Detect | Spd/SpA
739 | Sceptile4 | Calm | Leftovers | Leech Seed | Endeavor | Energy Ball | Toxic | Def/SpD
which can hopefully be Chansey food but first it's time to click Protect to get Gliscor's remaining health into a less sorry state--only to be met with apparently the other starter Breeder Swords Dance set not being shy to set up. Yes I suppose it's a risk I'm taking right here, but once again expected value is a thing and there are so many third Pokemon possible here where Gliscor may need every HP possible--or, heck, forget third Pokemon, if this is Sceptile4 then realistically I'll be swapping Gliscor back into an Energy Ball to reset Leech Seed/Toxic on Chansey later this battle, which it was in guaranteed KO range for at this point. Once again expected value and all that, once again getting the one set out of four where it falls flat. Now the good news is that Cloyster is still in the back as a hard check to Sceptile2; the bad news is that there's no way to actually get it in properly without a sack and by extension a major hole in my defensive core. Normally the Pokemon preservation prioritisation ladder is Gliscor > Chansey > Cloyster, where now it's obviously going between Gliscor and Chansey and Gliscor's weakened state might even out whatever edge it normally has over Chansey, especially with Chansey's matchup into certain parts of the starter roster. AI switch prioritisation means that the third Pokemon being a Water-type is all but ruled out at this point though, with just about all of them having a move with a higher effective Base Power than Leaf Blade's 90; with those being by far the main reason for keeping around Chansey over Gliscor, the choice for which one to sack makes itself, and after I let Chansey flounder for a few turns for the sake of it, Sceptile goes down to a boosted 1HP Cloyster. The last Pokemon is... Infernape, which okay a Fire-type is in line with the matchup foresight and good to see into boosted Cloyster, but Infernape is quite a bit more complicated than say Blaziken or Delphox here.
218 | Infernape1 | Jolly | Kings Rock | Fake Out | Encore | Fling | Acrobatics | Atk/Spd
393 | Infernape2 | Mild | Charcoal | Heat Wave | Will-O-Wisp | Grass Knot | Calm Mind | HP/Spd/SpA
568 | Infernape3 | Hasty | Life Orb | Fake Out | Close Combat | Overheat | Stone Edge | Atk/Spd
743 | Infernape4 | Jolly | Focus Sash | Fake Out | Encore | Flare Blitz | Close Combat | Atk/Spd
Infernape clicking Fake Out into 1 HP Cloyster is not exactly guaranteed (more often than not Infernape4 clicks presumably CC instead and just goes down to +2 Rock Blast if it shows up second into Cloyster in this position), but either way yea that's three of them having that move right there, two of which also can easily pick off a 77 HP Gliscor and that's bye bye streak. Unless... both Overheat and Flare Blitz have higher effective Base Powers than Leaf Blade into Gliscor, meaning those two would have come out before Sceptile after Empoleon went down--ergo we are assuredly dealing with set 1 or 2 here and I am kind of cursing myself for not paying attention to whether Sceptile was in the AI's second or third slot (latter of which also would have ruled out set 2 I'm 99% sure), but also not really since it doesn't affect anything in practice; this is where I click Surf, unless this is Infernape1 clicking Fake Out I win, if Fake Out does happen then uhhh at least set 1 has some pretty pathetic calcs into Impish-leaning Gliscor and I mostly just need to not choke into Encore. Turns out I was also misremembering Heat Wave's Base Power at the time and set 2 would also have been sent out before Sceptile, so, you guess it, Fake Out does happen, but after I (eat Fling and) hit Infernape with Toxic and intentionally get Encored into Protect, all is well that ends well. For what it's worth, yes, with Earthquake's OHKO odds Toxic is realistically a mistake here (matter of accuracy versus 110 BP Acrobatics crit in the event of missing the roll); truth is the stress of the battle and the fixation on having to play around Encore made me hallucinate Infernape4's inability to be OHKOed here and I absolutely wanted to have it in the bag with just one connecting hit, but I guess it worked out either way in the end.
