Battle Maison Discussion & Records

[Altissimo]

it's the same thing, the battle Maison is the facility within the battle resort

 

[Noah3475]

I have a couple questions and I figured this might be the correct place to ask.

In ORAS, does Battle Resort let you keep battling trainers consecutively or is there a daily limit or something?

Also, do Battle Resort opponents use mega evolutions?

I noticed there's a Battle Maison thread, but there doesn't appear to be one for Battle Resort?

The Battle Resort does not have a time-based restriction on the number of battles, nor any other restriction. As long as you do not lose a battle, your challenge may continue over one or more sessions indefinitely. Opponents do not use Mega Evolution, though multi battle partners do; Archie uses Mega Sharpedo, Maxie uses Mega Camerupt and Wally uses Mega Gallade.
The Battle Resort is an area where the Battle Maison is located in Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. The only differences in the Battle Maison from Pokemon X and Y to Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire is the names of many trainers, and the trainers you may partner with for multi battles.

 

[tobiuo]

... unless you're thinking about the type-theme trainers scattered around the Resort with the randomly selected level 60 teams that are sometimes useful for oval charm pokedex seen filling, those are once per day and also don't use megas.

it's the same thing, the battle Maison is the facility within the battle resort

The facility within the Battle Resort is the Battle Maison Replica!!

 

[Altissimo]

https://altissimo1.github.io/Main-Series/Kalos-Locations/battle-maison.html Info about Battle Maison now up on my site.

 

[Gamemaster137]

I have some questions and I figured this might be the correct place to ask.

In ORAS, does Battle Resort let you keep battling trainers consecutively or is there a daily limit or something?

Also, do Battle Resort opponents use mega evolutions?

I noticed there's a Battle Maison thread, but there doesn't appear to be one for Battle Resort?

Hi! To answer your questions: No, there is no daily limit in ORAS with the Battle Resort, you can battle as many trainers as you like consecutively until your streak ends (than you must start a new streak). As for mega evolutions I don't think so but if trainers do it might only be the leaders you fight every 50 battles or so, but I am almost sure none of the NPCs mega evolve. Also the reason why there is no Battle Resort thread is because the Maison & Resort are virtually the same thing in both XY and ORAS.

Hope that helped clear things up.

-Gamemaster

 

[RockhopperBC]

Hello everyone, I recently decided to go for all of the 50 win streak trophies in ORAS. After successfully getting the trophies, I went back to my doubles run with the same team to see how far I could go from there. Team ended up falling at a streak of 107.

So now the team.

Leads:

Kingdra @ Wide Lens
Swift Swim
Modest
IVs: 31/31/31/31/x/31
EVs: 4 hp/252 spattk/252 spe
- Muddy Water
- Ice Beam
- Draco Meteor
- Protect

Politoed @ Damp Rock
Drizzle
Modest
IVs: 31/x/31/31/31/x
EVs: 252 hp/4 def/252 spattk
- Scald
- Ice Beam
- Helping Hand
- Protect

Pretty tried and true idea for the leads. Politoed sets the rain with drizzle, clicks helping hand so Kingdra does maximum damage with muddy water. I went with wide lens on Kingdra over something like specs or life orb cause I didn't want muddy water missing as much. Ice beam didn't end up getting clicked very often, might've been better to have Dragon Pulse for consistent dragon STAB without the stat drops from Draco Meteor.

Back up:

Zapdos @ Life Orb
Pressure
Timid
IVs: x/x/31/31/31/x
EVs: 4 hp/252 spattk/252 Spe
- Thunder
- Heat Wave
- Roost
- Protect

Zapdos mostly sits there spamming perfect accuracy Thunders in the rain, helps deal with bulky waters like Suicune, Lapras, Walrein, etc that Kingdra can struggle to get rid of. I found myself practically never hitting heat wave but I wasn't sure what was a better choice for the slot. Doesn't synergize with the rain very well compared to thunder. Still mostly happy with Zapdos on the team though.

Mawile @ Mawilite
Intimidate
Adamant
IVs: 31/31/31/x/x/31
EVs: 252 hp/252 attk/4 spdef
- Iron Head
- Play Rough
- Sucker Punch
- Swords Dance

I settled on Mawile for the 4th slot when looking for a steel type mostly because I like Mawile. Rain getting rid of its fire weakness is pretty great for it, and having intimidate gave me decent chances to get it out onto the field. Dealt with fairies for Kingdra pretty well.

Ended up losing to Worker Levin with Whiscash/Magnezone/Golurk/Rhyperior. I didn't focus on taking out Whiscash, so after it survived a Muddy Water + Scald double up it hit back and landed fissure on Kingdra. It all kinda spiraled down hill from that cause Zapdos and Mawile don't have great tools to take out Whiscash/Magnezone after.

There's definitely a lot that could be improved on with this team, but I'm glad I broke 100 wins in very few tries. It only took 4 tries to get the 50 streak trophy, and that same streak got to 107 after so that's fun. Probably going to try to keep using the other teams I used for the trophies up to failure like I did these guys, might make posts about them too when that happens.

 

[turskain]

Posting a finished 953 win streak in Super Doubles. Played on emulator with pkhex'd mons.

0. Shoutouts

This team was inspired by mainly two things without which I definitely wouldn't be playing Maison again after all this time: Lumari's Khatios attempts (sorry, that's the name of the team now...), and Coeur7's various efforts over the years and specifically his usage of Fly on Landorus. And I got back into facilities through a friend introducing me to LRXC1's amazing youtube streams (highly recommended).

1. Team details

Medicham @ Focus Sash
Ability: Pure Power
Jolly Nature
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
- Low Kick
- Psycho Cut
- Fake Out
- Helping Hand

Kangaskhan-Mega @ Kangaskhanite
Ability: Parental Bond
Adamant Nature
EVs: 4 HP / 236 Atk / 4 Def / 12 SpD / 252 Spe
- Frustration
- Sucker Punch
- Seismic Toss
- Fake Out

Azumarill @ Assault Vest
Ability: Huge Power
Adamant Nature
EVs: 76 HP / 252 Atk / 44 Def / 12 SpD / 124 Spe
- Waterfall
- Knock Off
- Aqua Jet
- Superpower

Landorus-T @ Expert Belt
Ability: Intimidate
Modest Nature
EVs: 76 HP / 4 Atk / 4 Def / 244 SpA / 4 SpD / 176 Spe
IVs: 30 Spe
- Earth Power
- Fly
- Hidden Power Ice
- Protect

2. Development

This team started out from Lumari discussing her Khatios team on Discord. I proposed a terrible idea of replacing Latios with Alakazam (Ally Switch, Sash), and theorymon'd Lando-T and Azumarill to go with it. Lando-T was a very quick choice as I'd already played vanilla Landorus with Kangaskhan in the past. Azumarill took a little longer to arrive at, but was a relatively quick process of narrowing down into something that meets a few criteria: bulky, preferably Water-type, Fighting-resist, decent Volcarona match-up.

Then I actually played this idea and quickly discovered Alakazam was a little bit mediocre. It had great speed, a nice STAB Psychic, and Magic Guard+Sash for reliability but other than that, it was more or less deadweight and Ally Switch with 55/45/95 defenses was unimpressive, to put it lightly.

So I went back to the drawing board searching for a Psychic-type that's got Fake Out or a similar move, throwing darts first at Jynx, then Medicham. Medicham seemed like a possible hit, with Psycho Cut being comparable to Alakazam's Psychic and also having a juicy Low Kick to its name. For the 4th move, I tried Bullet Punch first, but found it nearly useless, and replaced it with Helping Hand doubling as both 'priority move' and 'coverage move' - "Bullet Punch/Ice Punch/Fire Punch but better".

This worked and not having Protect on either lead made the team fresh and interesting to play compared various teams I'd already played in Maison and Tree in the past. In retrospect, the boring old Protect might've been a more reliable choice and if I play this team again I'm going to try out Protect, or maybe a different Pokémon entirely.

At first I went with Wide Lens on Azumarill to enable Play Rough. However, after a few battles of not being convinced the Fairy STAB is needed, I made it wear an Assault Vest instead with Knock Off replacing Play Rough. It worked for this team and Azumarill's set and item stayed the same for the rest of the streak. Knock Off was especially helpful because this team has a few serious Ghost/Psychic problems (as seen in the loss, among other battles).

I might've increased the Speed investment at some point, but I don't remember right now. The 124 Speed EVs hit 86 Speed, which is the same speed as 4 Spe Scizor and crawls over such threats as Chesnaught4, Glaceon4, and Walrein4.

Landorus went through the most changes through the streak. I started out with Life Orb Landorus-T, then switched to a Life Orb Landorus-I, and finally settled on Expert Belt Landorus-T (Modest). 176 Spe hits 133 to crawl over the base 80 crew.

I'm still not sure which Landorus forme and item is superior for this team. Lando-I's speed and power is impressive, but Lando-T's Intimidate is also really strong and helps with the team's relative lack of answers or good switch options into strong physical attacks, with no Aegislash/Mimikyu on the team, or a 'countersweep' gambit like Lumari's Sylveon in Tailwind. Fly might seem like an odd move, but is much better than I expected: it can be used as a 'second Protect' to buy extra turns, avoid being forced to make a dangerous switch, and when it hits it's got solid damage and coverage to boot. 95% accuracy is good enough in practice since this is a 'once every 50 battles' kind of move, and it doesn't necessarily need to connect to provide the utility from its invulnerability turn.

3. Recordings

I played on emulator (a massive quality of life upgrade over playing on cart) and conveniently recorded the entire streak. Some of the later battles were livestreamed.

Playlist of the entire streak
The loss (streamed live)

(Hex Maniac Anastasia)
A nightmare match-up of the worst two back-ups Anastasia can bring, in the worst order they can show up in, after a lead duo that guarantees Trick Room going up and one or more Pokémon getting burnt. Possibly winnable, but not without significantly more foresight and skill than I have/had to tackle a situation like this - goes to show there's always more to learn in a game of facilities.

A fair loss in my opinion: getting 1-3 Pokémon burnt by Spiritomb, Landorus or another Pokémon boomed, followed by the team's worst nightmare in Gourgeist4 under Trick Room to let it perform an invulnerability turn stunt with Phantom Force is a lot of bad things and this team, while pretty good, doesn't have that many rabbits to pull out of the hat in case of disaster compared to my past Maison teams using Aegislash. Medicham and Kangaskhan have significantly overlapping weaknesses to burns and ghosts, and a lack of Protect that makes running into this kind of battle more than possible - since this is the first and only attempt I've played with this team, it's possible this 953 streak is an overperformance, but I have no idea lol. I think it might be a slight bit less reliable than my old Maison teams.

4. Double Fake Out & other anecdotes

Playing double Fake Out in the lead was a new experience for me, and Khan/Cham might be the best way to apply it in the Maison. Khan's brokenness in gen6 needs no introduction. Medicham has the strongest non-STAB/Technician Fake Out out there, and it can follow up with a Helping Hand on Turn 2 for a Double FO->HH Sucker Punch play to take out a faster threat before they get to move.

Azu and Lando-T fill out the backline with 'fat bodies that can switch in', which are needed since both leads want to be able to switch out to reset Fake Out and stay alive, and don't run Protect to be able to stay in. The back-ups are slow, vulnerable to flinches/paralysis/freezes/etc, and are dependent on Fake Out support to close out games; this is not a 'sac the leads then let the back-ups clean up' team like a Tailwind, or Kommo-o setup might be, nor a Wide Guard Aegislash situation where many bad situations can just be turned around with the bulk of Shield Form while blocking Blizzard & EQ. You need to be 3 or 4 living team members, and options to use Fake Out again versus the foe's 3rd and 4th Pokémon to feel confident in winning without complications from various surprises that could be in the rear. Play accordingly and make sure Medicham, Kangaskhan, or both are alive and positioned to use Fake Out when the 4th enemy Pokémon is revealed if at all possible.

