{ === + === }
Alright, training time.
After orientation, I am slotted into training with the Magnemites, largely because the Magnemite hover height is roughly equal to Ponyta kicking height, so there's less to adjust.
First order of business for me is to get a sense of where P-A and P-B will be slotted. If they get slotted, I will not be their controlling trainer, so the less I try to micromanage this the better.
To that end, the first day for me is just spent getting a sense of who usually does what while the Ponytas enjoy working out on the new equipment, under the watchful eye of an Ironwrecker handler.
The results:
In any given team: the Honedge family tend to be the starters, with the Magnemite and Aron families as special and physical sweepers respectively. Scythers and Scizors are few and far between, but when they get slotted they tend to be pickets or second starters with Honedges.
I probably should not mix my terminology like that. Magnemite and Aron families are anchors.
So, backing up:
Starters tend to be the first out in a match. They rarely stick around for the entire fight, and are on-field pretty much just to scope out the opponent–what their Moves are, how they maneuver, their quirks, so on, so forth.
Pickets go after Starters, and are all about taking advantage of situational openings, or else jostling for position for an easy switch. There's no easy corollary to this in the game, since the games are turn based, but I guess they would be ones setting obstacles–Spikes, Stealth Rock, so on, so forth. Controlling the stage to an extent.
Anchors are the big damage dealers and stay on-field the longest. As I mentioned, they're the Sweepers, specced to finish the fight, and are arguably the showrunners in terms of a Team's advertising and branding. Reason why I'm trying to separate them from the game-term of a Sweeper is that…take an Alakazam, for example. Best case in game, max EVs on special attack, speed. Here, high special attack, good speed, good stamina, good reflexes, so on, so forth. A certain amount of ability to stay on-field is expected, rather than just implied, and thus the training has to account for that.
It's as straightforward as it sounds, really. The roles aren't set in stone, but they do decide, to an extent, how a Pokemon is trained. Let's take Honedge as an example and, for the sake of simplicity, ignore movesets for now. A Starter Honedge would focus heavily on deflection, evasion, and parrying actions to maximize on-field time. A Picket Honedge focuses instead on accuracy, linear speed, and striking power, so when they get on field they can score the kill as quickly as possible and then go home. An Anchor Honedge, then, is somewhere in the middle, with the average being roughly 70% of a Starter's endurance and 70% of a Picket's striking power. Ergo, they're the hardest to train effectively, especially when you consider IVs and growth caps and rates of decay, so on, so forth.
In that vein, a good Anchor, rather than someone shoehorned into the role, is considered optimal for team balance. There are lots of Anchor Preparation Tutoring Services, though not called as such.
…
So, all that probably makes more sense with a showmatch. It's a mirror match between two three man teams, Honedge-Scyther-Lairon (trainer in Red Bandana), Honedge-Magnemite-Lairon (trainer in Blue Bandana).
The Honedges are sent out first, and they take the field largely to give the trainers time to scope each other out. Red side seems to favor moving to his right, because he has to constantly check himself so he doesn't run too closely to Blue, who is moving to his left.
The ring this time is just a big circle. Different Circuits have different ring designs, different rules on how far a trainer can move from their starting box, so on, so forth.
Either way, Red and Blue feel each other out enough, and both switch to their Pickets. Scyther versus Magneton. The Scyther has Brick Break, so it's able to deal some damage if it gets close. The Magneton is not interested in letting it get close, so it's spamming Shockwaves, which are incredibly fast, true to their never-miss nature.
The Scyther digs into the ground with its tail to help ground itself against the shocks, and wherever the Magneton stopped shooting it would zip right up into its face as fast as possible. Like Swift, Shockwave too has accuracy issues at melee range, so the Magneton is forced to try other things to fight at that distance.
Thus, the Scyther scopes out all of Magneton's moves, and pressures it hard enough so it's near the left side of the ring, close to Red. As Blue hustles to reposition, Scyther U-Turns against the Magneton and switches with the Lairon in a heartbeat.
Since the Scyther had just forced the Magneton to Spark at melee range, the Magneton suddenly had nothing to tackle, and it surges dangerously close to the ground before catching itself. The gap in timing lets the much slower Lairon to come out and close in. The Magneton doesn't have the time to switch to another move, so it follows through on the Spark against the Lairon's Defense even as it gets pinned and then Bulldozed to death. 'death'.
