After that horrible run of luck, I did indeed take the entire rest of the day off… from Pokemon entirely. I managed to reset my sleep schedule back to normal too, but I was sluggish and didn’t get back to the game until later in the morning today. The good news is, we can’t do much worse than we did yesterday. And even then we made progress, which is a good sign. Even losing still nets you a handful of VP and achievement progress.

I’m planning on doing two recruits a day now, since you get free coupons everyday to reset the timer once. The warm up challenge will offer another 100, so when we get the rewards from that (including a much needed Gardevoir), I’ll be using them all. Right now, if I didn’t have the starter pack, I’d have 40 slots total, thanks to reaching ultra ball tier. I also only have a couple training and teammate tickets left. So I’m starting to feel a bit of a free to play crunch. Yes I have my Mega Floette, but I earned that, 

I was going to run back the same team I devised the other night. I gave up on it too quickly due to mega froslass embarrassing me. I continue to be astonished that the CPU built teams are actually more competitive than you’d think. But since we have two recruits today, let’s see who we get. Remember we have Basculgeon (which I badly need to retrain) and a few other mons that just need the right support. 

So, one of my biggest complains so far, besides the incredibly limited free-to-play storage space (the only reason I popped 7 bucks on here because I didn’t want to get squeezed my first two weeks), the fact that returning Pokemon to the ranch nets you absolutely NOTHING bothers me. I think you should at least get some quick coupons based on how long you held onto the Pokemon (like the longer you held the less you get). Even if it was like 6 coupons. You get zilch for returning Pokemon to save storage space. I truly think this is the way that they’re edging people to buy the membership (which honestly isn’t even that pricey in either monthly or yearly installments). And honestly, because I’m still playing as if I don’t have the extra 50 storage slots, it’s really limiting my recruitments, which in turn, is limiting our options. Yes, I have several Pokemon almost ready to join us (including a shiny Incineroar and shiny Garchomp), but I still want to optimize them a bit further before their profiles are frozen into Champions. And again, I still want to win with what they give me; Mega Floette is our neutron bomb in case all else fails and it gets to the end of the season and we’re not in Master Ball tier yet. Considering most top players are still in Master Ball and haven’t reached Champion rank, I feel a bit better. This game is the most competitive I’ve seen VGC be in awhile, and having the singles ladder (which is much lower power thus far) to be able to grind a few wins for VP, quests, and achievements is really helpful.

I also don’t think that all these VP stacked up at the end of the first Battle Pass will always be available going forward. Those bonus VP are why I’m affording to recruit and train Pokemon so much in the early going. (I also am still trying to find an amazing Pokemon through trades on Home, and that hasn’t gone well; at least, not with Pokemon available in Champions.)

Preamble out of the way, let’s see who will be joining our roster today. I’m keeping in mind that tomorrow the Warm-Up Challenge ends, so tomorrow is going to be very interesting as far as the ranch is concerned! I also got another 2K VP for logging in 5 times this week. I just need to use one more grass type move, too; not hard since Meganium will be active today at some point. I truly think that it’s great that you just have to log in every day, recruit just one pokemon, play just one ranked battle, and you can always progress. I’m glad they set it up this way.

OK Recruit #1 for today. Our lineup is: Emboar, Trevenant, Espeon, Gourgeist, Alolan Raichu, Furfrou, Toucannon, Audino, Chimecho, and Passimian. This is actually one of the weakest lineups I’ve seen thus far. I am intrigued by Audino, though. It’s horribly trained, however. I finally just trial recruited the alolan raichu. I probably won’t use it at all. We immediately spend 22 tickets to roll a new one.

This isn’t a whole lot better: Polteageist, Chimecho, Meowstic, Bannette, Hisuian Avalugg, Heat Rotom, Orthworm, Liepard, Glimmora, and Absol. Orthworm can be good. But this is an easy choice and keep; Glimmora is one of the top Megas in the game right now and is also amazing at support. Easy 2500 VP send here. Garbage training on it, though. So we won’t be using it right away.

So far, I see two Pokemon we may be sending back, Alolan Raichu and Drampa, neither of which I have trained at all (I got a mega stone for Drampa but who cares.) But I’m not squeezed for storage at all yet. And I’m happy to get Glimmora.

Better yet, I have Meowscarada and Emboar pretty much ready to go if I need them, too. Looking at Game8, these two have great synergy with my Mega Floette in Singles. But I don’t really have the best teammates for Glimmora yet.

Let’s remix our old team we built yesterday, and see it performs before we make any hasty decisions with visiting mons. I am making one major change, though. No more choice scarf on Wash, and we’re swapping Shadow Ball for Will-O-Wisp. We’re giving Focus Sash to Adaptability Basculegion! It’s gonna cost us a ton in VP to retrain. 1160 VP is a lot, but it’s worth it for one of the better pokemon in the game. Gallade is dropped, as is Dragapult for our Whimsicott. Whims is getting the leftovers and instead of giga drain, it will be running Helping Hand. While Substitute is great, the Tailwind is more important for my current team. I can always just spend another 250 VP if this doesn’t work out.

