Woke up early and got ready for my day at 5am; at least I slept this time for the most part. It’s now 6am, and I’m just going to do my daily stuff on Champions for now because Mongil Star Dive just came out and I want to spend some time on that. But we are going to do our recruitment and run a battle or two.

I’m actually doing three recruits today. I didn’t do my second one yesterday because I intended on doing so later in the day. I am on the verge of completing some weekly missions, too, so I think we’ll just start today with a couple singles battles to complete those. Maybe doubles later?

First recruit lineup (for free): Victreebel, Skarmory, Gourgeist, Garganacl, Passimian, Kleavor, Simisear, Houndoom, Glaceon, Vanilluxe. This is one of the weakest I’ve seen. I have a strong Victreebel in ZA already. Both Glaceon and Kleavor are seeing play, though. I chose to keep Glaceon for now, just on a trial for the moment, since I now have the Membership and 1,000 box spaces. 

OK, now my second recruit I skipped yesterday: Medicham, Lycanroc (midday form), Espathra, Toxapex, Pangoro, Lucario, Goodra (Hisuian), Delphox, Alolan Raichu, and Pinsir. This is a much better line up. We have great Pokemon to go with Goodra, though. So Hisuian Goodra it is; we’ll just use a Teammate ticket on it. Welcome to the club.

We can get 24 more coupons just by using one more ghost type move: Basculegion’s last respects works for this. We also need to win one more Ranked battle without anyone fainting. The last weekly quest is sending fighting type pokemon into battle 5 times (that will require me to use Gallade). I do have Kommo-o and Emboar, too. Maybe it’s time to try Mega Gallade? Dragapult was kind of sketchy for my final singles team slot anyway. Gallade does lose Sharpness for Inner Focus, but gains 40 base attack and 30 defense and speed. I did have to spend 2K on the mega stone but it’s worth a shot.

Just going to have a bit of fun this morning. We bring Meowscarada, Basculegion, and Mega Gallade against Garchomp, Clefable, Umbreon, Gliscor, Snorlax, and Dragonite. This should be interesting to see which 3 they bring. I think we have a good matchup here. That’s because my Protean Meowscarada has Play Rough against their lead Umbreon. They do toxic me which kinda blows.And my second play rough misses. It moonlights and goes back to full health so I have to go U-Turn into Basculegion. It uses sunny day, which honestly is fine as I’m using last respects anyway. Foul Play one hit KO’s… this Umbreon is wrecking us. I bring Meowscarada back in to go for Flower Trick this time. It does barely anything. We may lose to this one pokemon! Without protean, Play Rough isn’t enough, and we fall to poison… this Umbreon knocked out two of our Pokemon! I kind of want to forfeit here as we only have Mega Gallade left. Let’s hope Sacred Sword is enough… IT GOES DOWN TO ONE PERCENT! God, our luck is miserable… Can we outpace Toxic? I will say, Mega Gallade hits like a truck, but we are SO FAR BEHIND. Snorlax should be a good matchup here, but we only do 92%. EQ and Toxic damage stack up. We take out Snorlax, but we need to OHKO this next Pokemon. It’s Dragonite and it’s Mega. I doubt we have the damage. It has extreme speed anyway. We lose to shit luck. That missed play rough and the bad damage roll on Umbreon sucked. We did get a weekly mission done, though. Actually, two: the 20 supereffective moves for 1K VP. I even got the 23 star supereffective move achievement which nets us 500 VP and both a training and teammate ticket! Still, what a miserable loss. We should’ve had that one. (and this makes me think maybe we should use our Umbreon…)

Let’s do a couple recruits to get that bad taste of bad luck defeat out of my mouth… I also found out what these affinity tickets do… they give you a higher-chance of meeting a specific type of Pokemon. Well, what we need at the moment is Sneasler and I don’t have a Poison type one. So let’s do our recruit from our daily coupons first.