The Magneton is out, so Blue switches in Honedge again, as Red swaps back to Scyther. Now, in real life, there is chip damage and grazing hits, so the Scyther is in a pretty bad shape. Scythers are good in melee combat, but Honedges are masters at blade-to-blade combat, so the Honedge comes out on top long enough to force Red to swap to Honedge as well.
Again, this is a weakness of a mirror match within the team, in that there's very little variation, so it's just a chipping fight until both sides swap to their Lairons. Ultimately, Red wins due to having more health: because he was able to keep his Scyther in the fight until the end, he got better positioning against Blue's Lairon via judicious uses of U-Turn.
For the record, Teams in general do practice against other Typings, just usually not on their own turf–gotta pay someone and travel there, and the like.
But, yeah. Also, the Magneton had some serious side-eye on that incredibly smug Lairon after the fight. I think they were rivals.
The roles are not set in stone, and adaptations will happen and will have to happen, but it's a good place to start and train into to get a general sense of where a Pokemon will be on a team.
The general agreement among the team is that the Ponytas are best as Starters or Pickets, so that's at least the starting position.
I'm allocated a Lairon for Picket training, and a Magneton for Starter training. Only when they are not busy, though.
…
…
So, after three days, I have a problem.
Ponyta's strongest kicks are a horse's back leg kicks, but back kicks are naturally defensive in nature, and there's not much we can do about that.
My problem is that I don't have access to Swift(reliably), and P-A and P-B are both really bad at Ember. I didn't have them practice it before because of time issues but woooow I made an amazing decision back there.
They'll probably get better at it, begrudgingly, if I get them to do it more, but, eh, time issues.
I guess…well, if shoot and lure doesn't work, then lure and lure? P-A has a very taunt-y Leer and P-B has good body mechanics, so maybe it works that way.
But if it works that way then they're basically useless against a shooter, which means they can't zone very well. Hrm.
Oh well, let's just see what happens.
…
[End of the Week]
…
Not great.
Leer and body mechanics are really good at luring in physical attackers, but special attackers zone us out. We can only do good things with a pin, but we're supposed to be the pin in the first place.
Bleeeh.
Well, whatever. Just need to figure something else out.
And just because I haven't really touched on it: TMs, the things you use to teach moves, are not rare. The entire suite of TMs can be loaned from a Ranger's office at a reasonable cost. It's generally considered a faux pas to use TMs anywhere other than the end of the training. Like, 90% of the training, planning, and skillset has been nailed down and practiced, it just needs that last little bit.
…I would say that's out of line with how things like Earthquake, Fire Blast, and so on are used, but now that I think about it the top line competitive TMs don't get used much, if at all. They're useful, but very few Pokemon have the power required to make good use of them. As in, 'standing still in order to unleash a Fire Blast' is not good use.
A Pokemon's energy isn't cleanly divided between its move PP pools, and all that.
So, long story short, I have no business getting, or else requesting the Ironwreckers to get TMs for P-A and P-B unless I'm at the point where they need it, and I'm not anywhere close.
Training for Ember at this point would be too slow, hmm.
Reversal, maybe?
There's a lot of moves and variations of moves, and I don't remember all of them. If we had a few months of prep time, like is normal for a C3, I could do extensive research, travel, network, do all that jazz to get the parts together, but…
…oh well, play with the hand we're dealt.
I mentioned before that P-A could possibly learn Thunderwave if she wanted to, but she doesn't want to, so that's out. Pokemon do instinctively know about badges and the rank they confer, so a badged trainer can get more loyalty (begrudgingly) and kind of force the issue, but that's not me, so…
Hmmmmmmmm.
…
[Three More Days]
…
Yep, nope, it's not working.
The Ponytas are so skewed towards physical attributes that they can get zoned out by special attackers without effort, and their physicals are not so impressive that they can out-chip a Lairon.
Everything points to them being a poor fit for this team composition.
Well, knowing that, what next?
Let's take a step back.
Lairons are big, beefy, and great at dealing damage, but they have issues closing in if there's a big enough physical disparity. In other words, they get zoned by special attackers, but have enough presence and raw power to make tailoring tactics around them worth it.
Scythers are fast, nimble, high risk, high reward. Of the things that they're good at they're really good at.