I'll be honest: I ran out of motivation to write this write-up around this point - there's a lot more that could be said, but I would instead recommend trying out the team on emulator (with fastforward, it doesn't take long at all to get going) or checking out a stream VOD or two from the playlist if you're interested in knowing more. Write-ups are a great way to communicate team ideas and the development process, but the actual battle-to-battle play in Doubles, I think, is a lot more difficult to express in a big wall of text compared to unwieldy (but informative and accurate) gameplay recordings.

Although this attempt fell short of 4 digits, I think this team was a very interesting variation to explore and I'm happy enough with the resulting streak. Recently I've been playing some different ideas in the Subway and I'm unlikely to return to this one any time soon.

I am very happy to see the Battle Facilities community is still alive and kicking after all these years, even after Gamefreak did 'em dirty in recent games. The gen3 & gen4 renaissance has super interesting with tons of new ideas and players and I'm glad to see these later gens have some life left in them, too. Love you all - even the unlucky people I didn't list in the highly condensed shoutouts!

 

[empoleonz0]

The Team​

Mega SunZard (Charizard-Mega-Y) @ Charizardite Y
Ability: Blaze
Level: 50
EVs: 6 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Heat Wave
- Solar Beam
- Dragon Pulse
- Protect

SlideQuake (Garchomp) @ Life Orb
Ability: Rough Skin
Level: 50
EVs: 6 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Dragon Claw
- Protect

Chlorosaur (Venusaur) @ Black Sludge
Ability: Chlorophyll
Level: 50
EVs: 6 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Giga Drain
- Sludge Bomb
- Hidden Power [Ground]
- Protect

MixedSlash (Aegislash) @ Leftovers
Ability: Stance Change
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 6 Atk / 252 SpA
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- King's Shield
- Shadow Ball
- Flash Cannon
- Sacred Sword

POKEPASTE LINK HERE

Team Overview​

Charizard and Garchomp lead and beat most things with Heat Wave + Earthquake and sometimes their other moves. Venusaur sweeps under sun, while Aegislash was picked as the 4th mon for being generically strong and a safe switch into ice and rock moves that threaten Zard and Chomp

Specific Team Choices​

I wanted to use this section to explain the specific choices I made with builds that "aren't obvious" and explain my rationale. I would welcome feedback and insight for people who are familiar with the specific Battle Maison Super mons and damage calculations

Dragon Pulse Charizard - Heat Wave is the generally used "strong attack" so I wanted a 3rd attack that would be for coverage as opposed to a 2nd "strong attack" (so no Air Slash). The candidates were Dragon Pulse or HP Ground and I chose Dragon Pulse for its ability to hit Dragon types super effectively while hitting most things neutrally at the cost of Zard Y being ineffective vs Heatran. This choice I feel pretty good about I'm just not sure if there's some super edge case I'm not considering.

Life Orb Garchomp + Black Sludge Venusaur - As I understand it, conventional wisdom states that Venusaur should get Life Orb while Garchomp gets like Rocky Helmet or something. After my first streak I just felt that Garchomp felt a bit weak and wanted to give it more damage at the cost of sacrificing Venusaur's damage. Black Sludge on Venusaur was selected because I didn't know what offensive item would be good the other candidate was Big Root which seemed more situational and also didn't boost damage, only boosted drain.

Choosing Garchomp to hold Life Orb was purely based on vibes and no calculations so I'm open to suggestions

HP Ground Venusaur - This is mainly because facing Heatran is my ultimate fear and I'm not sure what else would go in this slot anyways I don't think Sleep Powder is very good for Super Doubles because I would assume you'd want consistency that a 75 accuracy move doesn't offer.

Leftovers Aegislash - Uncertain how Weakness Policy would perform so I just chose the "safe option"

Sacred Sword Aegislash - I think the coverage can be useful, as sometimes Aegislash just ends up in situations where I messed up and now it needs to save me with its effective 720 BST. I have never been in a situation where I found myself going "I wish I had Wide Guard" and I'm not really sure how useful Substitute would be either.

The Streak​

The streak took place in Pokemon Y on my 3DS. I had won 101 battles and lost at the 102nd battle.

Evidence of Streak

How I Lost​

Link to Lost Battle

I think the main issue was that I got careless playing into Speed Boosted Yanmega and also didn't King's Shield Aegislash, allowing it to take more damage than I should have. There were a few unlucky factors such as Rock Slide missing Yanmega in the first place. All in all, I think the streak was lost because I made several careless mistakes and the unlucky factors turned those into streak ending mistakes.

 

[tobiuo]

Going on six months since last update, the streak yet lives. I’m sitting at 8840. There were a couple of months where stuff came up and I wasn’t playing, then I eased back in with other formats and non-serious runs and stuff, and then I got back to it and just kept grinding out the next 2k (ok, 1998… 1885 really) battles.

I kind of wish there were something to say, but at this point… I mean, it’s not like my last spread change really mattered, and I knew that going in. The ingredients are what they are. I got a little better at headcounting PP, which is probably going to be the death of me at some point when I miscount 3 times in the same battle again against something more threatening than -3 Krookodile4.

I ran out of funny numbers to chase. This post is for 8632(+α), I guess, basically, but that’s not a number anyone else cares about. And after this there’s one more milestone to look forward on the way to 9k, but beyond that… 9999 or bust, I guess?

funny battle videos

#8371, 8632, 8659, 8704, 8840

#8371 vs 12 Veteran Regice2/Virizion2/Zapdos2—Regice2 only occasionally goes for the t1 Icy into Gyara’s face in the first place (10/40 recorded, and of course these are indistinguishable from the other Regices at sendout), and even if it does that doesn’t accomplish anything unless it crits since the standard switch-stall bring Glis in on Thunderbolt a bunch of times anyway (and gic2 is speed-invested, I don’t think it ever clicks Icy into Aegi’s face), so this is like a 1/28k scenario that… ok that’s just normal at this point, really.
When I saw that instant tbolt para, I thought this was the end, really. It would’ve been a fine, satisfying end to the run, too, it’s a long-feared but too-rare-to-care disaster scenario (and ok maybe the conclusion then would’ve been that the Regice strat has to be for Aegi to facetank the likely tbolt if you’re going for 6 figures lol, I think you’ll forgive me being more afraid of tres1 tho)… then I calced/processed the amount of damage it actually deals. Regice2 has no SpA investment; its ice attacks do negative damage (and I should’ve known that), and that means its tbolt still needs like six full paras or even more crits to even have a chance of getting through Aegi. The perfectly adequate backup plan was Aegi solo-stall down to full combo this whole time…
Static pd2 + izi2 is honestly exactly the kind of backrow to out a Gyara sweep too, which is kind of funny to look at, but it’s not like things went sufficiently wrong after for that to matter and realistically Virizion2 is pretty bad at getting through Aegi fast enough to win anyway.

#8632 vs Butler Ursaring/Lapras/Magnezone—DT propaganda, I guess; it lets us set up fully on Ursaring as a skip turn button while providing a layered defense against the potential uhhh b2b2b QC return crits which might uhhh force us to go Aegi and forgo two DDs (idk this has never happened).

#8659 vs Battle Girl Aurorus/Infernape/Ninetales—the infamous t1 Refrigerate Hyper Beam happens again, it’s a real thing. Not much to actually say here, I just found this while looking for

Bonus: #8661 vs 12 Veteran Articuno2/Regigigas1/Cobalion1—So I had a funny clip before of Aegi sitting on cuno2 while frozen for like 30 turns, and this is the flip side of that: the perfectly acceptable backup plan where Gliscor comes in from the t1 Sheer Cold hit and proceeds to full stall it, coming out with a full Gyara setup, because as it turns out -1 cuno2 Shard doesn’t even reliably break a sub so the DT set can kind of just Do This.

#8704 vs Hiker Blaziken/Carracosta/Poliwrath—196 turns… ok, I’m not going to pretend was. a sane thing to do. You can tell I was really bored when I’m going out of my way to prolong a (real!) battle as long as possible (while still doing all the right things to have a reasonable Aegi setup out of Blaziken4 and a full Gyara setup out of costa4 ofc—this took like 42 minutes to play out lmao). This is actually the third “run” at improving my previous uhhh PB of 147 with a 164 and a (disappointing!) 163… the power of switch-stalling is amazing.
The worst part is that it didn’t even make it to 200…

#8840 vs Psychic Chandelure/Alakazam/Drifblim—progress. Not much to say.

insights, do we have any of those left in stock

I don’t think any I have any particularly fresh takes this time around. I didn’t last time, either, really. That’s not to say I didn’t like, learn anything new, since like there are for sure a few things I picked up, but unless we comes up with another dramatic, paradigm-warping variation, they’re not really the kind of thing to fuss over I think.

One thing I’ve been interested in recently (you know… other than Link Castle…) is the process of building a team “from scratch”, and man, the difference between building a full team in gen 6 using “intended mechanics” and… before… is like night and day; I wasn’t quite going full-on “childhood save challenge” (someone in ribboncord had a scenario where they deleted all their mega stones though), but I was able to build “bad Team Marathon” (ft. frus gyara) in like 20 hours with lots of room for improvement. (Though maybe “worse DDD” (thief>koff) is the more accessible and less worse option…)

Anyway. See y’alls again in a week if I make it.

 

[tobiuo]

A small update: #4689 vs Cabasa Ludicolo1/Seismitoad2/Aurorus4 was a little scuffed from the inside view, but I guess the ultimate artifact correctly reflects that this is a stall down to Toxic for an Aegislash setup, which is a satisfactory wincon against the rain pool. Actually, this happened about a week ago, but it is what is is (to wit, a cute number).

#8964 vs Ranger Meganium4/Victreebel/Serperior. This goes exactly according to plan.

This could've been six days ago, but I stalled it to what it is...

 

[Pran of Cingles]

Team Idea for Super Singles, still building the the team right no but anted to see what you guys think.
Perfect IVs for all of them.

Durant @ Choice scarf
Nature - Jolly
Ability - Truant
252Spd/252Hp/4Atk
-Entertainment
-X-scissor
-Iron head
-Crunch

Ninjask @ Focus sash
Nature - Timid
Ability - Speed Booster
252Spd/252Hp/4Def
-Hone claws
-Protect
-Substitute
-Baton Pass

Heracross @ Heracronite
Nature - Adamant
Ability - Swarm
252Atk/252Spd/4Hp
-Rock Blast
-Bullet Seed
-Pin Missile
-Arm Thrust


Using Durant to give the opponent truant it has the choice scarf to make sure it will get the move off before it dies, switching to Ninjask on a turn where the enemy is "loafing around", then go back and forth between set up moves (hone claws and sub) and protect, while also gaining the speed boost from the ability. Once Ninjask reaches +6 Atk, Speed, and Accuracy, baton pass the boost on a safe turn again to heracross who will then mega and destroy everything. The types on the moves hits everything in the list of Battle Maison pokemon I can find on Bulbapedia for at least neutral damage, other than Toxicroak which at these boosts it still knocks out in a single turn. The multi-hit moves covers sturdy or focus sash, and the improved accuracy from hone claws covers for bright powder and o0ther accuracy lowering items/abilities. Once I get the team going I'll post updates on how it goes.

 

[Zeo1]

Team Idea for Super Singles, still building the the team right no but anted to see what you guys think.
Perfect IVs for all of them.

Durant @ Choice scarf
Nature - Jolly
Ability - Truant
252Spd/252Hp/4Atk
-Entertainment
-X-scissor
-Iron head
-Crunch

Ninjask @ Focus sash
Nature - Timid
Ability - Speed Booster
252Spd/252Hp/4Def
-Hone claws
-Protect
-Substitute
-Baton Pass

Heracross @ Heracronite
Nature - Adamant
Ability - Swarm
252Atk/252Spd/4Hp
-Rock Blast
-Bullet Seed
-Pin Missile
-Arm Thrust


Using Durant to give the opponent truant it has the choice scarf to make sure it will get the move off before it dies, switching to Ninjask on a turn where the enemy is "loafing around", then go back and forth between set up moves (hone claws and sub) and protect, while also gaining the speed boost from the ability. Once Ninjask reaches +6 Atk, Speed, and Accuracy, baton pass the boost on a safe turn again to heracross who will then mega and destroy everything. The types on the moves hits everything in the list of Battle Maison pokemon I can find on Bulbapedia for at least neutral damage, other than Toxicroak which at these boosts it still knocks out in a single turn. The multi-hit moves covers sturdy or focus sash, and the improved accuracy from hone claws covers for bright powder and o0ther accuracy lowering items/abilities. Once I get the team going I'll post updates on how it goes.

