So, as my loyal readership can see, I have not made any updates, nor have I even been playing my copy of sapphire for a while. But just for a quick update
I was able to get to gym #4 (Norman –normal type) cleared out all the trainers, but I lost 2 numels getting there, one to random a trainer with explosion and another to a critical hit. I battled Norman, and defeated his first slaking pretty handily, but in switched his vigoroth with vital spirit and before to long, two of my essential teammates had been KO’d. I’m sorry to say that I ragequitted and have not picked up my Sapphire game since then, so I do not even remember who I currently have on my team.
In the mean time I was getting ready to make a massive trade over from my copy of diamond to soul silver. This preparation included giving my good monsters in diamond items that I wanted transferred, and catching an equal number of dummy pokemon on soul silver to make the trades with. I need give a big thank you to my brother-in-law for letting me borrow his DS so that I could transfer 3 boxes worth of pokemon (about 90 monsters) between my two games, a task that took about 2 ½ hours.
Since that was completed, I have been working on finishing off some teams that I dreamed up. I’ll put them up as I finish them, I have already completed a hail team, and I just finished a more standardized team, and am working on a sun based team and another slightly unorthodox team that I just call my croteam.
I’ll post the one that I just finished:
My lead is a Swampert with ice beam, earthquake, protect and stealth rock. It is out there to get stealth rock and abuse it’s great resistances and type coverage, and act as a goto pokemon as the battle goes on.
Next I have a Magnezone with discharge, substitute, magnet rise and tri attack for hitting grounds, it acts as a steel trapper with magnet pull and can surprise a few opponents with magnet rise to avoid earthquakes.
I put a Dusknoir on this team as well, with pain split for healing; will-o-wisp, shadow sneak, and brick break from some coverage and screen breaking. This dusknoir lives to burn things and pick things off with STAB shadow sneak, and then to stick around by abusing pain split.
Next is the Red Gyrados who takes the role of a bulky gyrados with taunt, dragon dance, waterfall and bounce for STAB. This gyrados acts as a check for lots of things and stops stat boosters with taunt and has more defense and hit points to take hits.
I have a revenge killer with Flygon holding a choice scarf to boost its speed and hopefully make a killing with outrage, earthquake, stone edge, and scout with u-turn. With good typing and u-turn it will have many opportunities to come in and wreak havoc.
Just a note about the game: Revenge Killing. In the game of Pokemon, if an opponent KO’s one of my monsters, on the following turn, I can switch in another monster on my team without it taking an attack (which is different from the standard switching in a battle). Because of this, many players have taken to crafting ‘Revenge killing’ pokemon to go on their teams. These are typically very fast monsters with high [special] attack, and can typically be wearing a choice scarf to give them the extra speed to strike first. My fast Flygon can hopefully KO whatever is out, or scare it away, effectively preventing it from becoming a problem. Other revenge killers have trapping abilities like Wobboffet (but its use it typically frowned upon) or Dugtrio or even Trapinch, or make use of the move pursuit to prevent their prey from escaping because it deals extra damage to monsters that switch out, these include Tyranitar or Weavile. Flygon operates slightly differently, with the move u-turn, if I predict that the monster is not going to remain in to take a potential outrage or earthquake I can u-turn to deal a little damage, and then see what switches in to take the hit, so I can then select what to switch in, rather than just try to blindly out guess my opponent.
Finally the star of this team is a swords dance Lucario with close combat, extreme speed and crunch for coverage of ghosts and psychics. The team exists to (hopefully) weaken or KO checks to Lucario so that it can perform a clean sweep of a weakened opposing team.