Honedges are kinda similar. Only good at a few things but very good at those few things.
No point talking about the special attackers because we're not replacing those roles.
Either way, given that, the Ponytas are currently only good at a few things but also not really standout in those few things. In that case…
…in that case, we're going to be glue, aren't we?
…good glue. Oh god, what's a term for this that isn't bad for horses
Uh
Uh
Uh
…shit I can't think of anything
Oh no
…
I mean, we're not tanks, we're not damage dealers, not agile, not mobile, not hostile. Jack of all trades, I guess? Thinking back on it, the team could use someone that's not quite as fragile as a Honedge as a Starter.
…That might not be a bad idea. I don't have the time to get P-A and P-B to specialize, so let's just not specialize. Not as agile but bulkier, not as strong but more flexible, and we add fire attacks to the mix, which definitely ups the team's variety.
Ok, let's do that. Let's not worry about standing above the guys who have trained for months and years with just a few weeks. I'd like to say this is training for the Anchor role, but realistically it's just giving up.
Giving up is an amazing tactic sometimes.
…
[Start of C3 Season]
…
Sadly, we missed the first C3. Preparations were just not on par.
Still, getting into the second C3 isn't bad.
The Circuit: Lion Laurel League (C3), because it was (and is) sponsored by the Shalour City Zoo. It's kind of a unique circuit in that all gyms are in Shalour–usually there's neighboring cities and all that.
There are ten gyms in the circuit, four Opens and six C3s. It's a mishmash of typing and styles.
The first gym, per Shalour's specialty, is a fighting gym.
The Ironwreckers are sending seven people, four T1s and three T2s. We're in the T2 group. A Tier (T) is just shorthand for the person's rank in the team. It's unofficial official (read: not endorsed by the IPL but universally used) and differs per team. In general most teams have three ranks, with 1 being the most prestigious.
Anyways, P-A is active and P-B in reserve. Our participating team is: P-A, Scyther, Lairon. We're taking the Starter role, because, as the trainer himself said, Jiminy Critmas is out sick.
I have no idea how Honedges can get sick, but it was floating around kinda wilted-like, so I'll take his word for it.
Also P-A and P-B got real names! Voted and agreed upon by the team. P-A is now Palla, and P-B is now Bolero. Not really my style to be honest, but the Ponytas like it, so whatever works.
And, yeah, names are nicknames for Pokemon, they have to agree on it before they'll respond to it.
Anyhoo, we're in the…match 26? Of the day. Qualifiers. This gym is a strict challenger versus gym setup.
Per the agreement, I'm just watching.
…
[The Match]
…
Our side: Ponyta, Scyther, Lairon.
Their side: Machop, Mienfoo, Machoke.
…
Palla's up first, versus Mienfoo. Starter wars. Palla is a horse, and Mienshao is a bipedal martial art cat ferret. It's not very tall.
The Mienfoo is very fast, but Palla's no slouch. The Mienfoo keeps trying to get into Palla's blindspot.
The Mienfoo runs a little too hard and ends up right behind Palla. Double Horse Back Kick.
Stomp.
Machop up next. It's more defensive. Frankly speaking, Palla sucks on offense. She managed to learn Flame Charge, but with the Machop being so guarded, charging in is just asking to get punished.
She gets an ok angle and charges in, misses entirely, and gets bonked on the head for her troubles. This continues for a few exchanges before she's swapped out. I don't think she made any meaningful contact, especially since she became more and more flustered after the first failed attack.
Scyther comes out. It has Aerial Ace, but, again, moves and countermoves hit simultaneously, so a bad move gets a bug punished.
There's a jostling for position. Scyther is extremely agile compared to Machop, but it's physically larger and its blade arm has a slower swing compared to Machop's arms. This forces Scyther to flutter around and poke and prod at Machop's defense, testing it piece by piece. It takes a good while before Scyther can get in with an excellent Aerial Ace, taking a glancing Revenge hit to one of its wings. It did air-dive in, though, so that glancing hit crashes it to the ground, so it needs to scramble back for a return position as both swap out.
Palla versus Machoke. Lairon has problems against Fighting types in general, so Palla's expected to do some whittling.
The match starts with the Machoke immediately running at Palla
Ohshit they're a grappler RUN PALLA RUN
Palla is not used to having a big dude running at her, arms outstretched.