219 | Empoleon1 | Lax | Sitrus Berry | Yawn | Swords Dance | Aqua Jet | Metal Claw | HP/Def
394 | Empoleon2 | Lonely | Muscle Band | Drill Peck | Aqua Jet | Metal Claw | FeatherDance | HP/Atk/SpD
569 | Empoleon3 | Quiet | Lum Berry | Surf | Ice Beam | Signal Beam | Icy Wind | HP/SpA
744 | Empoleon4 | Calm | Petaya Berry | Surf | Substitute | Blizzard | Whirlpool | HP/SpA
where for set 3 the Chansey switch works just fine too of course, same for set 2 where Gliscor should be able to win as well. Set 1 is obviously a much more major problem though, with Swords Dance and basically infinite attacking PP ruling out any Gliscor stalling; Swords Dance + Yawn (+ Sitrus Berry) also pretty much shutting down Chansey from muscling through it; and Cloyster itself being an obviously lol tier answer in the first place. However, set 4 requiring all three team members to handle and creative ways to account for set 1 without shooting myself in the foot for other sets pretty much not existing, combined with basic expected value logic, means that turn 1 still remains a Chansey switch and just winging it if it does turn out to be the feared set. With it showing up here, I decided to brute force through it and hope that, between Aqua Jet's lack of power and the AI's general lack of prioritisation on Swords Dance, I'd have enough time to take it down before it would boost over me. Things did not go fantastically on that front; after Chansey got hit by Yawn on the switch I went for a Seismic Toss to take both the Sitrus Berry and plausible Torrent range (which barring miracle rolls Empoleon would be in after two immediate Earthquakes) out of the equation, but just for once the AI was actually smart and, rather than click Yawn again on my Seismic Toss, went for Swords Dance, and another one right after on the Gliscor switch. At this point I kinda didn't see any other option than just try to take it out with two Earthquakes, which is kinda sorta Focus Blast level odds but went my way here. Sceptile comes in:
214 | Sceptile1 | Timid | Focus Sash | Quick Attack | Endeavor | Detect | Leaf Storm | Spd/SpA
389 | Sceptile2 | Hasty | Scope Lens | Leaf Blade | Night Slash | Earthquake | Swords Dance | Atk/Spd
564 | Sceptile3 | Timid | White Herb | Leaf Storm | Dragon Pulse | Energy Ball | Detect | Spd/SpA
739 | Sceptile4 | Calm | Leftovers | Leech Seed | Endeavor | Energy Ball | Toxic | Def/SpD
which can hopefully be Chansey food but first it's time to click Protect to get Gliscor's remaining health into a less sorry state--only to be met with apparently the other starter Breeder Swords Dance set not being shy to set up. Yes I suppose it's a risk I'm taking right here, but once again expected value is a thing and there are so many third Pokemon possible here where Gliscor may need every HP possible--or, heck, forget third Pokemon, if this is Sceptile4 then realistically I'll be swapping Gliscor back into an Energy Ball to reset Leech Seed/Toxic on Chansey later this battle, which it was in guaranteed KO range for at this point. Once again expected value and all that, once again getting the one set out of four where it falls flat. Now the good news is that Cloyster is still in the back as a hard check to Sceptile2; the bad news is that there's no way to actually get it in properly without a sack and by extension a major hole in my defensive core. Normally the Pokemon preservation prioritisation ladder is Gliscor > Chansey > Cloyster, where now it's obviously going between Gliscor and Chansey and Gliscor's weakened state might even out whatever edge it normally has over Chansey, especially with Chansey's matchup into certain parts of the starter roster. AI switch prioritisation means that the third Pokemon being a Water-type is all but ruled out at this point though, with just about all of them having a move with a higher effective Base Power than Leaf Blade's 90; with those being by far the main reason for keeping around Chansey over Gliscor, the choice for which one to sack makes itself, and after I let Chansey flounder for a few turns for the sake of it, Sceptile goes down to a boosted 1HP Cloyster. The last Pokemon is... Infernape, which okay a Fire-type is in line with the matchup foresight and good to see into boosted Cloyster, but Infernape is quite a bit more complicated than say Blaziken or Delphox here.
218 | Infernape1 | Jolly | Kings Rock | Fake Out | Encore | Fling | Acrobatics | Atk/Spd
393 | Infernape2 | Mild | Charcoal | Heat Wave | Will-O-Wisp | Grass Knot | Calm Mind | HP/Spd/SpA
568 | Infernape3 | Hasty | Life Orb | Fake Out | Close Combat | Overheat | Stone Edge | Atk/Spd
743 | Infernape4 | Jolly | Focus Sash | Fake Out | Encore | Flare Blitz | Close Combat | Atk/Spd
Infernape clicking Fake Out into 1 HP Cloyster is not exactly guaranteed (more often than not Infernape4 clicks presumably CC instead and just goes down to +2 Rock Blast if it shows up second into Cloyster in this position), but either way yea that's three of them having that move right there, two of which also can easily pick off a 77 HP Gliscor and that's bye bye streak. Unless... both Overheat and Flare Blitz have higher effective Base Powers than Leaf Blade into Gliscor, meaning those two would have come out before Sceptile after Empoleon went down--ergo we are assuredly dealing with set 1 or 2 here and I am kind of cursing myself for not paying attention to whether Sceptile was in the AI's second or third slot (latter of which also would have ruled out set 2 I'm 99% sure), but also not really since it doesn't affect anything in practice; this is where I click Surf, unless this is Infernape1 clicking Fake Out I win, if Fake Out does happen then uhhh at least set 1 has some pretty pathetic calcs into Impish-leaning Gliscor and I mostly just need to not choke into Encore. Turns out I was also misremembering Heat Wave's Base Power at the time and set 2 would also have been sent out before Sceptile, so, you guess it, Fake Out does happen, but after I (eat Fling and) hit Infernape with Toxic and intentionally get Encored into Protect, all is well that ends well. For what it's worth, yes, with Earthquake's OHKO odds Toxic is realistically a mistake here (matter of accuracy versus 110 BP Acrobatics crit in the event of missing the roll); truth is the stress of the battle and the fixation on having to play around Encore made me hallucinate Infernape4's inability to be OHKOed here and I absolutely wanted to have it in the bag with just one connecting hit, but I guess it worked out either way in the end.
