There are bats in my belfry!
It is time for an UPPL Update with your hometown team, the Nimbasa City Emolga! This week’s opponent turned out to be the Albuquerque Lycanroc! This wolf pack was ready to bite into us as we face them in Week 5. After all, the leader of the pack was Ash from the Safari Zone Podcast.
Pre-Battle Prep
Ash from the Safari Zone Podcast knows a thing or two about competitive battling. You can see that with the picks she made during the drafting for the Albuquerque Lycanroc. That is especially obvious with picks such as Togekiss, Excadrill, Serperior and Chandelure. All three of these picks are known for their ability to put their opponents into a tough spot. If one piece of my plan goes down then that could risk the whole match for my side.
Let us start with the big threats on Ash’s team.
The first big threat on Ash’s team is that Chandelure who is famous for hard hitting Special Attack power. This Pokemon even has some good moves to boot with Fire Blast and Shadow Ball. There are not many Pokemon who want to be on the receiving end of these attacks. What helps balance out Chandelure is the fact that it has low speed. That is why most people equip Chandelure with a Choice Scarf. It will make up for Chandelure’s low speed and act as a great surprise.
It was the Scarf Chandelure set that scared me the most. Especially because if we decide to not Scarf Kartana then we could be on the bad end of a Fire Blast. Kartana wouldn’t want to risk staying in on a Chandelure when it know there is no way to score a knockout.
The next big threat to our team was Excadrill. That is because he has some strong Steel attacks that scares off our Fairy Pokemon. Especially because we sometimes rely on Fairy Pokemon such as Mega Altaria and Florges. These two Pokemon are solid Pokemon from our draft pool. They have done a great job so far in the league. Though, Excadrill scares them off because it has a solid Steel attack with Iron Head.
Even worst, Excadrill has a great ground move because of Earthquake. That attack can take out two of our most solid team members, Zeraora and Volcanion. We will have to be careful when this Pokemon decides to come out. Especially on Zeraora and Volcanion who will need to swap out to avoid Earthquake. If Excadrill was Choice Scarf then that would cause even bigger problems because it could out speed some of our best counters for it.
Serperior is another big hitter on Ash’s team. That is all thanks to Serperior’s Hidden Ability, Contrary. This ability allows all drops to become boosts for the Pokemon. That pairs great with Serperior’s Leaf Storm attack. After all, every use of Leaf Storm makes the next one even stronger. If we let this go on for too long then we will be in a bad spot. Even our strongest wall will be no match for a Serperior after three Leaf Storm.
The last of Ash’s big four threats is Togekiss. This is a classic threat that has become famous for doing one job. Para-Flinching. This strategy depends on paralyzing Pokemon with Thunder Wave and then using Air Slash to flinch the opponent. The purpose is to keep your opponent from attack as you slowly knockout their Pokemon. The last thing I wanted to do was get stuck in this trap. Togekiss is also famous for using Roost to stay in the battle and continue doing this strategy. This was the one thing I wanted to avoid.
Other things that Ash had that could threaten my team was Milotic and Mega Heracross.
The biggest reason Milotic would come for was to knockout Gliscor. It has powerful attacks such as Scald and Ice Beam to take out the big scorpion bat. I felt confident that Ash would bring Milotic to this battle simply to counter Gliscor.
The other Pokemon to worry about was Mega Heracross. It can do some heavy damage because of Skill Link. Pin Missile and Rock Blast are no joke when they can hit you hard four times. This was going to be a powerhouse that can take out my whole team if I am not careful.
So what was I going to do about this?
Team Prep
The first thing I needed to decide on was keeping our Fairy Pokemon out of this battle. With Excadrill on Ash’s team, we knew that these guys were not safe from Iron Head.
First up for our team, we wanted to bring Gliscor out to play. He would want to get Stealth Rock up to help do chip damage to Ash’s Pokemon being swap out to adapt to whatever Pokemon I had in the active. It could also handle some of Ash’s big threats such as Excadrill and Chandelure. After all, Gliscor was a Ground that Pokemon that had access to STAB Earthquake.
Also, I learn during testing that Gliscor does a pretty good job in countering Togekiss and Mega Heracross. If I can land a Toxic on these two Pokemon. Once we have done that, all Gliscor has to do was keep on using Roost until Toxic takes them out. Togekiss can’t use Thunder Wave to Paralyze Gliscor so all it has left to do is Air Slash. If I can land Toxic then we will still be doing damage to Togekiss.
Though, I knew one thing going into this battle. Gliscor was going to be my key Pokemon for this battle. It can wall a lot of Ash’s Pokemon and hit them hard. If Gliscor goes down then our chances of being victorious was going drop.
We decided to give Dhelmise an encore performance. This week we decided to equip Dhelmise with an Assault Vest to help give it more bulk. That way Dhelmise can come in on certain attacks and still live to hit back. It could also stay alive long enough to do some surprise damage. If worst comes to worst, we can use Dhelmise to sponge up attacks from Excadrill and do a surprise Earthquake. The choice to include Dhelmise like we did was going to be interesting as it has an interesting array of attacks with some solid bulk. Was I using Dhelmise correctly? Maybe not but it was worth trying out.
Noivern was brought along to give our team some speed factor. This guy has flexibility to go offensive with various attacks that can hit Ash’s team hard. Granted, I wanted to make good use of Noivern’s Flamethrower to get revenge knockouts on Serperior, Heracross, and Excadrill. I knew there was the risk of giving Chandelure a boost from a Flash Fire switch in. If that was the case then we knew that Noivern wasn’t going to throw out Flamethrower freely until Chandelure was gone.
