006 It's Tricky...

When the battle started against BNSPokeMstr, I wasn't exactly sure what a lead Espeon would do, but when I saw Trick Room, I started to worry, since my slowest Pokemon at the time was Scizor, and it was still of average speed.  Then I realized that priority moves will always be priority moves regardless of whether Trick Room was active, so that kind of eased the concern a bit.  Still, I didn't want to have a Curselax on the opposing side make things difficult for my mostly physical offense team, so I decided to take it out with an Explosion as soon as I could.

I'm not sure why for the blind switch I went for Gyarados instead of something that had a priority move.  I had no idea what speed of a Pokemon I should try to underspeed as the case may be.  Scizor could have handled the issue best with the aforementioned average speed and priority attack.  I didn't have my Gyarados use Dragon Dance because I was thinking that Heracross was running minimum speed, which would allow it to go first in Trick Room, and likely use Stone Edge, so I wanted to get in some damage before Heracross could 2 hit KO Gyarados (ignoring the critical hit factor).  I turns out that I did go first, though.  Either way, it was a good decision because if I did use Dragon Dance, I would have been hit, probably, by two Stone Edges before I could have my Gyarados attack.  As it turns out, though, this Heracross did not carry Stone Edge (or at least thought that I might switch) but still manages to get a critical hit.  I return the favour by giving my opponent flinch hax.  And then, Trick Room ends, meaning that I wouldn't be knocking out Heracross before taking another hit.

Seeing Ampharos enter meant that I should switch out to something with better special defense, so I chose Latias to take the attack, seeing as how it has a resistance to Thunderbolt.  I didn't expect Thunder, though, and that still managed to take off a little less than a third of Latias' maximum HP.  I also forgot that Ampharos had pretty decent special defense as well, but luckily Latias dealt a critical hit with its STAB move.

Once Ampharos fainted, BNSPokeMstr summoned Espeon again.  I was hoping that Dragon Pulse would KO Espeon before it could use Trick Room again, but to no avail.  Since Latias' speed was way too high to be useful in Trick Room, I switched to my Scizor.  However, Espeon used Trick Room again to restore the dimensions.  I had never seen that tactic used before, but then again, I rarely faced Trick Room teams up to this point.

I commanded Scizor to Pursuit, hoping that Espeon would retreat, but it didn't.  Luckily, Choice Band Scizor was still able to deal enough damage to KO Espeon anyway.  When Lapras was called in, I immediately thought it would use a Water move, so I decided to switch back to Gyarados. 

However, BNSPokeMstr used Thunderbolt instead, figuring I would probably switch into Gyarados or another Water-type.  Should I have switched back into Latias?  Maybe not.  The Lapras could have had Ice Beam, and Lapras had a higher HP and Special Defense stat than Ampharos, meaning that I could have lost Latias... and if Lapras had Shell Armor, I wouldn't have been able to rely on a critical hit.

With Gyarados gone, I could now have a free switch in, so I chose Lucario and hoped that its STAB Close Combat would be enough to defeat a Lapras at about 80% remaining HP.  I'm not sure why BNSPokeMstr didn't switch out, though.  Maybe a Swords Dance was predicted.  Even if Lapras didn't fall to Close Combat, Scizor could have come in for the revenge kill with its Bullet Punch.

BNSPokeMstr had one Pokemon left, which was Altaria.  Knowing that I have Latias and Salamence still in tow, I knew I had this battle won.  I just made sure that Lucario did as much damage as it could with Extremespeed before going down.  After Lucario fell to Flamethrower, I sent out my Latias, since I didn't really feel like showcasing Salamence when I didn't need to.

This was a pretty fun battle.  It was nice to see people trying out other types of teams to see the viability of its use in the competitive environment.

Until next time, protect the world from devastation!