The lineup: Arbok, Hatterene, Politoed, Hisuian Typhlosion, Skaramory, Gallade, Huisian Goodra, Tauros, Victreebel, and Basculegion-Female (the special attacking one). The only mon I really need here is Hat. Hisuian Typhlosion is great, but I already have one I can bring in. This Hat isn’t well trained, but I’ll just trial recruit it for now until I decide what I want to do with it. Could be a great alternate trick room setter to Farigarif or Sinistcha.

Let’s do one more recruit thanks to the extra tickets from the Ghost-type moves mission. AND THERE HE IS! PELIPPER! FINALLY! Absolutely garbage training… he has Rain Dish… But we will take it! I couldn’t click teammate ticket fast enough. THANK YOU GAME! Finally we can actually make a Rain Team around Mega Starmie and Mega Meganium! I need to grab that Starmienite actually… we’re still over 30K VP somehow. 

On Pelipper, I’m going Relaxed nature with full Defense and HP investment. We’ll have your typical moveset: Hurricane, Tailwind, Weather Ball, and Protect. And Drizzle of course! I use a training ticket to save me 1600 VP.

For Starmie, I’m going NAUGHTY nature, since we want to maximize our physical attack on Huge Power Mega Starmie. We’re going all in on Attack and Speed with a moveset of Liquidation, Protect, Psycho Cut, and Aqua Jet. I’m also giving it Natural Cure as its base ability instead of Analytic, which is not good here because we don’t want to be the last Pokemon moving in this case! I use a training ticket here, too.

I don’t know if this team will work: Focus Sash Pelipper, Choice Scarf Basculgeion, Mega Starmie, Mega Meganium, Sitrus Incineroar, and Black Glasses Kingambit. It’s worth a shot. Not having Archaludon or Sneasler makes this team a bit odd, but we’ll see. Guess I’ll do a double battle here. We do need one more battle where we don’t lose anyone.

Interesting team we’re up against: Aegislash, Garchomp, Crabominable, Azu, Reuinclus, and Incin. I lead Pelipper and Mega Meganium with Incin and Kingambit in the back. I think that works. They lead Aegis and Incin. I decide to set up tailwind and mega for Dazzling Gleam. I expect the Aegislash to protect here with King’s Shield. Incin does fake out our tailwind and they actually don’t protect the Aegislash. I may have goofed here. They go for Poltergeist. I decide to go for weather ball, which was dumb as they switch out Incin into Azu. Earth Power from Meganium doesn’t KO the aegislash. So there goes Meganium to Iron Head. I just didn’t have the damage. I’m not in a good position. The Azu protects, which is fine. Darkest Lariat finally deals with Aegislash (ugh that pokemon sucked for me). FINALLY, I get up Tailwind. Their third mon is Garchomp. I switch Incin out to Kingambit. Rock Slide comes in and no flinches fortunately. Hurricane brings Azu low with a crit AND confuses! Unfortunately, Super power connects on Kingambit. Yeah, I didn’t play this battle well. Starmie would’ve been the better mega here. I decide to double the Garchomp, which switches out into Incineroar. The Azu protects, so I made the right move. Darkest Lariat does a decent chunk to the Incin and Hurricane does a ton AND CONFUSES! The incin eats its berry, but still. I’m in bad shape but their Incin does hit itself. Aqua Jet doesn’t do much to Incin. Weather ball takes out Azu and they bring back Garchomp. I lose my Tailwind and Drizzle here. Stomping tantrum almost kills Incin (2 HP!) Lariat does OK damage and we set up our Tailwind. We’re in trouble, as our health on both mons is now way too low. We lose Incin to another stomping tantrum. So it’s Pelipper (with no rain) vs Garchomp. I have to risk a Hurricane miss. But they get Rock Slide out and we lose. Bad positioning from me. That was winnable if we brought Starmie. I’ll chalk this up to not having experience with this team, and losing Rain was just awful.

Off to such a bad start today, I decide to just cut it there. I think I’m done for awhile, although our recruiting today was great. See you tomorrow.