Palla is now running around the field. It's not big enough for her to go into a full gallop, so she can't quite shake him off.
Fear aside, that's quite clever. Palla doesn't have the time to calm down and retaliate, and the Machoke isn't revealing any of its moves. The only thing we know about it is that it's fast on its feet.
Eventually, Palla makes enough distance to aim a Double Horse Back Kick despite the trainer warning her not to. Machoke takes the kick, grabs her by the hindquarters, and Seismic Tosses her like a wrestler, both falling to the floor. It then springs back up and is on top of the struggling Palla in seconds. She then gets immediately Recalled because that distance is seriously bad.
Now, she was nowhere near the trainer, so that's considered an out–she's not in this fight anymore. Not recalling a pokemon when it's within seconds of being beaten down one-sidedly is a faux-pas, so nobody's faulting the trainer here.
…To explain further, because I'm sure I haven't at this point: switching out Pokemon is common, per the whole Starter-Picket-Anchor role delegation. There is a maximum range that a Pokemon can be from the trainer, referred to as the Recall range. A Pokemon pulled back beyond that range is considered down by technicality. This is to stop certain tactics like a Rhydon charging from across the map, doing damage, getting pulled back, and then doing it again.
It's also a nod to Real Battles In The Wild, where being too far from a trainer dramatically increases a Pokemon's chance of taking serious injuries or deaths. If Palla got pinned by a Machoke like that in the wild, in the time it takes for a trainer to throw the ball and call her back, or to get in range of the recall beam, she would've taken more than a dozen of a Machoke's punches. She would be dead.
Anyways.
Lairon versus Machoke. While attack and counters happen simultaneously, Lairons lack the innate agility to spin around fast. Machokes are more nimble, so a few Low Kicks to Lairon's backside and he's out.
…
On one hand, kinda sucks we lost the match. On the other, not surprised. Palla pulled her weight more than expected, but the general lack of lateral agility in the team is very obvious.
Or, rather, we knew it was going to be a problem, but there were not enough Magnemites that could perform at the C3 level, so, yeah.
Magnetons are elsewhere.
Ultimately, all the T2s lost, and only two T1s passed the first round, only to lose during the second round. Hawluchas are kind of insane. A Lairon chomped onto one of these Luchador Parakeets and got punched in the throat for his troubles.
There are three other gyms in the Circuit that are Fighting Types, so we can write them off as possibilities right off the bat. Why did a Steel Team choose to challenge a primarily Fighting Circuit?
While the Ironwreckers did have agreements, when the time came the other teams did not have well-trained Pokemon to lend, therefore none were borrowed. It's like taking a Lv 5 Wooper into a Lv 20 gym. That Wooper's just there for morale support.
Unrelated: Wooper-specific cheering pom-poms exist. They go around the head and are designed like antennas with hollow rubber balls on the end, so they don't get badly affected by a Wooper's natural slime. When Woopers jump up and down the pom-poms go boing boing. It's very cute.
Anyways, Palla performed well, that's all I care about.
…
[First Open Circuit]
…
Name: Dreamscape Open. Some rich person made this one some years back in honor of his family's deceased Musharna (IPL-class, died of old age). It's notable for having a sizable prize pool despite being an Open. Reminder that only C3+ circuits have prize money allocated to them; lowers are all out of pocket.
Five Gyms, scattered around the west coast of Kalos.
First Gym is Grass, but the format is also challenger versus challenger for the first match.
Team: Honedge, Bolero, Magnemite.
Opponent: Pidgeotto, Vulpix(?!), Fletchinder.
Gee I wonder what he was preparing for
Also, Vulpixes are rare. Not in the sense that they're hard to find, but rather it's hard to find a Vulpix that's willing to participate in Circuit battles. Like, yeah, they'll fight if threatened, but that's different.
…I just realized how bad this matchup is for us. Bleh.
…
[Round One: Bolero versus Pidgeotto]
…
Oh, this sucks. We got outplayed. The Pidgey family of birds are statistically very average, but even if they're average they still make for decent shooters. We're zoned out from the beginning.
We swap to Magnemite and they swap to Vulpix.
Yeeeah we're outplayed. Electric is faster than Fire and we had a faster switch, but not by enough to make a big difference, and the fighting starts as soon as both sides enter.