Zeraora was brought along to be a Togekiss and Milotic counter. We wanted to hit those two with strong Super Effective hits. Guess what Zeraora has. A strong and Super Effective attack in the form of Plasma Fist. If we can land a hit on Togekiss and Milotic then those two will not be happy. Granted, Zeraora welcomes in Excadrill into the battle. If that happens then we will have switch in Gliscor or Noivern to avoid Excadrill’s Earthquake.
We also decided to bring our big Volcanion to the battle. It has a powerful Flamethrower and Steam Eruption attack that can hit Ash’s Pokemon hard. We had to deal with Volcanion low speed but during testing we found out that something was slower then Volcanion. It turns out that Mega Heracross is in a speed tier lower then Volcanion. That means if Volcanion and Mega Heracross did face off then Volcanion was going to get the first hit. If that first hit was Flamethrower then Mega Heracross would be going down.
Volcanion can also threaten Chandelure with Steam Eruption. Though, if Chandelure was Scarf then we may not live long enough to erupt in the ghost’s face.
Lastly, we have our good Kartana who has a high kill rate. This little Swiss Army Knife has all kinds of tools to take down some of Ash’s Pokemon. Leaf Blade to handle Milotic. Knock Off for Chandelure. Smart Strike for Togekiss. Sacred Sword for Excadrill. If we can corner these Pokemon and bring in Kartana then this guy can go to town. After all, it seems like Kartana is pretty good at take care of things in the late game.
Now that we have chosen our Pokemon, it was time to battle the wolf pack.
The Battle
Before we talk about the battle, I will like to say that this battle was for my friend who was recently in the hospital. This friend is somebody who I regularly play the Pokemon TCG with at my Pokemon League. Though, he has recently been in the hospital due to some complications. To honor my friend and his battle to recovery, I decided to go with an Overwatch naming theme for my team. My friend is a regular Overwatch player and is even on an Overwatch team. I think the names that I have chosen are almost spot on.
Now to the battle!
The match began just how I thought it would. Ash opened with her Milotic against my Gliscor. I have seen this move way too many times to know that Gliscor needs to be swap out. That is why Volcanion came out to take an Ice Beam that was aimed at Gliscor.
That was a good play because Gliscor was going to be key in this match. Especially because Gliscor ended up being the MVP.
So why was Gliscor consider the MVP for this match? That is because he did work! This flying scorpion ended up walling a lot of the Albuquerque Lycanroc’s team. You could see this each and every time Mega Heracross, Togekiss and Excadrill came out to the field. Those three Pokemon simply couldn’t do enough damage to knockout Gliscor.
And what did Gliscor do to them? He used Toxic on them and proceeded to simply Roost. Granted, he couldn’t use Toxic on Excadrill but was able to throw a solid Earthquake to take out a chunk of Excadrill’s health.
The most amazing part was that Gliscor did all of this without having Poison Heal support. That was because Mega Heracross used Knock Off to get rid of Gliscor’s Toxic Orb. That wasn’t a problem because Gliscor stayed in and walled all that came before him. Gliscor used Roost when he needed to and Toxic upon slight of Mega Heracross and Togekiss.
Gliscor didn’t take many kills. One of the knockouts he got during the match was against Togekiss and that was thanks to Toxic. We had to play a long waiting game as Toxic slowly took Togekiss. Though, Gliscor made sure do some work upon switching into things like Thunder Wave and flying over Earthquake.
Maybe one of my favorite moments in this battle was how Volcanion was able to out speed Mega Heracross. That turn went just like how it did in practice. Volcanion was able to go before Mega Heracross and fire off a powerful Flamethrower. Though, that came at the cost of Volcanion.
The following turn, Ash sent out her Choice Scarf Chandelure. I had to make a hard decision because I knew that Chandelure was going to hit hard. If that was going to happen then somebody was going to get knockout or lose a lot of HP. I made the decision to let Volcanion stay in and if it was able to survive then it would take two knockouts by using Steam Eruption. Chandelure fire off a Shadow Ball and took out Volcanion. We knew what could happen and was prepare for that. Volcanion’s job wasn’t done but he did enough.
After all, Gliscor came in to take a knockout. The winged scorpion swoop in with an Earthquake and hit Chandelure in his fragile defenses.
From that point on, the battle went our way with Gliscor in the active doing what it does best. We had to make the decision to let another Pokemon stay in and be knocked out. That was Dhelmise who allow Serperior to set up Leaf Storm boosts. The good anchor took them for awhile. Eventually Dhelmise fell but was able to chunk off enough damage got allow our quick Noivern to knock Serperior out. After that, Kartana came in and took out the Milotic that we wanted to save for last.
The battle ended with us having four Pokemon standing against Albuquerque Lycanroc’s fallen team. The wolf pack fought hard but our heroes came out on top.
Coming Soon
Coming up in Week 6 for your Nimbasa City Emolgas is the Nagano Pangoro! This team is coached by Luke from Luke Loves Pokemon podcast. This threat from the far east is actually pretty scary.
Luke is a casual Pokemon battler who made his picks based on Pokemon that he liked. You can tell based on some of the Pokemon he picked like Snorlax, Ursaring and Bewear. Though, he has some big threats to our team such as Raikou, Toxicroak, Mega Sableye and Kommo-o. These Pokemon are to not be taken lightly. If I am not careful then we may end up losing this battle.
So far we are on a win streak and I want to keep it going. The spotlight is going to be on us as we face Luke and the Nagano Pangoro in Week 6!
Record: 4-1-0
Signing off!