Monochrome_Complex

And Saphira is down! 1st try even! Only ended up using 4 pokemon too. Lead with Golduck to change the dragon field into regular cave(he survived the dragon pulse), though I forgot about boomburst's boost on it lol. Then had Hypno tank a boomburst and set up trick room. After that, I sent in Cloyster who CLEANED house and swept through 5 of her pokemon. I was able to do damage to CharXizard who put himself into red via flare blitz, which let Noivern finish him off. I was not expecting Saphira to end up the easiest gym leader this playthrough lol.

I don't get where I'm supposed to go after blowing up the 4 minecarts in victory road. Been wondering around for like 40 minutes now.

EDIT: had to look it up, it was a rock climb part in the room with all the strength rocks.  That was easy to miss.

 Anybody still believing the fantasy that all sides are as equally bad/to blame as the other needs to take a nice, good look at what happened in Charlottesville and face reality that, no, there is ALWAYS a worse side or a worse option and that by condemning everyone, you only further empower those people.  And screw Trump and his supporters since this is yet another awful consequence of his actions.

 poison touch on Aevian Mismagius. Surely could've come up with a better ability than that?

>Hears Walk Like an Egyptian playing

> Jojo intensifies

Back from hell. Took me nearly 3 hours to beat Charlotte.

3

freakin 

hours.

1st time using sudowoodo in a playthrough and he's actually legit? Sturdy + counter makes that Garchomp fight a breeze. Might be a good idea to lead with a pyukumuku or two first to guarantee the KO.

6 HOURS

6 PAINFUL HOURS 

It took for me to beat the freakin glass gauntlet. UGH. 

Cain/Shelly seem to have been nerfed from ep18  as  "Anna" is no longer sash'd.  By far the easiest part of the gauntlet, I could handle them with just Excadrill/Noivern provided I didn't get unlucky and miss an air slash or get crit by mimikyu's play rough.

Luna used to be the easy part of the fight but she was the hardest IMO, or more accurately the most problematic due to how it impacts the next fight.   Shadow tag gothitelle is scummy when you're playing on set mode because it effectively guarantees a loss of pokemon if she sends it out against something that matches poorly and can't switch out. I had to remove Emboar from my team because of it. Then there's the ever annoying jubjub bird in his sucker punching glory, Umbreon turning your physical sweeper against itself with foul play and her super fast Mismagius whose seed gives her a guranteed crit. Oh and Megabsol I guess but tbh he's not THAT big a deal. Weavile's flinch hax off icicle crash happened more times than I would have liked. I kept losing nearly all my team in this fight which made the next one impossible. I figured the best way to minimize loss was to switch to A-muk on weavile, hopefully not flinch and land a memento, and have Cloyster set up shell smash. Weavile would always get switched out to Mismagius, which after a shell smash was easy pickings. When she brought weavile back out I'd try to get another shell smash(cloyster at -2 could survive a brick break, even moreso with a white herb) so I could get the KO on Umbreon. If I got eveything executed right,  I'd have 5 pokemon for the next fight.

Okay so like, Excadrill WRECKS. He OHKO's nearly everything in this fight, but the chip damage from hail + sucker punch and Glaceon  kept doing him in at the worst times. Leading with Noivern meant that it got maybe one turn before it gets iced. I actually taught Noivern sunny day specifically to get rid of the hail, and that actually WORKED. Ninetales' blizzard missed which let noivern set up a tailwind, providing a clean avenue for Excadrill to do its thing. Also this kind of screwed up the AI's usual pattern because once Noivern did get KO'd, I sent out a galvantula on a balloon to set up webs, which Bisharp targeted with sucker punch instead of the 300+ attack killer drill mole...lol. Eventually Galvantula got z-move'd by Frosslass but Excadrill pretty much cleaned house the rest of the fight. Best thing to do is to get rid of the hail ASAP because between the 100% blizzards, chip damage and worst of all aurora veil you can end up getting overwhelmed quickly. 

Hah haha on one hand I feel great beating it, on the other hand I was also getting mega salty  and frustrated. 

About to take on shelly with a monograss team. RIP me.

Adam down! Had an easier time dealing with his gym match compared to the last few leaders. His Tyranitar was the hardest to deal with, as it was dealing dumb amounts of damage and bulky, so eventually I settled on using Mudsdale's counter to get him out the way.  Talonflame is great for setting up tailwind which gives you an actual chance to hurt aerodactyl, and while Rampardos' crest is annoying as he's guranteed to damage you, as long as he isn't using head smash you can take a hit from him, still one of adam's most torublesome pokemon. Obstagoon with guts is excellent for this fight and can  OHKO half his team, possibly even gigalith on a good roll if you have hazards set up.