Magnemite is a flying ball with a pair of magnets for wings, with Pokemon Levitation Powers. It absolutely sucks at fighting on anything other than its own terms. As soon as both sides come out, Vulpix blankets the area around itself with a smokescreen.
The smokescreen is not so uniformly thick that it hides the Vulpix from sight, but smoke is a physical thing, and as a physical thing, it acts as a pseudo-barrier against the Magnemite's Thundershock.
Also Steel is weak to Fire, so the more standard tactic of zoning the target until the screen clears isn't in the cards. The Magnemite attacks as soon as it gets anything close to a resolution, and the Vulpix responds in kind.
Magnemites are not bad at shooting and scooting, but they're god awful at it when they're taking fire. Thus, it deals reasonable chip damage whenever Vulpix shows its head, but not enough to avoid getting burned down by the six-tailed fire fox.
I want to fluff its tails. I wonder if the trainer will let me if I ask them.
…
[Next: Bolero versus Vulpix]
…
So, about Pokemon Abilities. All Pokemons have all abilities of their species, including the hidden ones, but their strength and expression vary. The degree by which a Pokemon's ability is expressed is testable and fairly accurately documented, though my Special-ness lets me see it in reasonable detail.
Bolero's best ability is, therefore, a 34% Flash Fire. It lets him absorb about a third of an incoming fire attack's damage, before resistance calculations.
Perfect Flash Fires are near impossible.
Either way, the Vulpix lets out big blasts of…Ember? I didn't read the card. A lot of fire, but it's very focused on breathing fire against the incoming Fire Horse. Bolero rides her down with no effort, taking basically no damage in the process.
…
[Next: Honedge versus Pidgeotto]
…
Honedge can fly, to an extent, but lacks the agility that can match the bird. Still, it's able to counter-zone against it enough that the Pidgeotto has to respond and clear the airspace instead of flying back to swap out with the Fletchinder.
The Honedge keeps launching itself in the air to Slash, and the Pidgeotto keeps maintaining distance and countering with Gust. This trade continues for a few rounds until the Honedge gets a lucky hit on the bird's wing and downs it. The Pidgeotto tries to get away with an injured wing, but the Honedge is between it and the recall area. Despite being grounded, it defends pretty well against the next few hits before its trainer Recalls it out of zone. Out.
…
[Next: Bolero vs Fletchinder]
…
This one…is weird. I can see that the Fletchinder is undertrained for an Open in terms of stats, and everyone can see that it isn't following orders very well.
So, in other words, it's a fresh capture that hasn't had the time to assimilate to the team or the combat environment.
It…it's really bad, to do it like this. A fresh capture's biggest weakness is their confusion, which badly hampers their ability to make use of moves. The fact that it's confused as all hell implies that not only is it a fresh capture, but the dude taught it TM moves without integrating it into the Pokemon's arsenal. It's very much like learning to make a table and never practicing any carpentry–the first work is not going to be a table.
So, it probably has a good moveset for a Fletchinder, maybe even a Talonflame, but it has no experience to back it up. It tries to swoop at Bolero, which is a pretty common bird-y thing to do, but Bolero is bigger and heavier and whips the bird with its tail before delivering a Double Back Horse Kick. Victory!
Bolero's a total MVP for getting two knockouts.
…
Only the first round in this gym is PVP, the rest is against gym trainers.
The Gym Trainers all have Grass types, or Grass mix types. Discounting type matchups, the Ironwreckers are, by all rights, a C3 grade team, so an Open rank gym is not a significant challenge.
I mean, the trainer team sent to this gym are all T2s, after all.
Either way, between Bolero being fairly good with Flame Charge and the Honedge swapping in Aerial Ace, and with their trainer very aggressive on offense, the rest of the gym trainers didn't have much they could offer to stop them.
Thus, boss time!
…
Our Lineup: Honedge, Bolero, Aron(?)
Gym Lineup: Snivy(?), Roselia, Sunflora
…
[Honedge vs Snivy]
…
Snivy? That's pretty rare around here. This gym is particularly well known for having deals with local Florists, and Snivys are kinda pure fighters. Very proud little grass snake things, so they're very unlikely to take a non-combat role in a gym. Also, a little odd to have Snivy as the Starter–they love taking their time–but grass types are kind of notorious for having few good Starter options.