#1939: vs. Pokemon Breeder Teppei
Chansey is the only plausible defensive switch-in to lead Samurott, and Samurott3 is for all intents as benign as it gets, not even mandating quick Toxic stalling to avoid taking chances with Ice Beam freezes like set 4; I end up Growl stalling Waterfall entirely so that I can safely proc Gliscor's Toxic Orb without surprise crits and also mitigate odds of Chansey ending up in a compromised position via a late flinch during a Toxic stall. Going against conventional takedown priorities I do choose to win with Chansey here rather than with a Subbed Gliscor, because "Feraligatr" and because Chansey has a comparatively decent matchup into the starter Breeder roster; after all, even against the Fire / Fightings there is no functional difference between them coming in on Chansey and them coming in on lead Cloyster. Chesnaught is not exactly a Fire / Fighting but does mandate an obvious Gliscor switch all the same... only to reveal the one set that, rather than being hard countered, carries one of the few moves that give this entire backline headaches.
9 | Chesnaught1 | Adamant | Leftovers | Taunt | Spiky Shield | Feint | Wood Hammer | Atk/Def
I will say right away that I kind of floundered here (for more reasons than the obvious choke of "okay I'll Sub here then I can Toxic after"), but other than Taunt + Wood Hammer being obviously kind of lol into Gliscor + Chansey, it's also worth pointing out that Leftovers (+ Spiky Shield) messes up the reflexive anti-Taunt strategy of slowly breaking through it with chip damage and Wood Hammer recoil. After a handful turns of the aforementioned floundering, I position myself so that I can take it out with a +0 Icicle Spear after a few rounds of Toxic damage; this does involve hard switching Cloyster into Wood Hammer and putting myself into a more than slightly compromised position, but sadly it's the lesser of several evils at this point and the final Pokemon will just have to be merciful. The last Pokemon is in fact... Feraligatr, validation for anticipating that one I suppose?
213 | Feraligatr1 | Careful | Lax Incense | Screech | Aqua Jet | Earthquake | Block | HP/SpD
388 | Feraligatr2 | Adamant | Liechi Berry | Superpower | Aqua Tail | Ice Fang | Dragon Dance | HP/Atk/Spd
563 | Feraligatr3 | Adamant | Lum Berry | Aqua Jet | Waterfall | Earthquake | Ice Punch | HP/Atk
738 | Feraligatr4 | Adamant | Liechi Berry | Dragon Dance | Waterfall | Crunch | Substitute | Atk/Spd
Feraligatr1 is a lol set that is not worth worrying about unless it somehow traps Chansey early in the game, set 3 is one that even Gliscor can beat okay should it come down to it, and set 2 is already ruled out from Superpower having a higher effective Base Power into Chansey than Chesnaught's Wood Hammer. Set 4 is still the same minefield as ever though, and with me just having given up Cloyster's Sash I can't even do the usual "good enough" lead strategy of +2 Spear 2HKO. Fact of the matter remains though that set 4 is the only one to seriously anticipate at this point, and clicking Shell Smash to be instantly picked off is not in fact a misplay even with the pretty much guaranteed KO on Cloyster coming up; as long as Chansey gets in safely on a +0 Feraligatr one way or another it Growls it to death anyway barring serious hax, and should a rogue Dragon Dance somehow happen then the Smash at least gives me the out of trying to take it out with +2 Rock Blast into Seismic Toss rather than assuredly losing me the game should it happen on a Chansey switch (and I guess a Crunch Defense drop would also be a thing). While the set is in fact Feraligatr4 it indeed just clicks Crunch like it was always gonna do in a non-major-freak-accident scenario, and Chansey has no trouble handling it. I will leave it to your imagination how I feel about the optimal play with this team in this position being an almost objective misclick, but yea one way or another all's well that ends well, somehow even after a majorly disruptive second Pokemon into one of the biggest late-game threats to this team outright.
9 | Chesnaught1 | Adamant | Leftovers | Taunt | Spiky Shield | Feint | Wood Hammer | Atk/Def
I will say right away that I kind of floundered here (for more reasons than the obvious choke of "okay I'll Sub here then I can Toxic after"), but other than Taunt + Wood Hammer being obviously kind of lol into Gliscor + Chansey, it's also worth pointing out that Leftovers (+ Spiky Shield) messes up the reflexive anti-Taunt strategy of slowly breaking through it with chip damage and Wood Hammer recoil. After a handful turns of the aforementioned floundering, I position myself so that I can take it out with a +0 Icicle Spear after a few rounds of Toxic damage; this does involve hard switching Cloyster into Wood Hammer and putting myself into a more than slightly compromised position, but sadly it's the lesser of several evils at this point and the final Pokemon will just have to be merciful. The last Pokemon is in fact... Feraligatr, validation for anticipating that one I suppose?
213 | Feraligatr1 | Careful | Lax Incense | Screech | Aqua Jet | Earthquake | Block | HP/SpD
388 | Feraligatr2 | Adamant | Liechi Berry | Superpower | Aqua Tail | Ice Fang | Dragon Dance | HP/Atk/Spd
563 | Feraligatr3 | Adamant | Lum Berry | Aqua Jet | Waterfall | Earthquake | Ice Punch | HP/Atk
738 | Feraligatr4 | Adamant | Liechi Berry | Dragon Dance | Waterfall | Crunch | Substitute | Atk/Spd
Feraligatr1 is a lol set that is not worth worrying about unless it somehow traps Chansey early in the game, set 3 is one that even Gliscor can beat okay should it come down to it, and set 2 is already ruled out from Superpower having a higher effective Base Power into Chansey than Chesnaught's Wood Hammer. Set 4 is still the same minefield as ever though, and with me just having given up Cloyster's Sash I can't even do the usual "good enough" lead strategy of +2 Spear 2HKO. Fact of the matter remains though that set 4 is the only one to seriously anticipate at this point, and clicking Shell Smash to be instantly picked off is not in fact a misplay even with the pretty much guaranteed KO on Cloyster coming up; as long as Chansey gets in safely on a +0 Feraligatr one way or another it Growls it to death anyway barring serious hax, and should a rogue Dragon Dance somehow happen then the Smash at least gives me the out of trying to take it out with +2 Rock Blast into Seismic Toss rather than assuredly losing me the game should it happen on a Chansey switch (and I guess a Crunch Defense drop would also be a thing). While the set is in fact Feraligatr4 it indeed just clicks Crunch like it was always gonna do in a non-major-freak-accident scenario, and Chansey has no trouble handling it. I will leave it to your imagination how I feel about the optimal play with this team in this position being an almost objective misclick, but yea one way or another all's well that ends well, somehow even after a majorly disruptive second Pokemon into one of the biggest late-game threats to this team outright.