Hello! I like the team idea, but at the very least, I think you should change the EV spread of your Durant. Since it's your lead and your main goal is to get Entrainment off, you should be running the standard Choice Scarf Durant set that we all use so that you are at least going to outspeed everything and have a chance to actually get it off on the first turn. Here is the moveset:

Durant @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Truant
Nature: Jolly
EVs: 172 HP / 108 Def / 228 Spe
- Entrainment
- X-Scissor
- Iron Head
- Aerial Ace

I feel this is especially important to your mono-bug team because if you go against a Pokémon that happens to outspeed your Durant and has a fire-type move, it is likely OHKO'd, and the rest of your team is swept as well.

 

[Altissimo]

pretty sure "Spd" meant "speed" in that post, I know the standard abbreviation is "Spe" but I also doubt they're putting 252 special defense on Ninjask and Heracross too

 

[Pran of Cingles]

pretty sure "Spd" meant "speed" in that post, I know the standard abbreviation is "Spe" but I also doubt they're putting 252 special defense on Ninjask and Heracross too

Yep, I'm just used to writing special defence as Sp.Def and special attack as Sp.Atk. To be honest the moveset on durant doesn't matter at all, they are there to get truant on the enemy and nothing else

 

[Lumari]

Team Idea for Super Singles, still building the the team right no but anted to see what you guys think.
Perfect IVs for all of them.

Durant @ Choice scarf
Nature - Jolly
Ability - Truant
252Spd/252Hp/4Atk
-Entertainment
-X-scissor
-Iron head
-Crunch

Ninjask @ Focus sash
Nature - Timid
Ability - Speed Booster
252Spd/252Hp/4Def
-Hone claws
-Protect
-Substitute
-Baton Pass

Heracross @ Heracronite
Nature - Adamant
Ability - Swarm
252Atk/252Spd/4Hp
-Rock Blast
-Bullet Seed
-Pin Missile
-Arm Thrust


Using Durant to give the opponent truant it has the choice scarf to make sure it will get the move off before it dies, switching to Ninjask on a turn where the enemy is "loafing around", then go back and forth between set up moves (hone claws and sub) and protect, while also gaining the speed boost from the ability. Once Ninjask reaches +6 Atk, Speed, and Accuracy, baton pass the boost on a safe turn again to heracross who will then mega and destroy everything. The types on the moves hits everything in the list of Battle Maison pokemon I can find on Bulbapedia for at least neutral damage, other than Toxicroak which at these boosts it still knocks out in a single turn. The multi-hit moves covers sturdy or focus sash, and the improved accuracy from hone claws covers for bright powder and o0ther accuracy lowering items/abilities. Once I get the team going I'll post updates on how it goes.

for what it's worth this is probably going to run into the same issues as all the durant + BP variants which is that they just crumble on the spot if the setup fails with no tools at all available to them to recover. think skuntank taking out durant on lead and exploding quickly after, medicham and mienshao KOing themselves via HJK recoil (though ninjask's typing might make the former manageable?) before you finish setting up, and skarmory just shutting the entire team down with hazards + whirlwind, of course on top of things like gale wings talonflame showing up if heracross ends up without a sub and generic hax like flame body if you end up having to risk this.

there are still a few move changes you could consider for making the team a bit less shaky if you can get only partial setup:
- hone claws -> swords dance; the accuracy boost is questionable value in games where you do get full setup (e.g. talonflame dies to +6 pin missile anyway so you don't need rock blast here), and the underappreciated upside of swords dance is "it boosts faster", which could come in clutch versus the likes of (hazard stack + explosion) forretress, where i would feel comfortable enough trusting it won't boom before giving you 3 swords dances but would not make the same assumption for hone claws's 6 turns.
- arm thrust -> close combat; 75BP is atrocious and with bug's bad neutral coverage id rather have the extra power over yet another sash/sturdy bypassing tool for my other stab move. you might have to check sash/sturdy users to make sure but hopefully the other moves are okay anyways (e.g. bullet seed handles aggron/probopass and pin missile handles bisharp). maybe there is also an alternative for rock blast out there somewhere especially without HC, but pragmatically speaking you're probably more likely to run into an enemy that thwarts setup than one where you need rock blast over one of the other moves even with full setup anyways.

let us know how it goes; unfortunately this archetype in general does have too many matchups where it loses on sight for a very deep run, but if your goals are more modest that'll certainly be doable.

 

[Pran of Cingles]

for what it's worth this is probably going to run into the same issues as all the durant + BP variants which is that they just crumble on the spot if the setup fails with no tools at all available to them to recover. think skuntank taking out durant on lead and exploding quickly after, medicham and mienshao KOing themselves via HJK recoil (though ninjask's typing might make the former manageable?) before you finish setting up, and skarmory just shutting the entire team down with hazards + whirlwind, of course on top of things like gale wings talonflame showing up if heracross ends up without a sub and generic hax like flame body if you end up having to risk this.

there are still a few move changes you could consider for making the team a bit less shaky if you can get only partial setup:
- hone claws -> swords dance; the accuracy boost is questionable value in games where you do get full setup (e.g. talonflame dies to +6 pin missile anyway so you don't need rock blast here), and the underappreciated upside of swords dance is "it boosts faster", which could come in clutch versus the likes of (hazard stack + explosion) forretress, where i would feel comfortable enough trusting it won't boom before giving you 3 swords dances but would not make the same assumption for hone claws's 6 turns.
- arm thrust -> close combat; 75BP is atrocious and with bug's bad neutral coverage id rather have the extra power over yet another sash/sturdy bypassing tool for my other stab move. you might have to check sash/sturdy users to make sure but hopefully the other moves are okay anyways (e.g. bullet seed handles aggron/probopass and pin missile handles bisharp). maybe there is also an alternative for rock blast out there somewhere especially without HC, but pragmatically speaking you're probably more likely to run into an enemy that thwarts setup than one where you need rock blast over one of the other moves even with full setup anyways.

let us know how it goes; unfortunately this archetype in general does have too many matchups where it loses on sight for a very deep run, but if your goals are more modest that'll certainly be doable.

I will try hone claws vs swords dance, I haven't run into any teams yet that doesn't allow me to fully set up. I just wanted to make sure my moves hit because there is 0 investment into any defence so I pretty much need to one shot everything I run into. only really annoying thing was a curse/stealth rocks/earthquake that set up while ninjask set up. +6 def steelix can survive 5 hits from arm thrust mega heracross at +6 attack, but since I had a sub it broke the sub after the first attack and died the second turn

 

[tobiuo]

Protect is the second most common move in the Maison; other common things that sometimes prevent a straight Entrainment setup include: Protect (15.4%)/Detect (2.5%), Fake Out (3.2%), Toxic Orb (1.3%)/Flame Orb (0.9%), Explosion (4.3%), U-Turn (2.0%)/Volt Switch (1.9%), HJK (0.9%), Bright Powder (2.7%)/Lax Incense (1.6%), Quick Claw (1.7%)—numbers given are 41+ lead frequency, n.b. distributions are very different before that point (e.g. Protect/Detect is 9.3% 1-10, 10.7% 11-20, 11.5% 21-30, 14.8% 31-40, 17.9% 41+).

Not all of these prevent you from setting up anyway all or even most of the time (90% of the time Lax Incense does nothing whatsoever!!) and the specific properties of your team will play around some of them, but you should expect the game to remind you that you need backup plans at least like a couple times an hour?

 

[Lumari]

Third and final act, here we go again... posting an ongoing streak of 1200 wins in Omega Ruby Super Singles.

I'll try my best to make this post an addendum to earlier writeups, since the "Bermuda Triangle" Cloyster / Gliscor / Chansey story started (in full force) almost a year ago, and there already is a Lot that I mentioned about them with the two prior streaks I have submitted. The first one was the 787 run in here that was cruelly cut short by Anastasia's Medicham3 for which the writeup can be found via the linked quote above, and the second one followed my realisation that the team was backportable into Subway and by extension made for an invitation I couldn't refuse to familiarise myself with that place; Subway-specific dynamics and some bad luck made it a bit of a school of hard knocks at first, but once those were overcome it lashed out for a very surprising score of 652, described in more detail here. I was absolutely not willing to commit to writing a third chapter to this story back then other than the acknowledgment that /if/ it would happen, it would be in the Maison again; before we get into all of that, let's formally reintroduce the team real quick though since that part of a report is probably still slightly too integral to entirely relegate to old posts. I'll limit myself to not naturally intuitive stuff like EV spreads though and will keep things extremely concise; for a (substantially, hopefully) more detailed description, please read the earlier Maison post in particular, where hopefully most things written still hold true.


Imprisoned (Cloyster) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Skill Link
Nature: Naughty
EVs: 252 Atk / 12 SpA / 244 Spe
- Icicle Spear
- Surf
- Shell Smash
- Rock Blast

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Cutting Speed by a single point is the most you can get away with in order to preserve the jump on Terrakion2 after one Smash in particular, and while unlike in Subway there's only a single Trainer running it here, Gyarados1 also makes it an actively superior choice over going for max for the additional Speed ties. When facing an unknown Gyarados set, you're forced to go for Shell Smash right away and confirm the enemy Dragon Dance set by relative Speed tiers (the naturally faster 1 and 3 fall to +1 Spear while the slower set 4 requires at least +2, i.e. an additional Smash if it's Intimidate); set 1 has Thunder Wave to be additionally annoying about this, but since the Speed cut means you actually underspeed it, it no longer has (should have) reason to click it, so yay happy times. Out of the moves, Rock Blast, while definitely "standard", is one that'll always require justification for obvious 90% reasons that is basically threefold in practice:

- its targets are important and mandatory: this is explained in more detail in last year's post, but think Articuno2, which can dodge the KO from +2 Spear therefore cannot properly be stopped from a Mind Reader + Sheer Cold + Ice Shard KO in a lead scenario otherwise, and the only potential detour in the form of a Gliscor stall for a +6 Cloyster requires both a Chansey sack and the breaking of Cloyster's Sash, which can make for an auto-loss in several matchups. Also including others like Lapras, Weavile, and Vanilluxe; notably not including Volcarona, which should always be Chansey food.
- 90% accuracy is a dishonest argument in practice: if there's any (remotely standard at least) situations where you rely on Rock Blast connecting right away or you lose then your team sucks beyond the use of Rock Blast, and if you can afford a miss then with the way probability works it's functionally a 99% accurate "Wide Lens" coverage move. Again read the earlier post, but every single mandatory Rock Blast target falls in this category, where an initial miss can be mostly shrugged off, and enemies that can be handled more reliably like Regice and Volcarona are outright not a factor in this discussion.
- all other options are active downgrades anyways: think e.g. using Substitute to dodge Lapras's Perish Song, which in fact accomplishes nothing other than effectively sacking Cloyster anyway while Rock Blast at least works without a hitch and by extension leaves me in a much much better board state (almost) 90% of the time; or Weavile and Vanilluxe, which none of the other options cover and I'd forced to handle with Chansey at the cost of Taunt and several rounds of freeze hax risk. In practical situations, this goes beyond the mandatory targets too; think e.g. Regice showing up second into 1HP +2 Cloyster, where without Rock Blast at best you're committing to an awkward detour into Gliscor via Chansey that risks freeze hax several times for an upside that's either nonexistent or way too niche to make up for it. Remember that if going Gliscor or Chansey in a situation like this was a better option than relying on Rock Blast, you should be doing that anyway; and if Cloyster is functionally sacked in this position without Rock Blast, then 90% odds of a streamlined way through the battle is still better than 0%.