Either way, Honedge starts off and immediately goes for Aerial Aces. Aerial Ace, by virtue of being a move in real space, is extremely fast and decisive, and thus has a high hit rate…if you hit. The Snivy has very good body mechanics and impressive power control. It layers leaves on itself like a shield and deflects the worst of the hits, retaliating all the while with Leech Seeds.
Leech Seeds suck. There's no visual component to the attack, and on a fast-moving object like a Honedge Leech seeds are near impossible to see. I only know it's using it because the display for observers is showing the move name. It takes a while, and the Snivy defends beautifully, and eventually it becomes clear that the Honedge was affected, and the Trainer calls it back to swap out.
Just because we're on the topic: sub-status effects like Confusion, Leech Seed, etc. don't automatically go upon switching out. The trainer will have to physically remove the seeds from the Pokemon while the main battle continues.
Leech Seed does not work while the target is inside its ball, but the target has to be let out to be de-seeded.
Strictly speaking, the Honedge can remove the seeds on itself with its tassel while in combat, but that involves not paying attention to the Snivy, which is silly. It'll do that after the match.
…
[Bolero vs Snivy]
…
Bolero, being a fire horse with Flame Charge, a skill that wreaths his entire body in flames, does not care about such puny things like seeds. That said, Snivy does know Slash, so it gets a few good hits in before Bolero nails it dead on like a burning train.
…
[Bolero vs Sunflora]
…
It's a battle between aces!
The Sunflora, a human-height sunflower with a face, is a little overspecced for an Open, but so is Bolero. It's always smiling but the smile is a tad creepy.
The Sunflora starts by jumping into the air. They have limited flight abilities with their leaf-hands.
Bolero leaps into it with a Flame Charge and tackles it out of the air, but the Sunflora has already…casted? Caused? Sunny Day to happen.
There's only one reason why a Sunflora would have Sunny Day.
Our Trainer knows it, so he tells Bolero to make distance and stay as far away from the giant sentient Sunflower as it can. Said sentient sunflower's face begins to glow, and it…wow that's bad. The Sunflower essentially falls on its knees and aims its face at Bolero in order to fire its Solar Beam. Beam of light it may be, but having an easily tracked firing point means Bolero can see it coming to an extent, and avoid taking the full hit as he runs around the field.
That said, it is a monster of an attack, and the Sunflora keeps it up for a full twenty seconds, forcing Bolero to jump on two occasions to avoid the ring walls and taking a direct hit. Even so, the Sunflora does land several hits.
The burns are pretty bad. He'll need some time to heal and rehab after this fight. His hindquarters are in especially poor shape. A little weird to call them burns when it's not a fire attack, but eh.
Still, Bolero has more than enough grit left over. As the Solar Beam fades he Flame Charges right into…no, Flare Blitzes right into the Sunflora, stomping it into the dirt, before ending the fight with a Double Horse Back Kick.
Just call it Stomp.
No.
…And, it's very demonstrative of how skewed Bolero's stats are that he's taking a fight technically above his weight class and ending it in two hits.
…
[Aron vs Roselia]
…
Very, very odd final battle.
The Roselia Ingrains as soon as it hits the ground, and fires Magic Leaves in flurries at the Aron.
The Aron Digs.
Dig is a weird choice. The Pokemon in question doesn't dig and disappear into the ground in Circuit battles (they do out in the wild) so they're not totally immune to incoming damage, but the bonus cover is appreciably high enough that it doesn't matter. Water and Earthquake are still effective though.
Either way, as the Aron digs its way forward like a land shark, the Roselia floods the air and ground around it with Stun Spore. The Aron gets close enough to Undig, and it immediately gets slapped in the face by one of Roselia's powder-covered flower hands. The Aron is stunned.
Arons eat iron.
The Roselia now has its hand trapped under the hood of a car as the Aron bites and holds. The fact that it's ingrained means it can't even pull away effectively, so it's just beating the Aron over the head with its other flower hand. The Aron's not chewing, because that would be mean. Instead, it's kicking up sand and mud with its little stubby front paws. Usually they use their back for a bigger effect, because the front paws can barely reach the ground when it's biting something.
Momentary reminder that both creatures are around twelve inches tall.
It's a very silly fight.
