2 versions of my response to this, the more annoyed one is in discord. Here's the more professional one.
For starters, this discussion, if it is going to be had, needs to be had without these attacks on me. Being pedantic/calculating/etc has always been a part of the game, and trying to make it seem like I can only win by abusing little things like this is both false and insulting. I understand that it must suck for you given that you're the one being abused at the moment, but I assure you that I'm 100% okay with my orders no matter which way it goes. I just know that the reason I ordered them puts me head and shoulders in a better spot than the non-abusive orders, which still abuse something anyways.
Now as for the actual discussion topic, I'll address each part of your two reasons as for why its "toxic" as you would put it:
1) It is horribly pedantic to tear apart a substitution like that in order for a gym leader to win a match.
So are you trying to tell me that if this happened in say, Round 1 of a tournament, it's suddenly perfectly fine? Like, because I'm a Gym Leader I should be forced not to order the way that I see will put me the furthest ahead? Call me crazy, but this complaint just feels like you are complaining because you wanted this badge, and this abuse is costing you yet another chance at it. I will admit that it is a very pedantic move on my part, but I don't see anything wrong with being pedantic because I think that sometimes being a pedant and abusing subs make for some of the greatest plays.
2) If those are really ASB's substitution rules, I think we have messed up with how convoluted they are.
This one I slightly agree with, but not because I think they are convoluted. The biggest issue I have with our sub rules is that we
still do not actually have it documented anywhere official how chance clauses work. We've spent forever and a half arguing over how everything works, clarifying everything else, but this is not specifically written anywhere that isn't just a match that I have to cite to show that I'm not pulling the rules about this interaction out my ass, whether it be for this match in particular or any other match in ASB.
Regardless of how we're going to rule things here, this actually needs to finally make its way into an official writing since I think the original ruling was always just a WoG thing.
All that being said, here's the issue that's actually at hand, because Birkal didn't actually state any issue besides the fact that I'm abusing his sub for a victory:
--- As it currently stands, Chance Clauses are by default checked when the Pokemon is supposed to act that action.
--- Also as it were, Chance Clauses have the loosest definition of
anything in ASB, which is something along the lines of anything in the trigger of a substitution that is not a logical operator or things that can be identified as a Move Clause.
The above basically says that if you were ordered to use Mach Punch, the chance clauses check at +1. Body Slam? 0. Protect? +4. But this isn't written anywhere specific.
The lack of definition of Chance Clauses leaves a lot of room for a lot of abuse cases, both known and unknown. Outside of things like this, we have things like using a sub that is the most bullshit chance clauses I've ever seen just to bypass a substitution entirely (
link). As a whole, the term actually needs a definition and a governing set of rules that are written down in order to reduce the amount of bamboozles that can occur as a resulted of their undocumented rules.
For starters, I want to actually patch the abuse I linked, and I know Emma mentioned this back when it happened too, so I would like to add this rule to the list:
- A substitution made by the player ordering second is illegal if the result of that substitution would trigger the substitution of a Pokemon that has already acted that action.
As for this, I'm going to wait for more
non-existent feedback from other users before giving any more of my cents on this matter or suggesting ways to improve this.