Funny coincidence that both of the scary matchups are against the exact same Trainer isn't it, well yes kind of but also not really. Of course sketchy battles versus set 4 Trainers also exist. I'm thinking of one that I didn't save where lead Bisharp left me with Taunted Gliscor into followup Sceptile, and being unable to Toxic it right away meant I had to dance around Leech Seed / Toxic with Chansey and foolishly switched Gliscor into 1HP Endeavor on the turn Sceptile went down--of course there are still heaps of sets where fresh Cloyster and mostly fresh Chansey win on their own, but Absol4 is not necessarily one of those so it took some switching and turn grabbing to get Gliscor back into a winning position. Regardless, starter Breeders are absolutely the kind of opponent that is more capable of beating me than others. I've mentioned before that this team is close enough to hard stall that it hard wins most of its battles on preview but, at least theoretically, also risks hard losing on matchup should an enemy appear that it does not have covered properly--where of course practice has proven that odds of this are low enough into the narrow roster that at this point I can list in my dreams that is the set 4s for this streak to keep going for this long, but at the same time ultra rare sets or instances of set ambiguity offer up a lot more sets where matchup can very much not be on my side, and once these sets actually hit the field it does not in fact matter anymore that they're as rare as they are. Abd starter Breeders in particular do have a handful of potential wildcards up their sleeves for. The obvious culprits here are users of disruptive or stallbreaking moves, most notably Taunt, Encore, and Swords Dance, which tend to force uncharacteristically proactive strategies into the relevant set 4 mons as is and by extension can get very awkward very quick if they have any different additional toolkits for me to respond to or I'm forced to make midground plays.
The good news is that for the most part these Pokemon are still not 1v3ing me and the rest of the matchup still needs to complete a counterteam; we can even look at the terrifying Empoleon battle as an example, where even if Gliscor had in fact missed the roll on Empoleon, what would have happened was Cloyster picking it off with Surf, taking out Sceptile with +2 Spear just the same, and even if Infernape1 defeated Cloyster that set in question is not breaking a full health Chansey either. So, while of course I am not just gonna gleefully sack Gliscor into Empoleon1 should it show up again at some point, it is not exactly another Medicham3 lurking in the shadows either and very much needs additional support from a full-on nightmare matchup; still, we can take another look at some rare Pokemon where I might end up on the back foot unexpectedly.
218 | Infernape1 | Jolly | Kings Rock | Fake Out | Encore | Fling | Acrobatics | Atk/Spd
393 | Infernape2 | Mild | Charcoal | Heat Wave | Will-O-Wisp | Grass Knot | Calm Mind | HP/Spd/SpA
568 | Infernape3 | Hasty | Life Orb | Fake Out | Close Combat | Overheat | Stone Edge | Atk/Spd
743 | Infernape4 | Jolly | Focus Sash | Fake Out | Encore | Flare Blitz | Close Combat | Atk/Spd
Already indirectly mentioned above, but this one is obnoxious; it's already a vaguely tricky enemy if it's just set 4, since Encore takes Sub/Protect out of the picture as a strategy, while Fake Out and Cloyster having a chance at tanking Close Combat (which otherwise would have taken Fake Out out of the picture for turn 1) means Shell Smash won't work here either, meaning the line of play is a hard switch to Gliscor on turn 1 followed by an immediate Earthquake to take it out as it breaks its own Sash via Flare Blitz. Now this certainly works, but it also chips Gliscor quite heavily, which can make for awkward positions especially given the fact that Infernape is on Black Belt / Battle Girl rosters; good thing uhhhh that if they also have a non-Fighting-type in the back that one will realistically come out second? In any case, the risk of eating an Overheat from set 3 let alone Wisp from set 2 makes a turn 1 Gliscor switch kind of a non-starter here, meaning that... yes the play becomes a turn 1 Shell Smash (checkmate for sets 2 and 3 at least), and if it's set 4 or to a lesser extent set 1 then seems like Cloyster is not getting to keep a Sash during this battle. All sets are very much beatable, but the forced midgrounds here could certainly come back to bite me
222 | Samurott1 | Mild | Splash Plate | Retaliate | Razor Shell | Assurance | Encore | HP/Atk
397 | Samurott2 | Quiet | Zoom Lens | Blizzard | Giga Impact | Detect | Hydro Pump | Atk/SpA
572 | Samurott3 | Adamant | Custap Berry | Aerial Ace | Waterfall | X-Scissor | Aqua Jet | Atk/Def/SpD
747 | Samurott4 | Modest | Salac Berry | Hydro Pump | Ice Beam | Grass Knot | Protect | Def/SpA/SpD
Sets 2 to 4 are obvious Chansey food, with 2 and 3 also giving me the option to win with Gliscor if I so choose (technically 4 too but Ice Beam stalling too cavalier etc). It's set 1 that is the problem, obviously walling Cloyster while also messing up Chansey and Gliscor with Encore. I've faced it once in the Maison as far as I remember, in last year's streak, where I recall not loving how I played around it. The optimal way is probably something along the lines of go to Chansey right away, Toxic, go back to Cloyster on what's hopefully the baited Encore, go back to Chansey and intentionally get Encored into Soft-Boiled while it dies; however, Samurott can be annoying with unexpected move choices and Razor Shell drops, and of course even best case you're still left with one turn of Encore lock when the second Pokemon comes out. There may be ways of baiting Encore twice or something like that, but that would require more testing off an actual battle video and probably would still not be reliable anyway.
