After taking it slow this morning, I’m finally ready to dive in and set some goals for my first day in Pokemon Champions.

The Grind Begins

Despite having the 50 training tickets and 30 teammate tickets, I’m not using them anytime soon. I’m going to just take the one free recruitment roll per day for the next few days. I’m honestly confident that my current Pokemon can get me to the Great Ball tier, especially once I get the Gardevoir from the event. I’ve completed most of the beginner quests and starter quests outside of the Great Ball tier achievements. 

My goal today is to play double battles and see how things go with my Mega Gallade-focused team. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll switch back to Mega Dragonite. For the first week, at least, I’m not bringing in any more Pokemon from Home (although if I find I have something useful on GO that’s a different story, as my Shiny Ursaluna in Pokemon Violet is from GO originally.) But my discovery that Champions freezes a Pokemon’s traits as soon as it visits, I’m going to be very manipulative with what actually comes into Champions since I’m being very stingy with my tickets. 

The other thing I want to keep in mind is achievements, particularly the ones about using certain Pokemon. I want to win 10 battles with every Pokemon that I can to collect badges and VP. There are some other trainer achievements that deal with supereffective moves and types of moves. This is how you are going to progress regardless of whether you spend money on the battle pass, membership, or not. (I honestly think that both are worth it for the cost-benefit, but I don’t think they are necessary if you’re smart about conserving VP and tickets/coupons you acquire.)

So far, I’ve only missed out on Emboar for the Premium Battle Pass, and I have a fully trained one on ZA already. It is a bummer that some of these Pokemon and their mega stones are paywalled at the moment, but so far, I can live without what I’m missing out on. It’s the storage space that absolutely baffled me; 30 slots is just ridiculously miniscule and it already ruined my fully F2P challenge.

Double Battle Delights

It’s time to partake in the battles that are very rank… as in they are very stinky. I have no idea how this team will perform in doubles. Well, so far, I’m predicting perfectly. My first opponent played well with their Arcanine, Whims, Sylveon, and… I already can’t remember what the other pokemon was I knocked it out so fast! Yay, 300 VP. However, I just realized, that the Dragonite mega stone is on Gallade… I thought I had the Gallade mega stone. Need to fix that after this battle. This battle featured Victreebel and Hawlucha getting owned by Ice Beam and Heracross getting owned by Play Rough. Arcanine is toast. 4-0 victory! Now time to fix my team… Black Belt will go on Gallade and the mega stone back on the dragon. (I bought the Belt last night for 700 VP for Gallade. Gotta watch this game’s silly item “management.”)

Next up was a loaded team with Archaladon, Greninja, and a bunch of shinies. This is a legit VGC team. I’m probably toast. Sacred Sword did one shot the Archaludon though! Dragonite and Gallade got a ton of damage in before they went down. I was down 3-1 in a hurry, though. This wasn’t a winnable matchup. I got destroyed. Kinda expected this would happen at some point in doubles. Only got 94 VP for that loss. And I lost a TON of ranking on that.

The next battle looks like the exact same Charizard led team I started with. My Dragonite made it a good matchup. I made short work of Charizard and Whims. Next up were Gengar and Steelix. Doubled up Steelix for the KO. They inexplicably went for Night Shade on Dragonite when they could have done big damage on Azumarill. 4-0 victory. I claimed a teammate ticket and 12 more quick coupons from leveling up my battle pass. I got 1K VP for winning 5 ranked battles, 1K for 20 super effective moves, and 24 coupons for winning 3 ranked battles without anyone on my team fainting!

The next team is the first I’ve seen with Incineroar. A Whims/Venusaur lead isn’t great for me, they go for tailwind. I misplayed and tried to leech seed the whims… I’m dumb. That was a dumb loss of a pokemon for no reason. That pretty much cost me the match. I just brought the wrong mons to this match. That tailwind was the end of me. I only played it out for the paltry rewards I’d get. Although they did Sunny Day, which boosts Dragonite’s fire blast. I did take out their Venusaur. I did Mega dragonite because why not, and went for ice beam on whims. Incin did fake out unfortunately. The mega did save Dragonite but the writing was on the wall. Could I swing this around with tailwind petering out? Unfortunately no. Dazzling gleam still outsped both my mons. Wait, can Gallade do this? Sacred sword takes down Incin. Can gallade live one more dazzling gleam? Never mind, there’s Dragapult. Well, that was closer than it should’ve been. I just didn’t lead correctly. Gengar was the better choice over Whims there. Interestingly, I still got 300 VP even in the loss! So I’m 3-2, which isn’t terrible with free mons.