Deadwing (Gliscor) @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
Nature: Impish
EVs: 212 HP / 4 Atk / 36 Def / 164 SpD / 92 Spe
- Earthquake
- Toxic
- Protect
- Substitute

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The moveset is standard as is but is definitively confirmed by Cloyster not being a good all eggs in one basket sweeper i.e. a Gliscor that is able to also kill things on its own is good. EV-wise, with the way Gliscor plays you'll always want a mixed defensive focus to maintain ability to respond to a wide range of followup enemies, but Chansey's existence also made a more physical lean worth looking into. The angle I took was that Gliscor's role as a response to Fighting was obviously something it's great at, but with both teammates having a weakness for Gliscor to cover here the risk of running into something that used Fighting as a coverage or secondary STAB type but would be able to beat Gliscor with its primary attacks was always real. Enter Barbaracle, which has Stone Edge and Cross Chop to harass Cloyster and Chansey and Cloyster cannot beat at +2; with the whole crit machine thing it's got going on Gliscor was always going to be tasked with handling this, but that also requires being able to hard switch into a potential Sniper crit Stone Edge, which is just as fun as it sounds. The EV spread is a bit trial and error, but it specifically lets Gliscor switch into said Sniper crit while still being able to get back into Sub range with the one round of PH recovery (except on an absolute max roll--could not manage to rule that one out without taking too many EVs out of mixed bulk, but I guess in that actually extremely unlikely scenario there's the last resort option of sacking something else for another round of recovery after) as well as guaranteeing Sub survival against non-crit Shadow Claw even with Tough Claws, which is the difference between an assured clean enough win versus a real risk of Gliscor's PP actually getting drained wholesale. There weren't any other notable bulk targets I had in mind, but for the most part it's just worked in practice. The Speed EVs were primarily for Tyrantrum and Mismagius, which otherwise could potentially just win on the spot if they come in on a board state with Cloyster's Sash broken and Gliscor without a Sub, but one very helpful piece of collateral creep was Tentacruel, which is a special attacker that beats Chansey but now Gliscor can easily take out via Earthquakes after clicking Sub on its Protects.

Full Circle (Chansey) @ Eviolite
Ability: Natural Cure
Nature: Bold
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 Spe
- Seismic Toss
- Toxic
- Soft-Boiled
- Growl

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Growl is the name of the game here, not only for allowing Chansey to wall physical attackers on top of special ones but also neutering Curse boosters and giving Chansey infinite PP for a "skip turn" button to just sit on almost whatever enemy it wants until moves are gone that annoy Cloyster or Gliscor, as well as of course supporting Gliscor by making its Sub harder to break. Credits to VaporeonIce for this move as always after he first used it on team Growl / team Aegimensey. Toxic is still mandatory for Chandelure and Volcarona if nothing else, but it's also an outright better way of taking down enemies than Seismic Toss since you can beat at least faster enemies with full HP as well as mitigate potential crits by recovery spamming through them. Not that Chansey is still taking down a whole lot of enemies in the first place these days, but more on that later...

As always, the team takes a heavy defensive approach where the ideal gameplan is to end up with a +6 Cloyster with an intact Sash, which is attainable versus all/most enemies that can't beat Chansey and have a "do-nothing" move like Substitute, Rest, or Light Screen, where you stall out all of their PP that can touch Cloyster via Sub/Protect, Growl spam, or switches. Failing that, there is of course always still the option of attempting a +2 Shell Smash sweep or using Gliscor or Chansey to defeat the lead, where I should stress Chansey's susceptibility to losing momentum to bad backups and the importance of keeping Cloyster's Sash; this is no Mega Gyarados so even at +6 you're just a single hax proc away from losing non-Sash Cloyster, not to mention intact Sash +2 is functionally the same as non-Sash +6, with the guaranteed extra hit to make up for being at half power. The current rough prioritisation is as follows:

- +6 Cloyster with intact Sash (duh);
- +2 Cloyster with intact Sash (trickier to get to consistently for obvious reasons, but mostly guaranteed versus Solar Beam users and also best option against certain Protect users like Rapidash);
- Gliscor with active Sub and most Sub/Protect PP intact;
- Cloyster outspeeds and OHKOes the opposing lead;
- any Cloyster setup with broken Sash;
- Chansey KOes the opposing lead;
- Gliscor KOes the opposing lead without a Sub or at the cost of most Sub/Protect PP;
- Cloyster KOes the opposing lead without setup and at the cost of its Sash.

Of course especially further down the ladder things may vary depending on exact enemies or rosters, but this should be the gist. There should probably be an updated lead notes sample here too, but with my current mental state towards battle facilities that sounds like a great way for this post to just never get finished at all, so excuse me if I'll just Not (for now at least), and most of it from the previous post should still hold true if it's not overtly contradicted by the above list.

threats

Gonna just quote the section from the earlier report as a starting point (as usual for nested quotes, if you can't expand then press alt twice or flip your phone screen to landscape mode), with additions at the end that are not so much newly identified as much as deserving of more words than I gave them at first.

Unpredictable board states is probably the biggest risk here, with almost every lead having a reliable path around it but full setup on lead not being a very common scenario and Gliscor or Chansey often having mystery enemies switch in on them. It helps that Gliscor with a Sub active and Chansey with instantaneous ability to click Growl can hold off a massive range of foes, but certain boosters can still spell trouble; think Swords Dance users that need to be hit with Toxic right away, Feraligatr that is still the worst enemy on the planet to come out second versus Gliscor, and as far as all-out attackers go there is Medicham in particular that will almost assuredly take a life if it comes out against Chansey unless it manages to throw the matchup versus Gliscor via dumb Detect usage (which it usually does... but you get it), and so on. The team's insane defensive profile is enough to keep the list of these scenarios pretty contained, and another notable out worth mentioning is that a Cloyster with an intact Sash is a hard check to all threatening Swords Dance users.

Freak accidents for lack of a better word lol can actually matter here, with Shell Smash Cloyster's all-in nature making sudden wrenches actually annoying. The Trick Alakazam crapshoot is by far the biggest one that happened, but I've also been worried about stuff like Jynx4 throwing out a random Fake Out despite Psychic being a confident OHKO, to the point that rolling the dice with Chansey here instead might actually be better. The good thing is that if I believe Chansey can switch in on this t1 it can also do so t2 and the "bad outcome" is actually a +6 Cloyster with broken Sash, so it's not quite in the same ballpark as Mismagius4's miniscule odds of passing up on the guaranteed Power Gem KO actually making for a potential outright loss.

update: yes the Chansey stall is absolutely the right line here and I feel silly for ever defaulting to the immediate Smash..

Certain cases of set ambiguity versus starter breeders and weather trainers also are worth mentioning; for the most part they're not too hard to find middle grounds around, but two notable ones in particular are Infernape1234 (where set 4 forces the Gliscor switch on Fake Out for the immediate KO but the Wisp risk makes that unwise here) and Beartic1234 (where set 4 is Growl fodder but the possibility of an SD set means you kinda do have to gamble with +2 Rock Blast here).

855 | Lickilicky4 | Adamant | Lax Incense | Body Slam | Power Whip | Earthquake | Explosion | HP/Atk
...and Explosion users in general, who would've thought they get a tiny bit nastier without a Steel-type on the team, but the other ones other than maybe the Regirock pair, which don't use it against Cloyster anyways, are handled alright by lead Cloyster for the most part. Lickilicky dodges the OHKO from +2 Spear and has Lax Incense to make that a sketchy idea even if it did not, and on top of that the randomness of its moves means I risk switching Gliscor into Body Slam para as well. I don't really have anything better here than go to Chansey and keep health high while using Growl as a cushion so that it won't hit too hard when it does blow up (or ofc win before it does but unlikely). Has worked out fine for the most part, obvious potential for nasty backups is obvious.

813 | Mismagius4 | Bold | BrightPowder | Power Gem | Protect | Perish Song | Mean Look | HP/Def
Probably more threatening than Lapras in general; thanks to the item they both need Cloyster to hit a 90% accurate move, but unlike Lapras Mismagius only gives Cloyster a single shot to hit, and while thankfully I was wise enough to let Gliscor outspeed it for the safe plan B of just clicking Sub right away and waiting until it forces itself out, with Perish Song being what it is if you do end up in the 2v3 here you're getting dangerously close to the 1v2 that means an insta-loss. Especially Psychics/Hex Maniacs are scary with the ability to follow up with Medicham, but it can be mitigated a bit by switching out Gliscor on the second to last turn and bringing it back in. At least the good news is that it's only a threat on lead; Power Gem's pathetic Base Power means that second mon Mismagius is incredibly rare, and as a lastmon it might as well click Explosion the second it comes in unless something has gone dangerously wrong on your end earlier.

759 | Absol4 | Jolly | BrightPowder | Substitute | Swagger | Punishment | Will-O-Wisp | Atk/Spd
Similar situation as with Marathon, where you can't really stop it from statusing something and also can't switch Gliscor in directly as long as nothing is burned yet, though not quite as bad. Going to Chansey turn 1 is probably safest; in an ideal world Absol clicks Will-O-Wisp then and there for the safe Gliscor switch, but in the much more common case it clicks Swagger Chansey still has an honest shot of recovering/Growling through the worst of it, and in a pinch you can still make use of the very-much-not-guaranteed-but-certainly-observable pattern that Absol will probably use Punishment versus an enemy that has its stats boosted to get Gliscor in even without a prior burn. And once Punishment is gone and Gliscor and Chansey are both alive, the rest of the non-Substitute PP can be rid of as well and there we have a +6 Cloyster. Hitting Shell Smash turn 1 is not a significantly worse option either; any non-Swagger move lets you get rid of Absol then and there, and even Swagger (though not hitting yourself would be convenient) lets you get a better Chansey switch-in I suppose. One way or another it's a bitch, but it's probably usually not winning.

761 | Hariyama4 | Careful | Sitrus Berry | Belly Drum | Brick Break | Ice Punch | Bullet Punch | Def/SpD
890 | Snorlax4 | Careful | Assault Vest | Body Slam | Power-Up Punch | Earthquake | Crunch | HP/SpD

Thick Fat makes for an awkward defensive profile when your main sweeping move is Icicle Spear, and Belly Drum / Body Slam mean I can't easily respond to them defensively either. Without Thick Fat +2 Spear is a clean KO on both though (after Belly Drum in Hariyama's case, but that's how it tends to go anyways), and even if they do have it Hariyama may skip Bullet Punch as a finisher move and Snorlax actually cannot 2HKO Cloyster back without hax (not that that means a lot with that set though). Overall still pretty up there for leads that can both take out Cloyster and pressure backups though.

Trick is funnily worth mentioning, since it does suddenly reenter the picture when you're running a Mega-less team. In practice it's not the worst thing ever; several users (think Alakazam and Manectric) should just attack Cloyster, and "obnoxious offensive presence but defensively inclined enough to still actually use the move" Metagross and Reuniclus are thankfully holding Toxic Orb so Gliscor doesn't care about switching into them. Gliscor also makes for a situational counter to them in general since it doesn't care about non-Choice Trick anymore once its Orb is active, which can negate them in practice if they don't show up as a lead. The only one that comes to mind where I cannot avoid biting the bullet is lead Lopunny4, where you just kind of have to let it steal Chansey's Eviolite; however, obviously defeating it period is a joke and it's very easy to win with Gliscor with Sub active, so the main thing it gets to accomplish is soften up Chansey for any backups where you might need it, a lot of which are also negated by simply showing up into Subbed Gliscor. Freak accidents obviously do exist though, see the unfunny Alakazam replay and although this was not with this team I also remember Manectric having a tiny chance of using Switcheroo into the Greninja slot on the switch to Gliscor, at which point you'll just have to wing it.

update: unless it both does not open with Switcheroo and does not have Klutz Lopunny is not a problem either and can simply be switch-stalled down to Switcheroo so that it'll just give Chansey its Eviolite back and Gliscor wins with a free Sub. Yay!

