#bw083

[wild-battlebond]

also i wanna point out how it’s both fitting & ironic that Meloetta sits in on the whole battle — it’s fitting because it’s also a concert and it’s a music-themed pokémon, but it’s also ironic because it’s a rock concert and meloetta is fancy & elegant and stuff

[wild-battlebond]

virbank gym battle thoughts! this one’s a great one!

between the fact that it’s a 3 vs 6 and that it’s a two-parter, there’s a lot to talk about with this one! so i’ll start with the stuff that affects the whole battle, and then talk about the specifics.

The most noticeable thing about the Virbank Gym is it’s atmosphere! it’s a completely different atmosphere than every other Unova gym up to this point! they’re no strangers to gyms with an audience, but the grunginess of the gym and the rowdiness of the crowd and bandmates is unique, and provides a constant distractor throughout the entire battle. It’s comparable to the atmosphere that gym stadiums in swsh have, as those games use the music and cheering crowd to make the player feel more anxious and excited as the battle goes on, especially when the music changes when the leader is down to their last Pokémon.

Similarly, this gym contributes to the intense, everything-is-on-the-line feelings through drawing similarities to league battles. Ash is able to use 6 pokémon, and the gym uses a monitor that displays each party’s active, withdrawn, and fainted pokémon and other status in the same way that league matches do. It makes it feel similar to a league battle.

Lastly, Roxie overall battle style — her style varies wildly between Pokémon (as discussed below), but there is a connection between them. Her strategy relies on having control over the battlefield — in one way or another, her Pokémon have some way to exert control over the battlefield and therefore the battle itself. And of course she relies heavily on being able to poison her opponents, also a form of battle control, as inflicting toxic poison instantly puts the opponent under the pressure of having a time limit. Again, this’ll be elaborated on in a second.

Her first Pokémon is Koffing! first, it’s really cute how she gets really excited when she hears Ash is from Kanto & starts telling him about how she met Koffing there. Her Koffing itself is really cute too!

It’s also really strong, tho. Roxie’s Koffing’s main strength is its speed — its attacks are fast and don’t take long to start up, and being able to Levitate (literally & ability) combined with its speed makes it so it can travel clear across the field and back to the other side in no time. So no matter where the opponent goes, Koffing can meet it there and attack.

So, the first Pokémon sent out against it was Boldore. The first thing Ash had it do was use Sandstorm, which would have whittled away at Koffing’s health in a way comparable to poison… except then Koffing knew Clear Smog and cleared Sandstorm away with that — another way that Roxie controls the battlefield, by ensuring that her foe can’t change the weather or anything and keeping it exactly the way she likes it (technically clear smog only clears stat changes but we’ll ignore that <3. that sort of thing’s a lot harder to show in an anime setting than eliminating weather after all). So, that, combined with the fact that Boldore is slow and basically stuck in the spot where it started, Koffing was able to outspeed it and hit it with hi-power Gyro Ball attacks. Even clever things, like trying to slow down and stop the attack with Sandstorm, didn’t work because of how fast and strong Koffing was — it just ran straight through.

And then trying to hit it head-on didn’t work, either — he tried that with Unfezant. and it just didn’t work. Koffing still outsped and outpowered Unfezant, and where its strength wasn’t enough it relied on toxic poison’s effects to whittle away at her health.

so clever tactics don’t work against it and using brute force didn’t work. But what DID work was ranged attacks, and taking away some of Roxie’s control. By using Leavanny’s string shot to tie up Koffing, it wasn’t able to move freely across the battlefield anymore, already taking away a lot of options. This meant that Leavanny controlled Koffing’s movements now, and prevented it from using any of its close-range attacks or ranged attacks by swinging it around, essentially turning the tables and giving Ash command over the battlefield and what actions his opponent could take instead. So as soon as Koffing’s mobility was taken away (and its sp. def lowered by energy ball. i forgot to mention that), it was a piece of cake to defeat it.

Her second Pokémon is Scolipede, which does have a drastically different strategy than Koffing. It tanks any attacks that it receives, keeps opponents out of close range with attacks like Screech, and shoots at them afar — it might not be inaccurate to compare it to a turret? like as a descriptor similar to tank.

Anyways it doesn’t go very well for Leavanny and it faints almost instantly. But then it goes better for Pignite — it seems that as soon as you get past Scolipede’s defenses and tactics for keeping opponents at bay, it’s pretty easy to knock it down and defeat it. It also probably helps that Fire Pledge goes through the ground which makes it less telegraph-ible than moves like flamethrower or tackle?

And then after that Roxie throws Pignite a Pecha Berry… obviously a show of confidence on her part, as she feels that there’s still no way she can lose at this point. It also shows that she puts a lot of faith into Garboder’s abilities.

Her final Pokémon is Garboder! I think the best way to sum up its strategy is to call it a combination of Koffing and Scolipede’s main tactics, but still with its own uniqueness. Like Koffing, it’s able to cross the battlefield very quickly by stretching out its arms and holding itself on them, or by stretching its arms across the battlefield to grab opponents. However, it’s also very heavy like Scolipede, and sometimes holds its ground and attacks from afar rather than using close-range moves. So, it definitely has traits from both of those styles.

So because Garboder is so proficient in both long and short range attacks, it seems to be kinda difficult for Ash to figure out how exactly Pignite should attack, and that plus poison is his undoing for this match. However, it’s worth noting that Garboder was able to be knocked while it was holding itself in the air with its arms — since its arms are so spindly, all it took was a tackle to knock it down, and that fall seemed to hurt it quite a bit. To that end, Roxie seems to recognize that and doesn’t have Garboder stand on its hands again for the rest of the battle, which does very slightly limit her movement options.

And then it was Palpitoad’s Big Day! Unfortunately he was promptly defeated by a combination of poison from Gunk Shot and double damage from Venoshock

So then it’s Pikachu’s Big Day! Pikachu winds up being the perfect counter to Garboder. Pikachu is fast, so he’s able to outspeed Garboder and is small enough to avoid its arms. That plus accidentally tying up Garboder’s arms heavily reduces Garboder’s mobility, even if only for a little bit. However, despite this early lead, Roxie is able to quickly bring things back under her control — Pikachu’s next move is Iron Tail, which is pretty telegraphed given that Iron Tail needs some momentum and build-up behind it. So Garboder is able to predict and counter that attack, throwing Pikachu off-kilter with several blinding Gunk Shots and holding it up in the air, putting the battle back in Roxie’s hands and causing Ash and Pikachu to panic a bit.

So then Garboder is using Double Slap against Pikachu, a lot, BUT the combination of repeated contact moves activating Static + Iris and Cilan very nicely cheering Ash on (it’s always nice to know your friends have your back ^-^) mean that things start turning around again! Similar to what defeated Koffing, restricting Garboder’s movement and ability to attack puts Roxie in a bind, and as soon as Garboder isn’t able to keep up its onslaught for even a second, they take an inch and a mile and defeat it with their own onslaught of moves, and then they win!

So yeah a very good gym battle overall. It’s the sort of battle that makes you go “the pocket monsters are battlinggggggggggg” and then write several paragraphs about it.

[wild-battlebond]

[wild-battlebond]

hey meloetta what are the little symbols in the alphabet called

(transcript:)

Meloetta: “letta”