The Aron releases the Roselia, which flails back after having tugged too Aron, still somewhat stunned, waddles onto the Roselia and sits. As the Roselia is both Ingrained and flat on its back, it's in a terrible position and would have trouble with something sitting on its stomach a fraction of its weight.
Aron, incidentally, is as long as Roselia is tall.
Aron is also thirty times heavier than Roselia.
This is a killing move. The opponent admits defeat.
That's a very well trained Aron, not gonna lie. I feel bad for underestimating it.
…
We win! Cue victory fanfare.
It's an Open-ranked victory, so the gym reward is a gift card and a care package of berries.
More importantly, with this victory, Bolero is now officially an Open-ranked Circuit Pokemon!...Midrank.
The rank, or, rather, a series of score values between 0 to 1000, is how a Pokemon is further categorized based on its contributions in a gym. Bolero is somewhere around the middle because, while he did take down most of his opponents, he did have a type advantage and was slightly stronger than the competition.
This dramatically raises the odds that Bolero will continue to participate meaningfully in further circuit battles, because he now has a record.
…
Which, of course, means that Palla is jealous. She's putting in more effort into her training while Bolero does his rehab after the Solar Beam burns heal.
We only get a few days. C3, round two, go!
…
[Lion Laurel League (C3), Gym 2]
…
Water Gym. C3 Grade. Type neutral against Steel, weak to Magnemites, in theory.
Any prospective challenger would have to go through eight battles and two bonus rounds. A max of 16 people can receive badges, and the bonus rounds give additional money.
Long story short: We got through three rounds before we had to tap out.
The team formations were variations of the standard: Honedge, Magnemite, Lairon, Palla. This wasn't like a submerged water gym, because we can't swim, so more standard fish-water types weren't in appearance.
Still, the enemy lineup was: Staryu, Starmie, Corsola, Clamperl, Wooper, Quagsire. Some variation of these, with a strict player vs gym setup.
So, yeah, we did ok until round three, which is when the gym starts rolling out their Starmies. Starmies are scary. Their standby movesets are so massive it's hard to predict just what they're going to enter the field with.
Everyone did ok until a Starmie rolled up.
Palla got a lot of mileage out of her Leaf Blade and turned a few heads. Magnemites also did really well, but lacked the firepower to really take advantage of their type effectiveness. Electric being strong against Water makes matchups so predictable that the gym might as well specialize in forcing the opponent to go into melee or drown in mud, and Magnemites are god awful at melee.
The main team's not having the best luck.
…
[Dreamscape Open (OP), Gym 2]
…
Bolero's not recovered enough to join, and if Palla joins she won't have the time to recover and retrain for her C3. We skip this one. Or, rather, they skip it, I go to watch, because it's fun.
It's a Flying gym. Mostly small birds.
Lairon dominates the fight, throwing rocks at birds left and right.
Ironwreckers win, no contest. Reward is a week's supply of eggs. Plus a bird Pokemon egg they had extra.
They hold a lottery for the Pokemon egg and I win it. Woo!
…
[Lion Laurel League (C3), Gym 3]
…
Finally some good news.
This gym is a Fairy gym. Ten rounds of gym fights. Three bonus rounds. A challenge lasts for two days.
Steel and Fire makes a mockery of this gym, except when an Azumarill shows up. Palla's Leaf Blade did wonders against it, though.
This gym is also fairly easy for a C3 grade gym as it is fairly young in its C3 lifespan, so it goes with quality instead of, uh, quality: Each side is only allowed two Pokemon rather than three, and the gym trainers rather obviously try to get a team that hard counters the challengers. A different kind of quality, I guess.
Would be amazing if they actually had the stock to do so. But they don't, so…
This is the first badge that the Ironwreckers have taken in this league! MVP goes to the trainer's Lairon, with the newly minted C3 Palla getting high marks for being anti-Azumarill.
That being said, Huge Power Azumarill are hard to deal with, and Palla has a broken leg to show for it. She's smart enough to know to trust the leg after it heals, but she will not be able to heal and rehab in time for the remaining gyms in the circuit.
…
[Dreamscape Open (OP), Gym 3]
…
Bolero is fully healed and back in action! Gym 3 is a fire gym.