575 | Medicham3 | Jolly | Expert Belt | Hi Jump Kick | Zen Headbutt | Ice Punch | Bullet Punch | Atk/Spd
750 | Medicham4 | Adamant | Life Orb | Hi Jump Kick | Psycho Cut | Fake Out | Detect | Atk/Spd
As mentioned repeatedly, Medicham3 is the ultimate counter that OHKOes both Gliscor and Chansey and picks off +2 Sash Cloyster with Bullet Punch; unless Cloyster is both boosted and outside of Bullet Punch range or Gliscor has a Sub active this is all but a guaranteed loss, and of course by default you won't have this level of setup in a lead matchup or otherwise neutral board state, where your only option is to click +0 Icicle Spear and hope for the (technically slightly favoured but yea) OHKO roll. This thing is also the reason why against Anastasia you should do absolutely anything you can to defeat the lead with at least a Gliscor Sub so that at least your worries are over beyond the lead position.

Medicham4 is not quite so dire but still an additional enemy to highlight the value of positioning. In the lead it's forgettable unless it opts for Fake Out over HJK in a freak accident (reason why Telepathy Medicham is genuinely a bigger threat lol since that one not having a guaranteed KO ramps up those odds a bunch...), but since Gliscor is not actually a reliable switch-in, you really want to play to avoid situations where it shows up after Chansey takes out the opposing lead. Should this come to pass then odds are you'll still want to take your chances with Gliscor, since despite HJK + Psycho Cut always keeping Gliscor out of Sub range even with the one round of PH recovery in between, the fact that Medicham is a faster Detect user means that most of the time you actually get like three rounds if not more before it successfully decides to hit you--not to mention that if you went to Chansey for the enemy lead then Cloyster's Sash is still active to keep a guaranteed revenge killer in the back. For total transparency this does assume you're facing a Psychic/Hex Maniac, where preserving Chansey is paramount, and against Black Belts/Battle Girls the Chansey (or even Cloyster) sack might be better to avoid the automatic loss against third mon Hariyama or Arcanine or who knows what else. Thankfully there is very little on their rosters that has to be taken down by Chansey in particular, and if you ever needed a decisive argument between taking down Charizard4 with Cloyster and feeding it to Chansey then here it is. Still, there is of course also the thing that a high roll crit Psycho Cut knocks Gliscor out of Sub range entirely which might make for an automatic loss if/when it happens with Cloyster's Sash gone; thankfully with the flow of proper positioning in lead matchups and AI throwing with Detect being what it is that is a bigger risk in theory than in practice and not something that has come to pass yet.

820 | Poliwrath4 | Adamant | Sitrus Berry | Waterfall | Earthquake | Focus Punch | Circle Throw | HP/Atk
+6 252+ Atk Cloyster Icicle Spear (5 hits) vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Poliwrath-4: 195-235 (99 - 119.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Sitrus Berry recovery + Circle Throw = bad times and probably the main enemy that actually beats +6 Cloyster without hax (no Shiftry does not count when I can just switch Cloyster out and go through setup again...), bonus hate for also always showing up second into Cloyster when the enemy brings it thanks to Focus Punch's Base Power. It also led to one of the more scary battles in the run when it showed up after a lead Walrein4, which is a free +6 Cloyster but does (realistically) require a Chansey sack to get Gliscor in safely before stalling its OHKO PP, which meant I was going to have to face the final enemy with just Gliscor and a 1 HP Cloyster. Between finishing it off right away versus burning at least half my Sub/Protect PP in order to win with an active Sub I went for the latter option, and I at least got that gamble right when the lastmon turned out to be (non-Tinted Lens) Yanmega, but the fact that Walrein + Poliwrath can also happen on Water specialists where the eventual Gliscor positioning is even nastier makes me wonder if the play versus lead Walrein is just attempted immediate +2 Rock Blast anyways when even +6 Cloyster does still want Chansey alive sometimes.

That is specifically backup Poliwrath, and of course it's not a lead enemy I'm happy to face either. I've found the best way to handle it is just... keep clicking Icicle Spear, which despite being a 5HKO at best actually works more often than you'd think thanks to Focus Punch being what it is, and Chansey's Seismic Toss can do the same thing if it switches in there or Circle Throw brings it in; if Gliscor ends up in the field against it then stalling Waterfall in order to win with Sub should be the default line of play. Icicle Spear spam was actually foolproof in Subway I think, but unfortunately over here Focus Punch is a less guaranteed click to the point that (mostly healthy but still) +0 Cloyster with broken Sash is also a common outcome here. That could certainly be an argument for bringing in Gliscor in the lead matchup instead, but it comes at a PP cost that makes me nervous, and the slight randomness behind Focus Punch very much cuts both ways when it's only a matter of time until I'd be switching Gliscor into a Waterfall (as in Poliwrath has actually clicked this over Focus Punch into lead Cloyster lol).

738 | Feraligatr4 | Adamant | Liechi Berry | Dragon Dance | Waterfall | Crunch | Substitute | Atk/Spd
Not the worst thing ever in the lead position when it's 2HKOed by +2 Spear, nor the worst thing ever that can switch into Chansey when it gets Growl stalled from that position, but categorically the single worst enemy that can switch into Gliscor on really any Gliscor team, with Sub to block Toxic and continue to boost all over it. Intuitively, I think I have been at least a little bit lucky with this scenario on this run; depressingly, the safest play here is to just spam Earthquake to at least stop it from getting its free Sub up while having Cloyster in the back as a revenge killer, though it's worth mentioning that it might skip Substitute if Gliscor is in Waterfall range even if behind a Sub. A silver lining is that, with Waterfall's comparative lack of power for an offensive Water move, it usually won't show up second into Gliscor against Water specialists, at least mitigating the headache of a third Pokemon taking advantage of Gliscor's absence, but that's a thin silver lining indeed. This Pokemon is the reason why Caesar/Kenna are the two main Trainers where you don't need to feel so bad if Chansey ends up being the one to take down enemies. Even if it shows up second or third into +2 Cloyster it can get dicey though; the logical play is to hit it with Icicle Spear then let Chansey finish it off, but there you run into the risk that if one of the five hits is a crit you might end up knocking it into both Torrent and Liechi range, making Chansey a rather less reliable revenge killer indeed. Of course that particular risk is an easy one to play around, but for a case in point of just how sick this thing is lol.

795 | Scrafty4 | Careful | Leftovers | Bulk Up | Payback | Protect | Drain Punch | HP/SpD
Bulk Up = stale move = potential Cloyster setup bait, and despite this thing technically having 36 PP before it enters the stale loop Gliscor does not have major trouble stalling it down from lead. The PP count very much does become an issue if it switches in second or third against a Gliscor that already has been drained a bit though, since if you do give it room to start boosting there's also no backing out of it anymore until all of its attacking PP are gone for good, and Shed Skin means 1/3 of the time (or 2/3 if you look at it the way you should...) Toxic is not an answer either, nor is offensive pressure with this team for very obvious reasons. The fun fact is that, provided you don't hesitate and make the switch right as it comes in, Chansey actually counters it though lol as long as it's not using Drain Punch on the switch (read: if Gliscor is the active Pokemon when it comes in then you're good) simply by Growl spamming, which as we now know thankfully works since Bulk Up also does the Curse thing where they'll only boost six times and then stop entirely even as you drop their Attack all the way down until they're out of all their other PP. There is a like slight risk here where Chansey has a small chance of going down to back-to-back high-roll crits, but since it'll just about never actually use two Drain Punches in a row rather than just mixing in Protects and Bulk Ups over and over plus the fact that you should be recovering as often as possible too i.e. even if it does go for another DP after the first crit it'll still need the high roll on both, it's pretty safe in practice (not like there's any obviously better options anyways but). Even if the worst somehow does happen, realistically you're pretty deep into the stall at this point which means that Gliscor can suddenly make do with limited PP again and Scrafty also won't be getting anywhere close to +6 Attack anymore with the number of its six allotted Bulk Ups it's already used.

I have not bothered with any Speed for Chansey beyond the one point, and it's sort of right now crossing my mind that moving eight points from HP into here to get the jump and play around that dual crit risk much more comfortably would be a sane option; I intentionally stuck with simple max/max since with a Pokemon as chip-susceptible as Chansey I feel like focusing on specific bulk calcs over general survivability is kind of misguided but will certainly concede that this is a reasonable tweak for people running teams where Growl Chansey ends up as a Scrafty answer. As for me, though, well, more on this in the replay section but there is one game with an unpredictable hax cascade where without those 8 HP I would have in fact lost Chansey if not the game outright; while it would obviously be a pretty bad faith argumentation tactic to pass this off as grounds that 252 HP is categorically better I do feel validated that the freak accidents I use max HP for are in fact real, and it also is worth saying out loud that, while not a product of repeated chip damage or hax, poorly timed back-to-back Drain Punch crits from one specific enemy in one specific situation is a freak accident in and of itself. Overall the choice feels pretty optional, and while normally I'd go and put some more thought into it, at this point I feel like I'll probably default to "well this has worked so far" when I have met all of my goals on this streak anyways.

429 | Froslass2 | Lonely | Kasib Berry | Ice Shard | Thunder Wave | Hex | Taunt | Atk/Spd
The other non-set4 enemy that actually is a major headache potentially capable of just sweeping the team outright, and it warrants both a mention and respect since this is the enemy that ultimately ended my best Subway run with this team. Over here it only exists on Chef Andrei's roster and is the reason why any lead Froslass just demands a turn 1 Rock Blast. If Cloyster is no longer in the picture when it is around (or even if it is at just 1 HP left to be picked off by Ice Shard) this quickly turns into a nightmare for Gliscor + Chansey thanks to Taunt + Ice STAB, and the only real way to win in this position is 2HKOing it with Gliscor Earthquake while tanking two Ice Shards. The silver lining at least is that a healthy Gliscor can well. actually do this lol, not in the least thanks to Froslass having lost Ice Gem compared to Subway, and also that its moves' nonexistent Base Power means it should just about never show up second i.e. no need to worry about positioning as much as usual while taking it down, but yeahhhh while this one may not quite reach perfect counter level it certainly does qualify as a perfect... annoyance? and I'm not at all upset about its rarity or the fact that I have not actually seen it on this run.

This is the point where we can loop back to the story I started this post off with, since the Subway score also put the initial Maison score in some more perspective. The reason why my first loss here stung was not because it happened at all as much as the fact that a genuinely all but perfect counter was what took it down. Rare as it may be, I mean of course it's a rare one when it took 787 battles for it to manage to catch me, its existence alone would add a notable "just dodge the counter lol" component to any future runs that would have made them feel not like a worthwhile challenge as much as just a silly Russian roulette--not a fantastic experience without even getting into the slowness of the team and the resulting massive time commitment of even a single attempt. With that in mind, one could say taking this team to the Subway was not one of my brightest ideas, when the Medicham set in question also existed there and, while still uncommon, was substantially less rare. Thankfully though that is where going into things with a different perspective comes in, since I felt like the opportunity to go see for myself what the Subway was actually like was enough of a reason to go play around with it there, and even if Medicham3 actually did make it too volatile to work, I could hopefully still get a good story out of the experience; with hopefully a not-awful score to go with it as well of course, but there was plenty of context here to really not be too hard on myself expectations wise. At least it wouldn't be fair to hate the game (too much) when I know I'm willingly walking into potential Medicham3 lead sweeps.