212 | Typhlosion1 | Rash | Passho Berry | Flame Burst | Flamethrower | SolarBeam | Sunny Day | Spd/SpA
387 | Typhlosion2 | Naive | Wide Lens | Inferno | Focus Blast | Extrasensory | Will-O-Wisp | Spd/SpA
562 | Typhlosion3 | Modest | Choice Scarf | Eruption | Focus Blast | Heat Wave | Extrasensory | Spd/SpA
737 | Typhlosion4 | Modest | Power Herb | Extrasensory | Lava Plume | Bulldoze | SolarBeam | Spd/SpA
This one is very much not in the same category as everything else but gets a mention because it's just dumb lol. Typhlosion4 is handled fine by Chansey (how I wish the turn 1 Solar Beam was guaranteed enough to just Shell Smash on it though), and for the most part all of these sets are, but it's an inconvenience if it shows up second into a +2 non-Sash Cloyster; since... yes set 1's Passho Berry does actually force us into Rock Blast here, and sun specialist Chef Frank is another one who can bring this one in addition to starter Breeders. Just taking the gamble with Surf here is at least in average board states not a thing either; it's simple math, with 25% odds of losing Cloyster (or even 50% in Frank's case) as opposed to Rock Blast's 10%. Of course all sets are still Chansey or Gliscor food all the same, so this is at most a sweep interruptor, just for dumb reasons.
393 | Infernape2 | Mild | Charcoal | Heat Wave | Will-O-Wisp | Grass Knot | Calm Mind | HP/Spd/SpA
568 | Infernape3 | Hasty | Life Orb | Fake Out | Close Combat | Overheat | Stone Edge | Atk/Spd
743 | Infernape4 | Jolly | Focus Sash | Fake Out | Encore | Flare Blitz | Close Combat | Atk/Spd
Already indirectly mentioned above, but this one is obnoxious; it's already a vaguely tricky enemy if it's just set 4, since Encore takes Sub/Protect out of the picture as a strategy, while Fake Out and Cloyster having a chance at tanking Close Combat (which otherwise would have taken Fake Out out of the picture for turn 1) means Shell Smash won't work here either, meaning the line of play is a hard switch to Gliscor on turn 1 followed by an immediate Earthquake to take it out as it breaks its own Sash via Flare Blitz. Now this certainly works, but it also chips Gliscor quite heavily, which can make for awkward positions especially given the fact that Infernape is on Black Belt / Battle Girl rosters; good thing uhhhh that if they also have a non-Fighting-type in the back that one will realistically come out second? In any case, the risk of eating an Overheat from set 3 let alone Wisp from set 2 makes a turn 1 Gliscor switch kind of a non-starter here, meaning that... yes the play becomes a turn 1 Shell Smash (checkmate for sets 2 and 3 at least), and if it's set 4 or to a lesser extent set 1 then seems like Cloyster is not getting to keep a Sash during this battle. All sets are very much beatable, but the forced midgrounds here could certainly come back to bite me
222 | Samurott1 | Mild | Splash Plate | Retaliate | Razor Shell | Assurance | Encore | HP/Atk
397 | Samurott2 | Quiet | Zoom Lens | Blizzard | Giga Impact | Detect | Hydro Pump | Atk/SpA
572 | Samurott3 | Adamant | Custap Berry | Aerial Ace | Waterfall | X-Scissor | Aqua Jet | Atk/Def/SpD
747 | Samurott4 | Modest | Salac Berry | Hydro Pump | Ice Beam | Grass Knot | Protect | Def/SpA/SpD
Sets 2 to 4 are obvious Chansey food, with 2 and 3 also giving me the option to win with Gliscor if I so choose (technically 4 too but Ice Beam stalling too cavalier etc). It's set 1 that is the problem, obviously walling Cloyster while also messing up Chansey and Gliscor with Encore. I've faced it once in the Maison as far as I remember, in last year's streak, where I recall not loving how I played around it. The optimal way is probably something along the lines of go to Chansey right away, Toxic, go back to Cloyster on what's hopefully the baited Encore, go back to Chansey and intentionally get Encored into Soft-Boiled while it dies; however, Samurott can be annoying with unexpected move choices and Razor Shell drops, and of course even best case you're still left with one turn of Encore lock when the second Pokemon comes out. There may be ways of baiting Encore twice or something like that, but that would require more testing off an actual battle video and probably would still not be reliable anyway.
