002 The team is revealed

Now begins my first true T-Flare member match recorded for YouTube.

The team I had for this battle will pretty much remain fundamentally unchanged until after Battle 061, I believe.  Minor changes have happened along the way, but for now, let's take a look at my battle against pimpkirby.

I was a little concerned when I saw a lead Lopunny.  Lopunny usually use the Klutz ability, meaning that it most likely had a detrimental item ready to be switched with its opponent.  I was kind of hoping it would be a Toxic Orb, as my lead Metagross would not be affected by it, but it turns out it was a Flame Orb.  Once I saw those Agilities, I suspected that a Baton Pass was going to occur, so I was hoping to stop it by switching into my Gyarados and using Taunt, but unfortunately, pimpkirby saw that coming and decided to Baton Pass right away.  I began to think the opposing team was entirely based off getting a lot of passes to the final receiver for a sweep, but that turned out not to be the case once the Tyranitar was sent out.  I was pretty sure Tyranitar did not possess Baton Pass, but a Tyranitar with a lot of extra speed is pretty scary.

I didn't realize that Tyranitar would be using Thunder, especially since it has reduced accuracy in a sandstorm, but it would still be devastating against Gyarados.  I think I kept Gyarados in because I was gambling on the fact that Thunder would miss again, and I could get in another Dragon Dance and then begin using Waterfall or Return on the rest of the Pokemon, but obviously that didn't work.  Losing Gyarados early might have given pimpkirby a great advantage as now the speedy Tyranitar could probably use Ice Beam/Blizzard on my Salamence, Dark Pulse on my Latias, and Flamethrower/Fire Blast on my three Steel Pokemon.  This is, of course, an assumption on what moves the Tyranitar has, but given that it had Thunder, it might stand that the Tyranitar was a special sweeper.

My best option was to use a priority move to overcome the speed difference.  Metagross, Scizor, and Lucario all had Bullet Punch at the time, so the decision came down to Scizor, given its Technician ability and its Choice Band, as opposed to Metagross' burn and Lucario's lower Attack stat.  I lucked out with the critical hit, as damage calculations show the minimum damage being slightly less than 100%.

Once the opponent's Metagross switched in, I anticipated an Earthquake, so I switched into Salamence to avoid it, although in retrospect it may have been better to switch into Latias, as it would resist a Thunderpunch which could also have been aimed at Scizor.  Salamence also could not Intimidate Metagross, so that ability did not come in handy.  Sadly, Salamence was unable to knock out one Pokemon this battle, but it did help weaken one.

Latias was able to finish off the Metagross, but had to switch out when the Toxicroak appeared.  The Dry Skin ability would have made the Surf heal the Stealth Rock damage, and Latias was Choice Scarfed, leaving me no choice but to switch out and allow him to set up.  My opponent probably knew Latias had a Scarf, given the popularity of it at the time, and set up the Swords Dance with little worry of another attack like Psychic to ruin the Toxicroak's fun.

I switched to Lucario in order to lure out a Fighting attack.  I switched back to Latias with the intention of taking a resisted attack, but I had not taken into account the boost from the Swords Dance which was a pretty poor decision.  As a result, Choice Scarf Latias was unable to take out Toxicroak due to the super effective priority move.  Essentially, both of my Dragon Pokemon were only able to defeat one Pokemon between them, which was not a good sign.  With Gyarados gone as well, I had no more Ground immunities or Fire resistances, which meant that the rest of the team was going to be in trouble if those moves were still available to my opponent.  My best bet would be reliance on priority moves on faster opponents and hoping that the opposing Pokemon do not resist them.

Even though Metagross was burned, it was the only one who could deal super effective damage to the Toxicroak who was standing there.  Metagross had enough HP to take a +2 Sucker Punch, but I wasn't sure if it could take a +2 STAB Cross Chop.  I guess pimpkirby thought I was going to use Bullet Punch instead of Earthquake, so the only way to beat my priority was to use priority as well, given that Toxicroak has a higher speed stat than Metagross.  I was not confident in having a burned Metagross' Bullet Punch to deal all the necessary damage to Toxicroak.

Once that Lopunny appeared again, I knew I needed to stop another Agility pass, so I went for the Explosion to defeat Lopunny.  Even in its burned state, Metagross still packed enough power to KO the Lopunny at full health, but the critical hit could have also meant a critical hit to pimpkirby's strategy.  Okay, so maybe it wasn't the core strategy, but just go with it.

Without any Pokemon on the field, we both had to switch in without knowing what the other was going to do.  While pimpkirby knew that I had Scizor and Lucario remaining, I had no idea what Pokemon remained on the other side.  Steelix, a physical wall, was brought out on the opposing side, while I brought out Scizor.  Steelix could have been a problem if it used Earthquake on Lucario so I'm glad that I decided on Scizor.  I found it odd that Steelix used Stealth Rock, though, especially this close to the endgame, if we weren't already in it.  Lucario has a double resistance to Stealth Rock.  Maybe pimpkirby thought that Lucario was wearing a Focus Sash and wanted to break it.

Once Steelix fell to two Superpower attacks, pimpkirby was left with Armaldo, a Rock/Bug Pokemon which would have a weakness to Bullet Punch, so I decided to switch into Lucario given that Scizor has already had its attack lowered twice and was locked in a neutral Superpower.  After Armaldo used Rock Polish during Lucario's switch-in, pimpkirby realized that Armaldo had a Choice Scarf on, making it impossible to choose an attacking move to defeat Lucario and Scizor, and with no switches possible given that Armaldo was the last Pokemon, there was nothing pimpkirby could do but run (or struggle once the Rock Polish PP runs out, but by then Lucario would have used Bullet Punch already).

My first victory against a T-Flare member ended as a 2-1, and despite some mistakes I may have made in this battle, I was feeling confident that I could defeat my next opponent.  I still needed to create this video, but I really didn't feel like doing the double recording method that I did the last time.  I was looking at my music folder and found that I had a remix of the battle music from original Pokemon Game Boy games, so I used that as the background music.  I didn't really think I needed to edit the music to make it flow through the whole battle, which is why this is the only battle of mine where you will hear the "transition from field to battle view" ditty twice in the same video.  The battle also took a little longer than my first one, making me exceed ten minutes, so I decided to try speeding the video up, and that seemed to do the trick, and allows the flow of the battle to be more intense.  It typically doesn't take 6 seconds to read "The foe's Tyranitar fainted!" and at least this way I wouldn't have to repeat the music more times than necessary.

That's pretty much all I have to say about this battle, so until next time, extend our reach to the stars above!