Adrienne down!!! Took about 3-4 attempts, it was a matter of knowing when to send out my pokemon and keeping granbull alive long enough to where I could focus on the other mons without getting killed first(he's slow). Weezing could OHKO whimsicott and Tsareena could OHKO Gardevoir, provided she wasn't intimidated. Volcarona is probably my MVP atm, she has been putting in so much work since Charlotte. Megawile didn't stand a chance. it ended up coming down to swampert and florges, and with florges weakened by two heat waves already swampert was able to tough her out and triumph.

Adrienne down. For the first time I managed to get 10 volunteers too! Adrienne wasn't so bad this time around, as Hypno was able to remover xyr field right away and I didn't have to deal with it the whole fight pretty much since their pokemon went down fairly quickly save for Florges. It did take me a few tries to get the right lineup down, and twice a missed gunk shot from A-muk cost me the match between Houndoom and Emboar megamawile wasn't a threat and with web support Cloyster could instantly delete Whimsicott and take out Togekiss with no set up. Granbull was kind of annoying since it had earthquake but it's thankfully slow. Overall easier than any of the circus trio.

At the devon building, Victoria was actually the hardest fight. It took me about 5 tries to beat. Arclight took 2 tries(once I set up Cloyster it was a done deal), and ZEL took just 1. Might be the easiest time I had with the ZEL fight.

Always knew pewdiepie was an obnoxious twat. Glad to see it further confirmed, as well as being a racist POS. His antisematic thing looks even worse now.

Fame doesn't make one any less of a fool, I suppose. 

Am I seriously not able to purify shadow pokemon in past sheridan? The spring is RIGHT there.

Am I able to purify them at all while in GDC? 

Amaria down...one of the hardest gym leaders yet.  My heaviest hitters are all rendered useless on her field, and her assault vest Vaporeon is insanely tanky, Lanturn as well. I had to switch out Emboar for Sceptile, who along with Hypno were crucial in this fight. Hypno needed to set psychic terrain but was too slow to do so(if vaporeon sends the match underwater, psychic terrain fails) unless I used electroweb from Galvantula to slow her down. I taught toxic to Hypno to help with Vaporeon, and would lead with sunny day from Sceptile to weaken Amaria's surfs. After many attempts my winning team was

sceptile(84), Galvantula(85), Hypno(83), Noivern(78), Houndoom(86), Excadrill(86)

Sceptile took on Seismotoafd, Primarina and Blastoise, but the latter two required me to use Leaf storm which is why Noivern was there, so I could switch out. Houndoom and Excadrill might seem counterintuitive but Excadrill was the only pokemon on my team who could KO lanturn without trouble and Houndoom has d-bond which I planned for Lapras. Interestingly enough the winning strat was me giving houndoom an air balloon and having excadrill use earthquake while houndoom set up a nasty plot. Next turn the dark pulse + earthquake was enough to finish Atlantica. Turns out both of them could take one of atlantica's surfs as long as it wasn't on any of the water fields.

Amaria  has a rep for being one of the easiest if not the easiest late game gym leaders but this playthrough she was one of the hardest, certainly harder than Charlotte or Titania were.

And with ciel beat(took only 2 tries too) I can finally start episode 16 proper.

Beat adrienne, took 5 tries. Megawile kept ruining things as it would one-shot just about everything and sucker punch dhelmise for a OHKO which sucked. Plus I had nothing SE against it if it was on the fairy tale field. I had to get  adrienne's whimsicott to first set tailwind(sometimes it would just spam dazzling gleam), then have trevenant set a trick room so it could outspeed megawile when it showed up on the field. By using destiny bond trev was able to take out megawile which let silvally and dhelmise clean house with their field buffed  anchor shots and iron heads. The hard part was getting megawile KO'd, the rest of adrienne's team wasn't that bad in comparison.

You know wiseglasses for finding 10 people is a pretty lame prize. 

Beat Hardy!!! It took about 5 attempts, his pokemon are quite fast and hit very hard. Protect/detect/etc are your friend, as on his field his pokemon get hurt when they miss an attack. I "really" wish I had megaswampert for this fight as I feel he could've wrecked house with some rain set up but alas. I didn't have wide guard either, nor could I tutor iron head to Steelix <_<. It was a bit of a struggle and I had to come back with swampert at a slightly higher level as waterfall wasn't KOing megadactyl initially. Donphan ended up being MVP for the fight(qf)uick claw + scary face helped slow down a lot of his blitzers, allowing megacham to finish them of and of course togedamaru changing the terrain helped a bunch. The main issue was his pokemon outspeeding everyone. and archeops being a right pain. That dusk lycanroc is gross too, but off the rocky field it doesn't hit as had and tsareena was able to survive a rock slide from less than half HP by like 5 HP, then finish it. I kept gigalith in since it's the only slow mon on his team and donphan knocking off its choice band made it not too big a threat. I won't say he was the hardest gym leader, somewhere around serra or aya's level. Easier than Titania(well kind of, I think his pokemon handle better outside their native field) but harder than amaria or radomus for sure.