The first game is up against Victreebel, Incin, Sinistcha, Drampa, oranguru, and milotic. I’m assuming Trick Room is involved here. We bring Whims, Rotom, Meganium, and Basculegion. Did I bring the right mons? We’ll see. They lead Drampa and Oranguru. We’ll moonblast the drampa, which megas, and Rotom will volt switch the Oranguru. The moonblast does a ton. Unfortunately that does Proc Berserk. But this was planned for. We bring in Meganium. Drampa KO’s Whims with Hyper Voice before Oranguru sets up Trick room. This isn’t great. We bring in Basculegion to Aqua Let, since Last Respects is useless against the two normal types. Meganium will mega here and Sinistcha replaces Oranguru for them, healing Drampa. Does aqua jet chip enough here? Drampa Draco’s, but of course Basculegion hangs on with the sash. Dazzling Gleam does chill the Drampa. Now it’s Milotic. We have the right moves, and Sinistcha uses Rage Powder, but Icy Wind takes down Basculegion. I didn’t play this game correctly. Meganium gets forced to use Solar Beam on Sinistcha instead… actually no it still hit Milotic! Trick Room wrecked us here. I go Protect on Meganium, who’s very low and block a Psychic. Matcha Gotcha doesn’t hit either. Rotom hangs on and eats a Sitrus. Thunderbolt does decent damage to Oranguru. There’s still one turn of Trick Room, and Dazzling Gleam doesn’t KO either mon. I’m just too far behind. So I lose. That was just not good play from me. Bad matchup, but I don’t think I played well. Probably shouldn’t have brought Whims at all. Or even the fish. We’re still in the basement of Ultra Ball tier so we can’t lose anything. We still manage 143 VP. Time to just brush off a rough start and move on.

We’re up against a Mega Floette team this time. I probably bring the wrong mons again: Whims, Rotom, Baculegion, and Meganium. They have Dragonite and Garchomp which is why I left Dragonite. I don’t know if Gengar was better here than Basculegion… it does have Sludge Bomb. Let’s see what this does. Garchomp and Orthworm makes sense. I go Tailwind and Will-o-Wisp on Garchomp. They bulldoze which does like nothing. Odd move. Will o wisp hits too. Orthworm iron defenses. I expect it to shed tail here. Whims is going for the moonblast and Rotom for a hydro pump on Orthworm. They switch Garchomp to Incin. The chip is good on Incin. Hydro Pump hits Orthworm and makes it eat a berry. Then Orthworm explodes my Whims with a Heavy Slam. But it’s done its job. We have tailwind. I flip turn into Incin with Basculegion and go for Wisp on Orthworm. Incin fakes out Rotom out but the Flip Turn is Successful! We get to safely bring in our Mega Meganium. Finally the Shed Tail comes out to protect their Floette. We did see this coming. Likely this will be a Calm Mind. They then switch back in Orthworm. We Mega and go for Solar Beam on the Substitute. We click Thunderbolt and take out Orthworm. They still have burned Garchomp in the back but we have Basculeguion still. Tailwind is gone. Meganium clicks Dazzling Gleam and Rotom goes for Volt Switch on Floette. We need physical damage here so we want a safe switch back to Basculegion. Floette Megas, Garchomp uses Bullzone which doesn’t do much. It ACTUALLY LOWERS FLOETTE’S SPEED! We get some chip as we volt in Basculegion. We live the dazzling gleam and their garchomp falls to our gleam. They are toast. We win! We played CORRECTLY! What a nice win. As it turns out, either Gengar or Basc worked there.

I decide to go do a third recruit for today, since we got the 24 tickets from the grass-type moves weekly mission! We will be without weekly missions the next couple days. This third recruit gives us: Ramparods, Feraligatr, Hisuian Avalugg (again), Umbreon (yay one of my all time faves), Anaconda, Dragonite, Luxray, Lucario, Pinsir, and Gourgeist. Of all these, Feraligatr is probably the best. But I’ll just do a trial. Kind of underwhelming. Also, kind of crazy that we only have 4000 VP left to collet on this month’s Battle Pass! If I do decide to buy the battle pass, it will get me that Emboar and Feraligatr, their mega stones, and 6 more training and teammate tickets. I don’t need Emboar, since I have a really good one already in ZA. I do want Feraligatr and its Mega with Dragonize to be good, but I don’t know. Kind of a rough recruitment day, although we have Glimmora to look forward to, even if the teammates for it aren’t here yet.

Let’s go for another battle before we take a break on what’s been a successful day so far. I go for Rotom, Whims, Dragonite, and Basc this time. They’ve got a legit team with Hisuian Arcanine, Archaludon, Aerodactyl, Sylveon, Weavile (first I’ve seen that), and their own Dragonite. I’m thinking speed control is huge here. They lead with their two fast mons: Aero and Weavile. We set up Tailwind and Rotom gets faked out. Their own Aero uses Tailwind. We protect Whims and go for Thunderbolt on Aero. We’re not off to a good start. Dual Wingbeat gets blanked. Brick Break does a decent chunk to Rotom as we destroy Aerodactyl. Rotom eats Sitrus and they bring in… Archaludon. I decide to double the Archaludon. Moonblast does over half. Ice spinner kills Whims but this is OK. Rotom lives Dragon pulse thanks to its bulk. Remember we still have our Tailwind VS theirs. We double into Basc and Dragonite. Can Basculegion flip Archaludon out of existence? And can Dragonite survive a hit from Weavile? Arch protects, so that’s not great. Dragonite DOES survive, on 22 HP… but Fire Blast hits. And got a meaningless crit. Our positioning isn’t great here. Their last mon is their own Mega Dragonite. So will this come down to a Speed tie or is theirs Jolly? Ours hits first! We lose Dragonite but we still have Rotom. They have Tailwind on their Dragonite! Oh boy. We do last respects the Archaludon. This is gonna be close. However, it’s 2 v 1. Dragonite targets the Rotom, fortuntaely. Now Last Respects is at full power. And we win! YAY BASCULEGION! We still had sash on our fish anyway. So that was a guaranteed win. Hurray!

I’ll take a quick break for breakfast and get these notes uploaded. What a turn around!