And, uh, quite the experience it was. The whole saga of early skill issues and raging against old crits until several attempts led me first to a 280-something record and later to the dream run is documented in the post in the other thread, but what's more important here is how my handling of Chansey changed over time during those runs. Medicham3 was definitely real and iirc it quickly killed two of my early runs, one before Ingo one after and in one of those cases it showed up as a backup. While of course I am powerless at taking precautions against it in the lead position and have no other options than clicking Icicle Spear frame 1 and hoping for the 63% odds (crits included) to roll my way, as a backup, it would miss out on its guaranteed win if my board position upon taking down the first Pokemon was boosted Cloyster not in Bullet Punch range (i.e. not knocked down to Sash) or Gliscor with a Sub. So, like, if a Trainer has Medicham3 on their roster, then just make exactly that happen lol, whatever it takes, no ifs or buts... even if it leads to funny battles where no we do not take down Whiscash3 with +2 Spear or Chansey Toxic but in fact stall it out of Water / Ice PP entirely so that Gliscor can win with its Sub active, and then when the followup ends up being Lanturn3, with Ice Beam's higher effective Base Power giving it switch priority over phantom Medicham3 and its Ice Punch, no we do not use Gliscor's Sub to safely 2HKO it with Earthquake but yes we do in fact go back to Chansey and Growl spam it down to just Discharge and Thunder Wave so that Gliscor can once again maintain that potentially streak-saving Sub. Only of course for the third Pokemon to not in fact be Medicham3 but something wholly unthreatening that very much did not warrant extending this battle to like 80 turns--but obviously it beats an avoidable waste of effort up to that point any day. It was effective to the point that iirc I could count on one hand the number of enemies on potential Medi3 rosters where I was not able to finesse my way to at least Gliscor with Sub, and as for lead Medicham3, only one of those showed up during the dream run, around the midway point (where I won the t1 Spear click coinflip)--call it lucky all you like but it /did/ confirm it was possible for this team to coexist with it and still have win streaks as a worthwhile challenge.

More to the Chansey point though, turned out this was never just about Medicham3 to begin with. Psychics can only bring set 4, but it is not any more fun if you let Chansey Toxic stall lead Froslass only for Medicham4 to show up second and threaten blowing a huge hole into your team, when in fact... yes Chansey does effortlessly stall Froslass down to Struggle as well for you to win with a Gliscor Sub, and what's the point of having infinite Growl PP if you insist on getting Froslass off the screen in six turns anyways? And why were you ever feeding Carracosta to Chansey for "Gliscor is not winning with Sub here" reasons and risking bad times with the flinch machine or unexpected backups when you can also stall Waterfall with Gliscor then Growl it down so that it's actually not breaking Sub anymore? With the existence of hax, there is of course still such a thing as going too far (rule of thumb: stalling Ice Beam is probably a little too cavalier, also be cognisant of the effects certain other added effects can have on your Soft-Boiled PP), but that's the kind of thing you get a feel for and you can ofc still make an exception for Anastasia and PP stall her Espeons and Alakazams because taking chances is bad. Regardless it's an objective improvement when winning with a Gliscor Sub is so much better positioning, and it was the Subway that both taught me the hard way to really find and use these lines whenever I reasonably could and also showed me that the number of cases where you have no choice but to win with Chansey is actually bizarrely low. In hindsight the feeling I had on the first Maison run that I quickly the team figured out properly is just downright embarrassing now, and the thing I remember mentioning about Growl as a Gliscor positioning tool being more of a thing in theory than in practice has aged really poorly.

Anyways, we know how that chapter ends, and the score it got there was obviously one that I felt I could be really proud of but at the same time also overshot my wildest dreams so thoroughly that, should I ever feel like running the team again, it had nothing sane to win anymore in the Subway. The Maison was a different story though, with the way it was ended by an extremely rare threat rather than by a more common enemy or hax or any other sort of dynamic that could affect more average battles. After the initial run, I already was left feeling like it "played like a 1k team", which while probably not actually an uninformed hunch coming from me was still a hunch in the end and on top of that was made even muddier by the existence of The Counter, i.e. not the most responsible thing to gamble potentially up to 100 hours of my life on; however, the Subway experience gave me more than enough context to validate that feeling, since my record there got pretty close to the Maison score in an environment that seems almost designed to be much more hostile to the team. The relevant characteristics of the Subway that were toned down by the Maison are the increased prominence of "any set" Trainers as well as the fact that all "pre-40" sets survive into perpetuity at least on some Trainers, and the thing we should keep in mind about CloyGlisChan is that it's a slow and bulky team, probably not even borderline stall. And as we all know, the stallier a team becomes, the harder it dominates the enemy when it's in control but also the bigger its odds of just hard losing on matchup; which even entirely disregarding the whole old crits thing which also is a nail in the coffin of "stall" of course is far more of a factor in a place where rare sets and forced midground plays are so much more common than here. With these inherent matchup weaknesses mitigated the team's viability would also exponentially increase here, to the point that at least in theory the Subway score should translate to a Maison ceiling that is like. substantially higher than 1k; on top of that, add the improvements in play over the Subway runs as well as tobiuo's helpful input that (surprisingly) I had actually been statistically unlucky to get Medicham3ed within the first 1k (or even 2k) battles, and I had enough reason to believe that 787 was in fact beatable.

"Beatable" and "beaten" are two very different things though, especially for well. a team that reaches like 11 battles per hour on average and does not always do a good job not suffocating the human brain. Which is why I was still absolutely not committing to a new attempt after the Subway runs, with more teams and modes that I wanted to play out there and me having had my fill of Growl spamming for uhhhh evidently not a lifetime but quite a while at least. Other teams and modes came and went, burnout happened and I have a couple new teams I wanna try but burnout is absolutely not conducive for feeling up to actually figuring those out in depth, whereas the occasional set of a team that I both know well and also most of the times requires a lot less brainpower than my other ones is a different matter of course. And at the same time I still have that whole "I probably have not done this team justice yet" thing hanging over my head and that Maison record to set straight, so despite being cognisant of the fact that going all-in on getting this team to 1k at any cost is just not a use of my time that would make me happy, I can, with proper pacing, do one final serious attempt--if I get Medicham3ed again or there turn out to be other niche scenarios out there to once again cut an attempt short before 1k then for better or worse that also makes for an answer to the question of how good this team is at making it to there, and one way or another I'll also have this team out of my system.

So about that, up to the Medicham3 loss this team was in fact undefeated, and right now it actually has a second loss under its belt... I figured I could get away with rushing it just a little bit during the early sets for a headstart, and in like the 70s there was a battle versus a set12 Veteran that sort of went like this.

- Lead Cobalion1 (the Calm Mind one, no I can still never tell them apart either), Gliscor stalls it out of attacking PP as per standard procedure, on the very final turn I click Earthquake for PP conservation flex.
- as I switch back to Cloyster to set up three Shell Smashes Cobalion immunity switches out for Latios, oopsie. Yes I should normally feed this to Chansey for hax odds avoidance especially with Gliscor also pretty drained, but obv I can also just click Smash on it directly to just speed up the battle a lot without hax, since one of the other two Pokemon is already confirmed to be a dead Cobalion walking and both my other Pokemon are alive and able to do things it'll be fine...
- Cloyster does cleanly +2 Spear KO Latios (do not remember the set but if it was set 1 then I was spared Lax Incense moments), Articuno comes in where set 1 also folds to +2 Spear but this time it's set 2 picking off Cloyster with Ice Shard and suddenly, well, frick. Gliscor does in fact beat Articuno2, but we're talking about a fresh or mostly fresh Gliscor there, and with only 12 (or I guess 13 lol!) Sub/Protect PP left after stalling Cobalion, we're cutting it a Lot closer here.
- Gliscor does manage to get rid of Ice Beam and get a Toxic on Articuno that sticks through Lum Berry but only lasts for like two or three rounds of Toxic damage before running out of Sub/Protect PP and going down itself. Plenty of time for Articuno to just inexorably yeet Chansey with Mind Reader + Sheer Cold and that's all she wrote.

Goodness, it's the Subway school of hard knocks all over again. Let me be upfront that yea I do in fact struggle to come up with even a single other third Pokemon that actually could have beaten me in this position (especially with the other Calm Mind + Rest sets out of the picture thanks to Item Clause where a PP-drained Gliscor actually could have made things awkward) but well this is the one I got to deal with while I chose not to take the objectively better Chansey route, not to mention proccing the immunity switch in the first place was an inexcusable noob mistake without which this would have been an entirely clean sweep like hundreds before. I could complain all I want about Articuno of all things showing up here and I would not be factually wrong, but I would still be actually wrong because cutting corners like that is bad lol just don't do it. As always though, the silver lining of throwing before Lansat is that from a "time of my life sunk into this" angle the damage is thankfully very limited, so there is nothing to really do other than go off sulking for a bit and acknowledge that no obviously this does not count as the one Serious attempt left. And to learn from the no cutting corners reminder of course, which uh in fairness I probably still was slow on the uptake on when I almost threw again in the 200s when clicking Toxic into a potential (and soon after confirmed) Shed Skin lastmon Scrafty with a pretty depleted Gliscor but after losing Chansey to it I ended up barely having enough left to stall out all attacking PP, and the longer the streak continued the more consistent I got. Just like last year it's a heinously boring team where almost every battle stays on script with no interesting on the fly decisions to show off, but of course streak proof remains a reason to submit battle videos, and sure we can talk about a small couple more...

#1200: vs. Owner Galton
Proof video, but in a typical case of ongoing streak proof video syndrome, also a completely uneventful one of 4 turns long, as (thankfully....) still tends to happen sometimes even with this Cloyster team. The only thing worth commenting on is that the Smash only happens on second Pokemon Carbink rather than on lead Gourgeist, since that one actually does not actually need the boosts to go down (99,9% odds technically but I'll take my chances...) and preserving the neutral board state and by extension Cloyster's Sash is much better than the very common scenario of a second Pokemon that Cloyster can't beat thus reduces it to death fodder if it can at all be helped. Unless of course Medicham3 is on the roster.

other battles

#1000: vs. Waitress Ilisha
I had this one saved earlier since I didn't know yet if I could be bothered to go all the way to 1200 before submitting the streak, so no reason not to share it when it also has a more insightful lead matchup. Milotic is also at least slightly more interesting than other PP stall into full Cloyster setup victims because I use both Gliscor and Chansey in order to stall it down and potential Competitive means I can't Growl spam it either; so, the plan becomes to force it into a Rest first then go to Gliscor as it still uses Sleep Talk on its wake turn to finish the job cleanly. I guess Cute Charm means Seismic Toss comes with a risk too, but that's very much a theoretical one with how many immobilisation turns Milotic would actually need versus Chansey, to the point that I'd still rather do this than use Toxic for my damage only for Milotic to just forget to click Rest before my setup bait dies lol (it's not common but it happens!). Not to mention that Milotic is so weak that I can in fact totally just hard switch Gliscor into this both on lead and after a cascade of Cute Charm hax if I so choose, but this is more elegant and I guess does a better job keeping Gliscor's HP high just in case for potential disaster scenarios like followup Poliwrath.

For the last couple, I'm not providing any actual recordings because bluntly the literal zero watches they get most of the time are not worth the agony of manually recording ultralong battles when the above are enough to meet the actual burden of proof, but should they need more proper showing then lmk and I'll get over it!

The battle alluded to earlier, where the eight stat points of HP that could potentially be moved to Speed for handling Scrafty more comfortably might have in fact saved my run, though that of course is little more than a footnote in terms of reason for sharing it. The road to winning with a Gliscor Sub against Electivire is a switch-stall with Chansey while keeping Chansey's HP high and Growling it twice along the way to assist with this, as well as using extra Protects with Gliscor to stall Ice Punch quicker and make sure Electivire won't run out of Thunder Punch first and by extension start using random moves i.e. potential Ice Punch on the switch back to Gliscor. Now of course this does come with some hax risks against Chansey, but especially with the buffer from Growl there's a Lot of rolls that need to go its way; you can see where this is going though. Thunder Punch para into immediate full para foils the initial Growl after I've recovered back to full after switching in; out of the good habits to avoid re-rolling full para odds if at all reasonable I skip Growl for now to proc Natural Cure, knowing I can just do the thing on the next switch instead, but two immediate Ice Punch freezes later, Chansey is suddenly at like 40% and in range of Ice Punch + Thunder Punch if I switch it back in again. At this point I do have the option of just clicking Toxic with Gliscor since Electivire is in fact a pile of garbage that needs a crit to actually OHKO Gliscor with Ice Punch, where I also will have enough space to stall out the needed six turns, but with the Toxic miss + crit odds existing and the questionable position I'd be left in after, I decide to take my chances with a final Chansey switch, since Electivire does need high rolls to get the KO here. Anyways, Chansey survives with 7 HP and in the absence of further impactful hax recovers back to full, though since keeping it in for so many turns stops (I think...) me from stalling Ice Punch before Thunder Punch I do just take it out directly with Chansey's Toxic here. Backups Jolteon and Venusaur aren't a problem, and them being the lineup also means that it's questionable how much real danger I ever was in; at least the Gliscor Toxic route still would have worked here about 84% of the time, and even worst case this would have been a simple +2 Cloyster sweep anyway, provided (rather big if in this battle but...) it dodges Thunder Punch paralysis on setup.