212 | Typhlosion1 | Rash | Passho Berry | Flame Burst | Flamethrower | SolarBeam | Sunny Day | Spd/SpA
387 | Typhlosion2 | Naive | Wide Lens | Inferno | Focus Blast | Extrasensory | Will-O-Wisp | Spd/SpA
562 | Typhlosion3 | Modest | Choice Scarf | Eruption | Focus Blast | Heat Wave | Extrasensory | Spd/SpA
737 | Typhlosion4 | Modest | Power Herb | Extrasensory | Lava Plume | Bulldoze | SolarBeam | Spd/SpA
This one is very much not in the same category as everything else but gets a mention because it's just dumb lol. Typhlosion4 is handled fine by Chansey (how I wish the turn 1 Solar Beam was guaranteed enough to just Shell Smash on it though), and for the most part all of these sets are, but it's an inconvenience if it shows up second into a +2 non-Sash Cloyster; since... yes set 1's Passho Berry does actually force us into Rock Blast here, and sun specialist Chef Frank is another one who can bring this one in addition to starter Breeders. Just taking the gamble with Surf here is at least in average board states not a thing either; it's simple math, with 25% odds of losing Cloyster (or even 50% in Frank's case) as opposed to Rock Blast's 10%. Of course all sets are still Chansey or Gliscor food all the same, so this is at most a sweep interruptor, just for dumb reasons.
344 | Leafeon1 | Impish | Scope Lens | X-Scissor | Leaf Blade | Swords Dance | GrassWhistle | HP/Spd
519 | Leafeon2 | Naive | Liechi Berry | Leaf Blade | Giga Impact | Substitute | Yawn | Atk/Spd
694 | Leafeon3 | Adamant | Heat Rock | Sunny Day | Leaf Blade | X-Scissor | Synthesis | Atk/Def
869 | Leafeon4 | Adamant | Quick Claw | Leaf Blade | X-Scissor | Aerial Ace | Detect | Atk/Def
Moving to non-starter sets but keeping with the earlier Swords Dance theme, it would be so nice if Cloyster could just outspeed and KO this with unboosted Spear. Sets 2 and 3 are the nicest ones to face here, becoming easy Cloyster setup bait after they're stalled out; set 4 is of course the common one, which is like slightly obnoxious but can be Growl stalled okay for Gliscor to win (or Gliscor stalled directly, but Quick Claw makes that awkward of course). Set 1 is the potential nightmare; with Swords Dance, Gliscor and Chansey can't handle it at all, so it forces a turn 1 Shell Smash, which from a further positioning lens alone also makes set 4 more annoying by leaving Cloyster wide open to simply being taken out by a Quick Claw proc on turn 2 with nothing to really do about it. Grasswhistle is of course the actual headache though, since if it connects turn 1 and you get a three turn sleep then it's probably just kind of a loss on the spot. Thankfully "if it connects" is very much the operative word there, not to mention it will just as happily click Leaf Blade or Swords Dance anyways, so even a bad run-in here is far more likely to end in a scare than an actual loss; still, Leafeon1 is one of those where the Maison may just end up telling me "you lose" and I just lose.
639 | Carracosta3 | Adamant | Damp Rock | Rain Dance | Waterfall | Rock Slide | Earthquake | Atk/Spd
No case of set ambiguity here thankfully, since it only exists on Beauty Lana with no other sets proccing the "rain set" flag (thank you crappy algorithms for only checking non-hidden abilities for Swift Swim...), but still a very nasty one that I remember making for a close call once. It's kind of a catch-22 where the reflexive strategy of Chansey stalling it is already too reckless because of the potentially life-changing nature of Waterfall flinches and the rain boost here elevates it to an outright throw without substantial luck in my favour, and the safe play of going to Gliscor first to stall Waterfall doesn't even work here because of the risk of Rain Dance on the switch + Swift Swim. The good news is if it uses Rain Dance on one of its first two turns out then Cloyster can actually turn it against it for an outright KO with boosted Surf (of course unless it's Sturdy but if it's Sturdy then it's not Swift Swim) and even if it does go for the 2HKO with Rock Slide it's still in Gliscor (or Chansey) range, where Chansey hard counters enough of Lana's roster for it to be safe enough.
332 | Gardevoir1 | Timid | Wide Lens | Hypnosis | Dream Eater | Imprison | Dazzling Gleam | HP/Spd
507 | Gardevoir2 | Timid | BrightPowder | Stored Power | Thunderbolt | Calm Mind | Double Team | Spd/SpA
682 | Gardevoir3 | Timid | Lum Berry | Psychic | Shadow Ball | Energy Ball | Dazzling Gleam | Spd/SpA
857 | Gardevoir4 | Modest | Babiri Berry | Psychic | Moonblast | Focus Blast | Thunderbolt | Spd/SpA
Set 4 on regular Trainers is pretty easy Chansey food even with Focus Blast thanks to Soft-Boiled and Gliscor to reset any potential Sp.Def drops, same of course for set 3, and (at least in theory) won't be hard to stall down to Imprison for Cloyster to set up on. It's set 2 that is, well, a thing; there's no reason to deviate from the Chansey switch here, but this also is one where a (more likely than usual, for obvious reasons) early Toxic miss can snowball a little harder than otherwise, and even if Toxic only connects when Stored Power has started outdamaging Thunderbolt then Chansey also kind of has to weather the storm--of course we don't have the option of playing it safe with Seismic Toss here, so if this set also rolls Synchronise then even if Chansey does get through the evasion boosts we may still be left in a hopeless position for any followup enemies. Of course it's an insanely rare set that will still most of the time lose anyways, but yea it's there and if it decides to have a moment then there's really just kind of nothing you can do about it.