He's not great for a fire gym, but in a team of Steel…
Yeah, nah, we don't win this one. Bolero carries as much as he can, relying on his Flash Fire, but, uh.
Numels are kinda hard to deal with when you can't hit their weakness.
The trainer of the Numel also wept tears of joy when she won, so I think it's fair to let them have this one.
…
[Dreamscape Open, Gym 4]
…
Bug Gym.
Honedge, Scyther, Bolero.
Next.
…I suppose if I had anything to say about this one, it is that the sheer amount of kills Bolero managed to get has really solidified his Flame Charge. Dude goes in at full speed and full confidence and he is impressively difficult to stop.
…
[Gym 5]
…
Ground Gym.
Eek.
This gym is special in that it's classed as a C2 Gym, but also doesn't quite have the resources to do multiple grades. Normally, gyms that are a part of circuits with different grades have different teams, so they can provide an appropriate challenge.
Not these guys.
Three rounds, player versus gym. Gym may only use one 'mon, player can use three.
…
[Round One: Honedge vs Rhyperior]
…
Hoo, boy.
Honedge has Iron Head, which gives it type advantage versus Rhyperior.
Rhyperior has Physics, which lets it grab the Honedge by the tassel and whirl it around like a glowstick. Incidentally, I was unaware until today that Honedges are able to vomit.
…
[Round Two: Bolero vs Rhyperior]
…
Fire is not great against Ground.
The Rhyperior keeps on using Bulldoze and Bolero can't get his footing, much less do anything substantial. He fires off a few embers in desperation and surprisingly causes a burn, but the burn has nothing to latch onto and fades in seconds.
…
[Round Three: Lairon vs Rhyperior]
…
This feels like a poorly planned revenge match.
Or, rather, as an observing T1 helpfully tells me, it's more like hazing their new T2s. Normally, under normal circumstances, they'd have a water type to help flesh out the team. Luck's just bad this month.
But, yeah, the Lairon has a lower center of mass and is only a smidge heavier. It charges forward and the Rhyperior picks it up and…uh, flips it onto its belly with one mighty shovel of its horn. Then it pets the Lairon's belly until it gives up.
The T2 member is this Gym Trainer's son. Their respective Pokemon are practically brothers.
…
Wrap up.
…
At the end of the month, the results are:
Palla. Started unranked, ended C3 Grade with one win under her belt.
Bolero, Started unranked, ended OP Grade with three wins. The Ironwreckers are in talk with their backers to get some type coverage and make a proper, balanced, nontypical C3 team with him as the Anchor.
Patty (the Petilil), kicking my ass for ignoring her for two months.
Egg.
…
Per the agreement, Palla and Bolero are now officially transferred into the Ironwrecker's management. I get a nice and hefty bonus for my efforts, and get to go home.
I say that like I'm not home every weekend. Patty's just jealous I can't take her with me to the Ironwrecker camp, because she's technically the Gym's pokemon.
Her little nubby arms give the most adorable slaps. She's also terrified of close range combat, so when she slaps she leans back really hard and squeezes her eyes shut. Petilils are also top heavy due to their head being so large (sorry), so she can only get three slaps in before she topples over.
…
Which is why I'm adopting her from the Gym.
Real talk time.
The gym's primary operational costs are mostly covered by the IPL due to its status as a part of circuits, along with whatever other revenue that goes to a gym as a result of the circuit, usually from the circuit management. For example, that one Sweets circuit was sponsored by a candy company, and they gave money for us to run that, merch, advertisement, so on, so forth.
Of course, that comes with responsibilities. Business is business, even if everything is fair and forthright. I don't know the details, and I frankly don't care, but the Sunshine gym is behind on its finances and needs to close while the leader works things out with the city.
Closure means no work. No work means workers go bye bye. I go bye bye. The Pokemon being taken care of also has to go bye bye. Patty likes me enough to go with me, everyone else is going to an IPL designated ranch for caretaking until the gym gets back on its feet…hopefully.
Hm.
Well, in the grand scheme of things, I now have experience under my belt with Palla and Bolero, so I should be in a better position than I was when I started out.
…also, I have special abilities, so let's use it and make Patty amazing in the process.
.
.
.
{ === + === }
Author Notes:
The amount of time I have to refer back to Bulbapedia for context as to how a fight should go is craaaaazy
Five times isn't really a whole lot though
Shush.