This battle is an instance of hyperavoidance of winning with Chansey (almost) backfiring through additional hax I'm forced to risk with those lines and could be considered an argument that stalling out Electivire's Ice Punch like this might in fact be Starmie-stall level cavalier, but while it probably could be considered borderline, I'm still sticking with it I think; TPunch para into instant full para into double Ice Punch freeze is in fact rather unreasonably brutal, and every single one of those rolls did need to happen for me to get into a nasty position. No hard feelings to those who do want to go for Toxic directly though at least against Scientists, since off the top of my head there is not a whole lot they can bring to steal away momentum from Chansey as a second Pokemon. Provided Electivire doesn't land a Thunder Punch para on the final couple Toxic turns of course lol...

Important bit of context that you can't get from just the VS Recorder screen: yes this is Anastasia, so when she rolled up with lead Medicham I thought my number was up even earlier than last run and it was time to roll that good old coinflip with +0 Icicle Spear. I did win the coinflip, but not in the way I expected, since this was in fact Medicham4 and the round of Life Orb recoil put it into guaranteed KO range anyways. This did leave Cloyster death fodder into followup Alakazam4 though; while it was in fact helpless into Gliscor from that point and I got to reassure myself through practice that yes Gliscor + Chansey also stalls out Gengar3 without any real trouble, this was a funny case where the mere spectre of Medicham3 did cheat me out of a simple four-turn win by ruling out Shell Smash, not to mention that (probably not though?) this might have actually gotten awkward on the PP front had this been Zam3.

Case in point why no you are not supposed to win with Chansey against Froslass. While it's still not Medicham that's the followup here, Wailord is hardly any more fun if it shows up directly into Chansey, since there's not really anything better to do here than just try to win against it asap, which in fairness probably works most of the time but also might see Chansey end up eating a Fissure. Gliscor still wins in this position, but it takes enough Sub/Protect PP that a lastmon Milotic can get genuinely awkward with Chansey out of the picture. Obviously though Wailord is pretty much entirely neutered as a threat from the get-go if it switches in on a fresh Gliscor with a Sub, at which point Milotic also can't break Gliscor + Chansey.

Also Quick Feet is a real ability and Life Orb Ice Fang Granbull has it lol, next time when it shows up into Gliscor don't be a derp and finish it off with Earthquake after recoil stalling even if a miss gets you a free Sub. Thankfully the OHKO roll is extremely heavily in Gliscor's favour I guess...

...but that is all I have to say about these runs up to the present day. The future is still a blank and probably will remain for a while longer, in part because well it's a good thing I was never gonna run this back if I lost after a deep run. Maybe I got the time investment / team familiarity balance wrong when deciding to pick this team up in order to play again, since uhhhh yea no sense in sugarcoating this when I already let some subtext to this effect slip through a few times in this post, I really don't even want to think about playing this team right now lol, and I don't even have the "plausible" 1k hanging over my head anymore as a reason to pick it back up. That is not to say this is just going to remain at 1200 forever, since I still think that would be a disservice to the leaderboard in its "approximation of teams' power levels" role, and with this team's performance so far I think it would be dishonest to call 1200 "yea this seems just about right"; at least, without an actual loss. While yes it seems "expected" that there's at least another couple hundreds in the tank here, this is also where this team's stall nature comes into play, more specifically its increased matchup susceptibility. I can't in good conscience make the estimation that "yea enough close calls so far that my luck will run out soon" or "super clean run so far, if I lose in the next couple dozen battles it will be very obviously unlucky" when realistically this team will almost always win on preview but at the same time also actually risk losing if not have the odds outright weighted against it in matchups where it does not. In that sense it's kind of right in the middle between nonlinear teams like Marathon versus the likes of Durant teams, where the latter do a fantastic job accounting for everything possible in the builder but at the same time are up a creek without a paddle if an out there scenario happens they failed to cover proerly ahead of time. Now, of course the good thing is that these matchups are obviously excruciatingly rare, but it also means that if/when they do happen, this team has a bit less room to claw back than Marathon and even Greninja/Mega Scizor/Gliscor, and while for any good team the eventual loss will always be unexpected, I think that applies more strongly than usual here. It might be another Medicham3 that does me in, maybe (if I stick with the +6 Cloyster at the cost of Chansey strat into Walrein) next time Walrein4 + Poliwrath4 will be rounded out by Jynx or Starmie instead, but the fact that that has not happened yet says more about the sheer puny odds of these occurring than about my ability to actually Do something if they do, and there is really no way to tell whether those odds will run out at 1253 or if this team still has plans on asking for my attention for another dozen hundreds battles.

I suppose it helps a lot that I did manage to press on to 1200, since I did scoop up a lot of relevant leaderboard goals with that, and the only remotely nearby target at this point is Greninja/Mega Scizor/Gliscor, i.e. one of my own and there's no one I'd be hovering behind if it does take me a longer while than usual to get back to this. With 1200, I really do have everything I could want out of this team, with getting that new 1k under my belt that I was bummed about missing out on, definitively reestablishing Growl Chansey as an extremely strong set not only on Aegimensey, as well as of course finishing the mission of proving conventional Cloyster's potential by getting it to 1k for the first time and securing the (to the best of my knowledge?) longest Cloyster streak in this community outright; all that's left now is seeing how deep Cloyster's tank actually goes. Or of course I might end up playing some of the other, actually new, ideas I've had that also won't be seeing 100+ hours of actual play. None of those will be in Maison Singles though, since, as much as I hate for this to come off like bragging, now that I'm three out of three on getting serious teams that I've used to four digits plus Marathon's history and legacy, I think it's safe to say there might be actually nothing for me left to do here outside of meme runs (which I would still probably not be doing anyways as long as I have teams and goals elsewhere). For my own sake, that's probably best anyways, with all the rants about timesinks and four-digit brainworms that I've posted both implicitly and upfront.

Again, no clue on when anything of that will happen, but I've been playing a bunch of Zelda again lately specifically because I needed something that was the diametric opposite of battle facilities game experience wise lol, and actually believe me that Four Swords Adventures (of all the Zelda titles to be playing yes exactly....) is actually really fun and that I had not even started my now-completed playthrough yet when 70% of this post was already written. I think that is also my cue to call an end to this post so that I can at least get it out before my mind enters "no cloyglischan on the brain" mode for real, good job keeping it "short" this time Mari. At least I still have that in the tank no matter how long it took me to deliver on it, and there's still at least one final Bermuda Triangle post to follow at a currently unspecified point in the future. Byeeeee!!!

 

[CSPDR4]

Hey people, I've recently bought a copy of Pokémon X to replay the game and I had the idea to start from scratch and breed Pokémon myself the way GameFreak intended. The only "hack" I am using is this patch by zaksabeast which causes my game to believe I have access to all Friend Safari zones. I thought this would be okay because it's impossible to unlock the zones' third slots nowadays after the servers were shut down, and I would probably have made an effort to get access to these myself had I been able to do so legitimately. Access to these zones is crucial as you probably know, because otherwise I would be unable to get many Hidden Abilities like Gale Wings for Talonflame and Adaptability for Crawdaunt and these Pokémon would be unviable without them.

So then my focus shifted to the Battle Maison. I unlocked Super Doubles, and I'm in the process of building teams to take it on. My goal would be 200 wins at first, but if I feel like it I might push for more, or I will try a different format (though Doubles is definitely my favourite).

I currently have 1 "finished" team for Super Doubles:

Team 1 - Mega Mawile + Trick Room

Mawile-Mega (F) @ Mawilite
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Play Rough
- Iron Head
- Sucker Punch
- Protect

Conkeldurr (M) @ Flame Orb
Ability: Guts
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Drain Punch
- Mach Punch
- Facade
- Protect

Greninja (M) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Protean
Level: 50
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Mat Block
- Dark Pulse
- Ice Beam
- Grass Knot

Gothitelle (M) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Frisk
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 100 Def / 156 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Psychic
- Heal Pulse
- Tickle
- Trick Room

Hydreigon @ Choice Specs
Ability: Levitate
Level: 50
EVs: 76 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 172 Spe
Modest Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Dragon Pulse
- Dark Pulse
- Flamethrower

This team is fairly straightforward. For a while I led Greninja + Conkeldurr, but lately I'm more often leading Mawile + Gothitelle, and swapping Greninja out for the Hydreigon (the "5th member"), because I feel like when Greninja isn't leading it's not gonna be a huge boon for the team. Often I find myself setting Trick Room up, and Greninja outspeeds about 90% of the Pokémon we will face so it will just become free food. Hydreigon is kind of fast, and I trained it in its Speed to outspeed 75 base Speed with max investment, but underspeeding everything above that with max Speed investment (78 base Speed is the next relevant stat). Its HP investment allows it to live a Jolly Garchomp's Dragon Claw 100% of the time. Please share your thoughts on this team if you want to.

But this team has one big weakness - it doesn't have any spread damage. I'm not sure if it will come and bite me later that it doesn't, but in the meantime I started building another team. But I'd like some feedback on my ideas for it.

The first team member is basically a lock: Mega Gardevoir.

Mega Gardevoir set

Gardevoir-Mega (F) @ Gardevoirite
Ability: Trace
Level: 50
EVs: 140 HP / 252 SpA / 116 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hyper Voice
- Psyshock
- Energy Ball
- Protect

The set speaks for itself, I think. The third attack is definitely up for discussion - I picked Energy Ball because my (current) team doesn't really have anything for Water types, and especially nothing to hit Water/Ground types. I chose Modest and max Special Attack so I deal as much damage as possible, unboosted. The Speed investment is to outspeed every base 70 with max speed investment, the rest goes into bulk. In Tailwind, it outspeeds every scarfer except the Jolly Choice Scarf Aerodactyl set.

My second team member would be Talonflame (though I haven't bred it yet).

Talonflame set

Talonflame (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Gale Wings
Level: 50
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Brave Bird
- Flare Blitz
- Tailwind
- Quick Guard

I have doubts about this set. I was thinking of running a bulkier Talonflame with Roost over Quick Guard, but Quick Guard's utility can come in clutch, allowing me to ignore Fake Outs, Sucker Punches etc. but it forces me to run max Speed investment, otherwise it does not outspeed the Weavile sets which is the fastest Fake Out-user. I'm not sure which set to pick. Because Gardevoir is the "star" of my team, I think Quick Guard to keep it safe is the better option. But I'd like to hear others' thoughts.

The third team member would be Hydreigon (its set is identical to the one I put in my first team).

Hydreigon set

Hydreigon @ Choice Specs
Ability: Levitate
Level: 50
EVs: 76 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 172 Spe
Modest Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Dragon Pulse
- Dark Pulse
- Flamethrower

So I want to use this guy again, because 1. Hydreigon is one of my favourite Pokémon and 2. its typing matches with Gardevoir really well, offensively. When Tailwind is set up and these two are out, there aren't a lot of Pokémon that can hold up against their assault, except Steel Types. I still choose Flamethrower over Earth Power because I don't want to lock myself into a move that has common immunities.

The main weakness I was worried about at this point was Rock. I already mentioned the Choice Scarf Aerodactyl set that outspeeds everything, and I do not want to put myself in a situation where not getting repeatedly flinched by Rock Slide is the only way I win. So for my last Pokémon, I knew it would have to be something that could take care of it without having to worry about that. So I ended up with Metagross.