364 | Gyarados1 | Lonely | Muscle Band | Ice Fang | Aqua Tail | Thunder Wave | Dragon Dance | HP/Atk/Spd
539 | Gyarados2 | Naughty | Chesto Berry | Waterfall | Rest | Bulldoze | Giga Impact | Atk/Spd
714 | Gyarados3 | Jolly | Wacan Berry | Dragon Dance | Waterfall | Stone Edge | Earthquake | Atk/Spd
889 | Gyarados4 | Careful | Chesto Berry | Dragon Dance | Aqua Tail | Earthquake | Rest | HP/SpD
Not a threat on lead for a change; click Shell Smash right away, where the Speed tiers will confirm if the Dragon Dance set you're dealing with is 1/3 versus 4 (with the one-point Speed cut additionally ruling out Thunder Wave from set 1), and since sets 1 and 3 go down to +1 Spear while set 4 needs at least +2 it works out nicely. Gyarados showing up into Gliscor is a different case though; for guaranteed set 4 it's once again whatever since a healthy Cloyster is still a hard counter and even Chansey can pull through okay, but in the case of "any" set Gyarados the aforementioned Speed tier thing doesn't even work anymore since there is no real way to tell set 4 from set 1; this basically forces me to go for Toxic asap, which (if it hits) is fine for set 1 but does not in fact beat set 4 directly and it does not get identified until it's already boosted past the point where Cloyster is still a response. That is not necessarily a problem, but you better make sure Gliscor has enough PP to stall Aqua Tail, and if Gyarados comes in in a position where that's not the case then get ready to think outside of the box I guess...
489 | Shuckle2 | Bold | Quick Claw | Power Trick | Encore | Rock Slide | Bug Bite | HP/Def
teehee
519 | Leafeon2 | Naive | Liechi Berry | Leaf Blade | Giga Impact | Substitute | Yawn | Atk/Spd
694 | Leafeon3 | Adamant | Heat Rock | Sunny Day | Leaf Blade | X-Scissor | Synthesis | Atk/Def
869 | Leafeon4 | Adamant | Quick Claw | Leaf Blade | X-Scissor | Aerial Ace | Detect | Atk/Def
Moving to non-starter sets but keeping with the earlier Swords Dance theme, it would be so nice if Cloyster could just outspeed and KO this with unboosted Spear. Sets 2 and 3 are the nicest ones to face here, becoming easy Cloyster setup bait after they're stalled out; set 4 is of course the common one, which is like slightly obnoxious but can be Growl stalled okay for Gliscor to win (or Gliscor stalled directly, but Quick Claw makes that awkward of course). Set 1 is the potential nightmare; with Swords Dance, Gliscor and Chansey can't handle it at all, so it forces a turn 1 Shell Smash, which from a further positioning lens alone also makes set 4 more annoying by leaving Cloyster wide open to simply being taken out by a Quick Claw proc on turn 2 with nothing to really do about it. Grasswhistle is of course the actual headache though, since if it connects turn 1 and you get a three turn sleep then it's probably just kind of a loss on the spot. Thankfully "if it connects" is very much the operative word there, not to mention it will just as happily click Leaf Blade or Swords Dance anyways, so even a bad run-in here is far more likely to end in a scare than an actual loss; still, Leafeon1 is one of those where the Maison may just end up telling me "you lose" and I just lose.
639 | Carracosta3 | Adamant | Damp Rock | Rain Dance | Waterfall | Rock Slide | Earthquake | Atk/Spd
No case of set ambiguity here thankfully, since it only exists on Beauty Lana with no other sets proccing the "rain set" flag (thank you crappy algorithms for only checking non-hidden abilities for Swift Swim...), but still a very nasty one that I remember making for a close call once. It's kind of a catch-22 where the reflexive strategy of Chansey stalling it is already too reckless because of the potentially life-changing nature of Waterfall flinches and the rain boost here elevates it to an outright throw without substantial luck in my favour, and the safe play of going to Gliscor first to stall Waterfall doesn't even work here because of the risk of Rain Dance on the switch + Swift Swim. The good news is if it uses Rain Dance on one of its first two turns out then Cloyster can actually turn it against it for an outright KO with boosted Surf (of course unless it's Sturdy but if it's Sturdy then it's not Swift Swim) and even if it does go for the 2HKO with Rock Slide it's still in Gliscor (or Chansey) range, where Chansey hard counters enough of Lana's roster for it to be safe enough.