PS Lumi is adorbs.

Beat Noel. Even after leading off with the wrong mon(leavanny, who I was saving for girafarig) by accident, he was one of the easier leaders and it took only one attempt.  Roserade cut through his team like butter(or rather sucked the life out of them), as not even clefable could stand more than two hits against that field buffed giga drain. I didn't even have to set up growth. For swellow I was able to get meganium to set up a reflect and while he died to two brave birds, swellow couldn't even deal half to gourgeist and seed bomb was enough to finish him off. Ludicolo's special defense is high enough to where it could outank girafarig and as mentioned before roserade basically 1-2 shot everyone else. A welcome breather after serra haha.

Noel picked the wrong turf to fight on. I'm going to try and get a skiddo since I never used gogoat anywhere, not even in the official games. Radomus' episode is one of my favorites in the game and now I can get the rest of my team caught up n training as well as train up a couple of new additions.

Beat Terra, *sigh* it was somewhat frustrating because despite being able to handle 5/6ths of her team(including garchomp)  Swagsire kept walling me at the end and costing me the match. I would only have Golduck left and between  Swagsire stacking amnesias and terra's ultra potions it'd turn into an unwinnable battle. Turns out what I had to  was keep Gothitelle alive as my last mon instead, as she was able to handle swagsire pretty easily since he didn't do much damage even after a +2 amenesia and still took solid damage from psychic.  I had to change up my lineup several times but realizing the solution was so simple made me feel a bit silly lol.

Beat Titania! Took about 5-6 tries. I actually figured out a good strategy against her.

-Lead with togedamaru, set up electric field(because fairy tale field is worst field right guys?), it dies to a-slash's earthquake + hail

-have medicham use brick break as A-slash would always use aurora veil. Easy KO

-klefki comes out next, I used choice band swampert to OHKO him with earthquake(klefki leads with calm mind), and on a bad roll he dies to hail anyway

-scizor is easy, volcarona heat wave FTW. This is why setting up electric terrain is important

-empoleon is annoying because scald would end up wasting precious turns needed for electric terrain. If scald doesn't burn Medicham's HJK insta kos, otherwise medicham dies next turn and volcarona has to finish off the penguin. HJK missing is like the worst timeline lol.

-excadrill is a right monster on the fairy tale field so I really need e-terrain to still be out when he shows up. Volcarona beats him in one hit.

-Aegislash is annoying. Or rather titania's rampant potion abuse makes it annoying. I kept messing up here either by mistiming the field expiration or untimely crits or whatever. Donphan is strong enough to 2HKO aegis even when in shield mode but titania's potion spam kind of messed this approach up, + the hail breaking sturdy. Then I realized the easy solution would be to send someone like Tsareena to basically die/get some hits in, revealing aegislash's sword mode where  he gets OHKO'd by donphan . Since sturdy allows donphan to survive whatever aegislash throws out initially it's a guranteed kill. Basically I was doing it wrong by leading against aegislash with donphan, instead I should've led with someone else. Wish I realized that sooner, it would've been a fairly easy fight if I had. Also titania's AI is weird because she kept spamming ultra potions on aesgislash despite it taking like 10% damage if that lol.

Blake was really difficult.  I'm still not entirely fond of seeds in Reborn because on some fields they're just too good, this fight being a shining example of that in regards to Gyrados essentially getting an agility for free. 

Blasphemous opinion: I honestly like Megaman 7 and 8 over the other classic games. 

And I don't like 9 at all.

Blue Water, Blue Sky is one of those videogame soundtracks that never fails to make me smile. It's so lovely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhpisRcYuZw

Charlotte down.  I initially tried fighting her with a lvl 62 ludicolo and that simply wasn't cutting it, so after 4 or 5 tries I had to do some grinding. I got ludicolo up to 70 and meganium to 67 which made the fight a LOT more manageable as ludicolo was able to finish off darminitan(who was hit with fake out previous turn) 2nd turn  whereas it couldn't before. Surf spam works better than I expected here, though you should be doing it in the rain. With rain and light screen charlotte's heat waves weren't that scary and i even gave gourgeist a weakness policy so it could deal some extra hurt on Ninetales. Ludicolo was an MVP this fight. 

I also got trevenant as destiny bond could come in handy later on. 

Charlotte was tough but mainly because my best mons against here weren't leveled enough. Once I grinded she wasn't too terrible.