Metagross set

Metagross @ Lum Berry
Ability: Clear Body
Level: 50
EVs: 124 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 4 SpD / 124 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Bullet Punch
- Earthquake
- Thunder Punch
- Protect

I was thinking of either this set, or an Agility + Weakness Policy set. But considering consistency is the name of the game, I'm leaning towards the Lum Berry set. Its moves besides Earthquake and Bullet Punch are still a question for me, though. This EV spread lets me outspeed the Choice Scarf Heatran and Charizard sets in Tailwind, and outspeed Electrode.

These would be the 4 Pokémon I'd bring instead of the Mega Mawile team. What do you guys think? Which team has your preference, or do you have general tips or thoughts to share about my sets/teams?

 

[Brucolac]

Hey people, I've recently bought a copy of Pokémon X to replay the game and I had the idea to start from scratch and breed Pokémon myself the way GameFreak intended. The only "hack" I am using is this patch by zaksabeast which causes my game to believe I have access to all Friend Safari zones. I thought this would be okay because it's impossible to unlock the zones' third slots nowadays after the servers were shut down, and I would probably have made an effort to get access to these myself had I been able to do so legitimately. Access to these zones is crucial as you probably know, because otherwise I would be unable to get many Hidden Abilities like Gale Wings for Talonflame and Adaptability for Crawdaunt and these Pokémon would be unviable without them.

So then my focus shifted to the Battle Maison. I unlocked Super Doubles, and I'm in the process of building teams to take it on. My goal would be 200 wins at first, but if I feel like it I might push for more, or I will try a different format (though Doubles is definitely my favourite).

I currently have 1 "finished" team for Super Doubles:

Team 1 - Mega Mawile + Trick Room

Mawile-Mega (F) @ Mawilite
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Play Rough
- Iron Head
- Sucker Punch
- Protect

Conkeldurr (M) @ Flame Orb
Ability: Guts
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Drain Punch
- Mach Punch
- Facade
- Protect

Greninja (M) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Protean
Level: 50
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Mat Block
- Dark Pulse
- Ice Beam
- Grass Knot

Gothitelle (M) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Frisk
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 100 Def / 156 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Psychic
- Heal Pulse
- Tickle
- Trick Room

Hydreigon @ Choice Specs
Ability: Levitate
Level: 50
EVs: 76 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 172 Spe
Modest Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Dragon Pulse
- Dark Pulse
- Flamethrower

This team is fairly straightforward. For a while I led Greninja + Conkeldurr, but lately I'm more often leading Mawile + Gothitelle, and swapping Greninja out for the Hydreigon (the "5th member"), because I feel like when Greninja isn't leading it's not gonna be a huge boon for the team. Often I find myself setting Trick Room up, and Greninja outspeeds about 90% of the Pokémon we will face so it will just become free food. Hydreigon is kind of fast, and I trained it in its Speed to outspeed 75 base Speed with max investment, but underspeeding everything above that with max Speed investment (78 base Speed is the next relevant stat). Its HP investment allows it to live a Jolly Garchomp's Dragon Claw 100% of the time. Please share your thoughts on this team if you want to.

But this team has one big weakness - it doesn't have any spread damage. I'm not sure if it will come and bite me later that it doesn't, but in the meantime I started building another team. But I'd like some feedback on my ideas for it.

The first team member is basically a lock: Mega Gardevoir.

Mega Gardevoir set

Gardevoir-Mega (F) @ Gardevoirite
Ability: Trace
Level: 50
EVs: 140 HP / 252 SpA / 116 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hyper Voice
- Psyshock
- Energy Ball
- Protect

The set speaks for itself, I think. The third attack is definitely up for discussion - I picked Energy Ball because my (current) team doesn't really have anything for Water types, and especially nothing to hit Water/Ground types. I chose Modest and max Special Attack so I deal as much damage as possible, unboosted, The Speed investment is to outspeed every base 70 with max speed investment, the rest goes into bulk. In Tailwind, it outspeeds every scarfer except the Jolly Choice Scarf Aerodactyl set.

My second team member would be Talonflame (though I haven't bred it yet).

Talonflame set

Talonflame (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Gale Wings
Level: 50
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Brave Bird
- Flare Blitz
- Tailwind
- Quick Guard

I have doubts about this set. I was thinking of running a bulkier Talonflame with Roost over Quick Guard, but Quick Guard's utility can come in clutch, allowing me to ignore Fake Outs, Sucker Punches etc. but it forces me to run max Speed investment, otherwise it does not outspeed the Weavile sets which is the fastest Fake Out-user. I'm not sure which set to pick. Because Gardevoir is the "star" of my team, I think Quick Guard to keep it safe is the better option. But I'd like to hear others' thoughts.

The third team member would be Hydreigon (its set is identical to the one I put in my first team).

Hydreigon set

Hydreigon @ Choice Specs
Ability: Levitate
Level: 50
EVs: 76 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 172 Spe
Modest Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Dragon Pulse
- Dark Pulse
- Flamethrower

So I want to use this guy again, because 1. Hydreigon is one of my favourite Pokémon and 2. its typing matches with Gardevoir really well, offensively. When Tailwind is set up and these two are out, there aren't a lot of Pokémon that can hold up against their assault, except Steel Types. I still choose Flamethrower over Earth Power because I don't want to lock myself into a move that has common immunities.

The main weakness I was worried about at this point was Rock. I already mentioned the Choice Scarf Aerodactyl set that outspeeds everything, and I do not want to put myself in a situation where not getting repeatedly flinched by Rock Slide is the only way I win. So for my last Pokémon, I knew it would have to be something that could take care of it without having to worry about that. So I ended up with Metagross.

Metagross set

Metagross @ Lum Berry
Ability: Clear Body
Level: 50
EVs: 124 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 4 SpD / 124 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Bullet Punch
- Earthquake
- Thunder Punch
- Protect

I was thinking of either this set, or an Agility + Weakness Policy set. But considering consistency is the name of the game, I'm leaning towards the Lum Berry set. Its moves besides Earthquake and Bullet Punch are still a question for me, though. This EV spread lets me outspeed the Choice Scarf Heatran and Charizard sets in Tailwind, and outspeed Electrode.

These would be the 4 Pokémon I'd bring instead of the Mega Mawile team. What do you guys think? Which team has your preference, or do you have general tips or thoughts to share about my sets/teams?

Do you really need Quick Guard on Talonflame? With double Protect you also get around Fake Out from Weavile.
Metagross without Iron Head seems to be very weak. If you are going for priority then maybe Scizor would be the better option? Also you could consider using LO on that slot. And something else on the Talonflame, probably attack boosting (or Eject Button).
Other than that it looks solid to me, speed control, hard hitting stuff and good defensive synergy.

About the Greninja team I am not so sure. TR next to fast mons?

 

[CSPDR4]

Do you really need Quick Guard on Talonflame? With double Protect you also get around Fake Out from Weavile.
Metagross without Iron Head seems to be very weak. If you are going for priority then maybe Scizor would be the better option? Also you could consider using LO on that slot. And something else on the Talonflame, probably attack boosting (or Eject Button).
Other than that it looks solid to me, speed control, hard hitting stuff and good defensive synergy.

While double protect certainly works, I'd have to deal with a faster Weavile the turn after because I haven't set up Tailwind yet. But if I run Quick Guard, I just press that + Hyper Voice and bye-bye Weavile. While sure, that's just one Pokémon and I'm not likely to run into it a lot so maybe I'm too worried about it. But I can see Quick Guard having utility beyond just that Pokémon, it's just that if I choose to run it I'm basically forced to max Talonflame's Speed.

What would you say about a bulkier Adamant Talonflame with little to no Speed investment with Roost to stick around longer? Or is Protect really the best in your opinion?

And about Metagross; I could run Iron Head over Thunder Punch, I mostly put Thunder Punch for stuff like Gyarados and Skarmory which would otherwise über-wall it. I was also considering Scizor for its amazing Bullet Punches that OHKO any Aerodactyl set, but it's 4x weak to Fire and does not actually resist Rock. It's also walled by most Steel types, even moreso than Metagross. So I'm not sure I'd rather use it here. I'll probably breed a Scizor and run it for a few battles sometime, to see how it does.

About the Greninja team I am not so sure. TR next to fast mons?

Yeahhh... At first when I made this team the idea was to lead Greninja and Conkeldurr, Mat Block when necessary so my Conkeldurr gets its Guts boost safely at the end of the turn. But I figured having Mega Mawile on the field turn 1 to threaten its devastating damage with Gothitelle next to it to keep it alive and use Trick Room worked better most of the time. So that's why I usually don't bring Greninja in that mode, and pick the Hydreigon which, sure, is fast but not nearly as fast, it will still underspeed plenty of Pokémon.

 

[Brucolac]

Thunderpunch on Meta does not seem so bad. Without it, it is also walled by waters, which the rest of your team also is not so well equipped against. Maybe you could skip EQ? You already have a strong spread move, and EQs power without any multipliers is quite underwhelming.
Concerning Weavile, it has Sash, so Hyper Voice does not kill it anyways. To me it seems like Weavile might be annoying to your team but probably there are bigger threats? I have no experience with Talonflame, so I am not sure if the bulk pays out.
Maybe you do not need to be that worried about Aerodactyl as well. You have a very consistent TW setter, and so not having Tailwind up + getting flinched already is quite a niche scenario. I think about one team of mine where I thought: Oh but Scarf Terrakion outspeeds my Heatran in Tailwind, that will lead to desaster. In the end it did not matter over hundreds of battles, only once I had to do a safety Protect. So, I think focussing on mons that only under certain circumstances become threating may be wasted effort at this point. Instead I'd recommend to just build and run the team. To me it looks like a quite solid start, and from there you can see how it goes?

 

[CSPDR4]

Thunderpunch on Meta does not seem so bad. Without it, it is also walled by waters, which the rest of your team also is not so well equipped against. Maybe you could skip EQ? You already have a strong spread move, and EQs power without any multipliers is quite underwhelming.
Concerning Weavile, it has Sash, so Hyper Voice does not kill it anyways. To me it seems like Weavile might be annoying to your team but probably there are bigger threats? I have no experience with Talonflame, so I am not sure if the bulk pays out.
Maybe you do not need to be that worried about Aerodactyl as well. You have a very consistent TW setter, and so not having Tailwind up + getting flinched already is quite a niche scenario. I think about one team of mine where I thought: Oh but Scarf Terrakion outspeeds my Heatran in Tailwind, that will lead to desaster. In the end it did not matter over hundreds of battles, only once I had to do a safety Protect. So, I think focussing on mons that only under certain circumstances become threating may be wasted effort at this point. Instead I'd recommend to just build and run the team. To me it looks like a quite solid start, and from there you can see how it goes?

I hadn't even thought to check the held items, 2 out of 4 Weavile sets indeed have a Focus Sash, so yeah, you're right that that wouldn't even work most of the time. Thank you for your input!

 

[tobiuo]

It’s over, I didn’t make it—the dream is dead at 9226 without even the satisfaction of a loss. I steamed the last few stretches from 9141-9160, 9161-9190, 9191-9220, and 9221-9227 when recording started acting up midway through #9227’s Donphan4 lead and the game didn’t return to the overworld after (winning, obviously) that battle. (And tbc this was after ~15hish of testing, including triples and rotations 1-50s runs to finish my trophy collection, so I thought it was stable Enough… I was wrong.)

I don’t have anything particularly new to say at this point. I’m happy enough with the recordings as an adequate representation of what the “highest level” of Maison singles play looks like. For a brief moment there, it really looked like a good chance that we were going to make it.
I think y’all’ll understand if I’m not eager to reattempt a two-year run anytime this decade tho

 

[Noah3475]

I don’t have anything particularly new to say at this point. I’m happy enough with the recordings as an adequate representation of what the “highest level” of Maison singles play looks like. For a brief moment there, it really looked like a good chance that we were going to make it.
I think y’all’ll understand if I’m not eager to reattempt a two-year run anytime this decade tho

I hope someone takes up your mantle, though I have no interest in doing so, as I am consumed by other campaigns and I lack mastery of all the Maison has to offer.
Is the win counter known to stop at 9999 wins, or is it an assumption due to workings of other battle facilities or the Battle Point counter stopping at that amount?