In the next game, I messed up with sludge wave, poisoning my own gallade. Threw that mon away for no reason. (I should’ve brought Steelix.) I’m just not playing well. Clearly fatigue is a problem for me today. Icy Wind didn’t even take out the low health Azumarill. The Corviknight stole the Sitrus from my belly drummed azumarill. Nothing went right here. For some odd reason, they used metal sound on azumarill instead of knocking it out? Ice shard by Abomasnow? What weird move choices. Icy Wind helped azumarill kill their drampa with a +6 Play Rough. Holy crap, I’m coming back? Solar beam? Why are they throwing? I WON! I should NOT have won that! I need a break. 4-2 today in doubles. 314 VP!

Also, I remembered to reenter the competition tomorrow with the CORRECT team,  no wrong mega stone on Gallade. That was an embarrassing mistake. Shows you how sick I’ve been! Thank you people for throwing…

Anyway, I’m thinking of replacing Memento with Protect on Whimsicott, especially considering I have Sludge Wave Gengar. But right now, I’m just getting a feel for what sort of teams I’m facing. Back to some more double battles now that I walked around a bit and had some caffeine.

The next team I face has got some mons I haven’t seen in the game yet, complete with red and blue battle music. Charizard and Typhlosion are their leads. And he immediately goes for Charizard Y. Which has drought. That’s problematic. There goes my poor Azumarill. Well this game looks over. Typhlosion’s eruption is just too much with drought on board. They made it 4-1 in a hurry. Their combo was just too much. Mega Dragonite tried their best. Draco Meteor wrecked Charizard Y, but that minus special attack is a problem. I did have Ice Beam for Garchomp, but the land shark outsped. Yeah, this was a horrible loss. Nothing I could’ve done. 4-3. Absolutely brutalized. Only 38 VP… I simply wasn’t prepared for that. (What I should have done with this is double up on the Typloshion to weaken Eruption. It was still bad, but I could’ve eeked out a bit more VP at the very least.)

The next game Hydreigon and Steelix didn’t really stand a chance against my Azu and Whims. I did lose whims to heavy slam, but she did her job. Gallade and Dragonite could clean up the Manectric and Armarouge. Sucks that Aqua cutter didn’t one shot the Armarouge even with sharpness but all good. Good tip here: it makes sense to not mega Dragonite if you’re using Extreme speed, as it actually loses some physical attack when it mega evolves, FYI. 5-3

Next up is a Rain team with Palafin. I considered taking Palafin myself. Sneasler is an issue. But +6 aqua jet is very nice. Sadly Whims fell to Pelliper’s Hurricane and I have to deal with Hero Mode Palafin. They actually brought in Incineroar first. Interesting. Well, unfortunately Fake Out and Hurricane finished Azumarill. I’m in trouble. Unfortunately Incin outspeeds my Gallade with Parting shot. I doubled the palafin but wave crash KO’d the Gallade. FOrtunately Palafin is gone too. Dragonite got confused by Hurricane. Yeah, this is bad. Does Pelipper protect here? I need to Extreme speed it. Incin faked out anyway. And Pellipper misses hurricane. Phew. Does draco meteor connect with Incin? Pelipper protected as I predicted. It does hit through confusion and does a ton to Incin. Can I pull this out? And Dragonite hit itself in confusion. Bad luck there. So I lost. UGH! That was winnable. 5-4. My rating took a fucking bath and I only got 134 VP out of that mess. One more game then I’m done for a while. That loss took most of my confidence out of me. And this game doesn’t screw around with ratings. I lost all my tier progress basically.

Azumraill and Steelix versus Corviknight and Froslass. Well, the Froslass goes down to a heavy slam. Azu gets the Belly Drum off. Garchomp comes out and goes for scary face, on Steelix? Huh? Corviknight metal sounds my Azu but they’re down 4-2.  Absol comes out next and it’s likely not long for this world with an Azumarill +6 play rough. It’s down to corviknight getting Body pressed down by steelix.  What a nice 4-0 victory to go out on a high after 10 games. 6-4 isn’t bad, especially with one of those a bonehead loss, two were teams that were way too well constructed for us to beat, and that fourth loss was really close. Also, I got most of my ranking back from that win.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the Pokemon I have so far. I haven’t really given Drampa much of a shot because frankly, every time I see it, I absolutely body it. Gallade has been good, but I don’t know if I’m going to pay 2500 VP to keep it. My Charizard will wait until I have a good Drought partner or two for it. But everybody else has been good. Great start to this game.

I’m going to take a break for a few hours because that was mentally exhausting, not to mention I didn’t sleep well and had a very slow morning. My goal right now is just to grind with what I’ve got and day by day build up our roster. I do plan on using silly Pokemon like Castform and Watchog (yes, they’re in the game) but not until next season most likely. I’m going to stick to my original plan at least for the rest of this season of only using in-game Pokemon as I’m actually pretty happy with what I’m seeing so far. I learned a lot today.