332 | Gardevoir1 | Timid | Wide Lens | Hypnosis | Dream Eater | Imprison | Dazzling Gleam | HP/Spd
507 | Gardevoir2 | Timid | BrightPowder | Stored Power | Thunderbolt | Calm Mind | Double Team | Spd/SpA
682 | Gardevoir3 | Timid | Lum Berry | Psychic | Shadow Ball | Energy Ball | Dazzling Gleam | Spd/SpA
857 | Gardevoir4 | Modest | Babiri Berry | Psychic | Moonblast | Focus Blast | Thunderbolt | Spd/SpA
Set 4 on regular Trainers is pretty easy Chansey food even with Focus Blast thanks to Soft-Boiled and Gliscor to reset any potential Sp.Def drops, same of course for set 3, and (at least in theory) won't be hard to stall down to Imprison for Cloyster to set up on. It's set 2 that is, well, a thing; there's no reason to deviate from the Chansey switch here, but this also is one where a (more likely than usual, for obvious reasons) early Toxic miss can snowball a little harder than otherwise, and even if Toxic only connects when Stored Power has started outdamaging Thunderbolt then Chansey also kind of has to weather the storm--of course we don't have the option of playing it safe with Seismic Toss here, so if this set also rolls Synchronise then even if Chansey does get through the evasion boosts we may still be left in a hopeless position for any followup enemies. Of course it's an insanely rare set that will still most of the time lose anyways, but yea it's there and if it decides to have a moment then there's really just kind of nothing you can do about it.
364 | Gyarados1 | Lonely | Muscle Band | Ice Fang | Aqua Tail | Thunder Wave | Dragon Dance | HP/Atk/Spd
539 | Gyarados2 | Naughty | Chesto Berry | Waterfall | Rest | Bulldoze | Giga Impact | Atk/Spd
714 | Gyarados3 | Jolly | Wacan Berry | Dragon Dance | Waterfall | Stone Edge | Earthquake | Atk/Spd
889 | Gyarados4 | Careful | Chesto Berry | Dragon Dance | Aqua Tail | Earthquake | Rest | HP/SpD
Not a threat on lead for a change; click Shell Smash right away, where the Speed tiers will confirm if the Dragon Dance set you're dealing with is 1/3 versus 4 (with the one-point Speed cut additionally ruling out Thunder Wave from set 1), and since sets 1 and 3 go down to +1 Spear while set 4 needs at least +2 it works out nicely. Gyarados showing up into Gliscor is a different case though; for guaranteed set 4 it's once again whatever since a healthy Cloyster is still a hard counter and even Chansey can pull through okay, but in the case of "any" set Gyarados the aforementioned Speed tier thing doesn't even work anymore since there is no real way to tell set 4 from set 1; this basically forces me to go for Toxic asap, which (if it hits) is fine for set 1 but does not in fact beat set 4 directly and it does not get identified until it's already boosted past the point where Cloyster is still a response. That is not necessarily a problem, but you better make sure Gliscor has enough PP to stall Aqua Tail, and if Gyarados comes in in a position where that's not the case then get ready to think outside of the box I guess...
489 | Shuckle2 | Bold | Quick Claw | Power Trick | Encore | Rock Slide | Bug Bite | HP/Def
teehee
That list is not comprehensive, but I am sure it's common sense that Zoroark sets with similar stallbreaking moves scattered around them are also unfun here, and at the same time there are of course also similar sets that are in fact covered just fine, with e.g. Bunny's Swords Dance Tentacruel2 straight up falling to +2 Icicle Spear and Cobb's Encore + Curse Walrein2 just kinda sorta not really punishing Chansey that much by locking it into Growl + a voluntary forfeit of the Speed advantage also taking some sting out of Encore anyways. I mostly just wanted a bit more words to this post than just "score has been doubled was questionably fun ggs", and of course a closer look into how this team might actually lose was kind of due at this point. This loss will happen at some point, and we'll see when exactly; I obviously was already burned out on this team for a good bit after hitting 1200, but from a leaderboard lens I could still find motivation to continue on on and off over the next few months. Of course there was once again the whole Chansey debate that motivated me a lot to offer up another example of Growl Chansey actually being a really good and cool set that I've definitively delivered on at this point (as well as doubling down on the whole four-digit Cloyster thing), but something else that became a thing over time was putting up a great score with a (non-Durant) team without a Mega Evolution, which is another mission accomplished now. It's a bit less out there than it appears anyways; I've posted before about the whole four quasi-mandatory defensive pieces, where just about every strong non-Durant team has at least one, usually two out of Aegislash / Gliscor / Chansey / Suicune; the third team member then is the main sweeper, which here happens to not hold a Mega Stone but no surprise that Cloyster is also very capable of winning games.
In terms of numeric goals things are different now though, and it is in fact apt that Christmas ten years ago (...) was when my Marathon streak was trucking on in full force; continued Bermuda Triangle play is more motivated by a "wanting to get the team's full potential on record" than the team being the most enjoyable use of my time that I can think of, and if we're looking at the leaderboard, moving up further would mean we're indeed genuinely starting to think about reaching PB range--which uhhh does give me highly mixed feelings lol. First things first, this team is just not better than Marathon is/was, which is a point that has been proven in earth-shatteringly 9k+ fashion anyways, which would mean that adding another 1200 to this might just serve as a permanent reminder of how I choked that streak away rather than letting it play out to a real end lol. Thankfully taking that too seriously would just be textbook hybris for the time being anyways; I will still play this on and off because the box of getting its true potential on record has not been ticked yet, but it might just end up making my pace over the last several months look fast (no grinding 1k battles over my winter break this time I promise...). We'll see if/where it ends, and obviously there's nothing left that can make me dissatisfied with this score; even a choke would just leave things on a level playing field with Marathon, lol. Too bad that would be a bleh end to Maison Singles altogether for me, with the aforementioned promise that this'll realistically be my last serious run here; plenty of other modes where I can find interesting things to do and challenge myself more.
Just like last year late December, that concludes cloyglischan posting for this year; (slightly belated) mari Christmas to those who celebrate and happy holidays!