Challenge 4th Generation Battle Facilities Discussion and Records

Long time reader, first time writer. I recently picked up Pokemon again after a long break. Good to see a new thread for the Gen 4 battle facilities - they're still my favorite. I remember following the old one back in the day!

I'd like to submit a Heart Gold Battle Hall Single streak of 173 with Nidoking.

I know 173 isn't super impressive, but I'm proud that I was able to clear 170 with my favorite Pokemon, especially given how mediocre it is. Nidoking's saving grace is its huge movepool.

Here's my proof photo.

Nidoking Lv. 64-66
Item: Focus Sash
Nature: Modest
Ability: Poison Point (no Sheer Force in gen 4)
IVs: 18/31/31/31/12/31
EVs: 6 HP/252 Sp.Atk/252 Spd (mostly)

I used the same Nidoking throughout, changing moves for each type and EV spread for the Normal set. I made this objectively bad decision because I wanted to achieve 170 wins with my trophy ribbon collector Nidoking. As a result I had to waste time on irritating prep work in between each set. If I give Nidoking another serious Battle Hall try I'll definitely breed more than one.

Why lv. 64? No reason, it just happened to be my Nidoking's level. The streak started at 64, the Normal battles were done at 65, then the rest at 66. This is because in Gen 4 you need to level up in order for EVs to get recalculated after changes.

1. Ice - Earth Power, Flamethrower, Sucker Punch, Thunderbolt
2. Water - Earth Power, Sucker Punch, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt
3. Ground - Earth Power, Surf, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt
4. Dark - Earth Power, Focus Blast, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt
5. Psychic - Earth Power, Shadow Ball, Sucker Punch, Thunderbolt
6. Steel - Earth Power, Flamethrower, Sucker Punch, Thunderbolt
7. Rock - Earth Power, Surf, Ice Beam, Sucker Punch
8. Ghost - Earth Power, Shadow Ball, Sucker Punch, Thunderbolt
9. Flying - Sludge Bomb, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt, Sucker Punch
10. Normal - Thunderbolt, Super Fang, Superpower, Focus Blast
11. Fighting - Earth Power, Flamethrower, Shadow Ball, Protect
12. Grass - Sludge Bomb, Ice Beam, Flamethrower, Sucker Punch
13. Dragon - Ice Beam, Sucker Punch, Outrage, Icy Wind
14. Poison - Earth Power, Ice Beam, Sucker Punch, Rest
15. Bug - Flamethrower, Surf, Sucker Punch, Icy Wind
16. Fire - Earth Power, Surf, Sucker Punch, Protect
17. Electric - Earth Power, Sucker Punch, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt

Weavile
The Focus Sash Weavile is annoying. On my successful run I don't think I faced it at all, but it has popped up a lot. My original plan to get past Weavile was to use Double Kick, but apparently in Gen 4 Double Kick won't break a Focus Sash. I ended up just doing Ice and Dark early and hoping for the best with Flamethrower. Lucky burns and Poison Point activations occasionally let me score a KO on the first turn. Sucker Punch was rarely helpful because Weavile has its own priority moves.

Sharpedo
Again, I just had to get lucky here. Sharpedo has a Focus Sash and it's faster than Nidoking unless it appears very early. It's also not Sucker Punch-able because of Rough Skin - fainting to Rough Skin counts as a loss even if Sharpedo goes down too. Thunderbolt and hope for the best.

Gallade
Gallade has a powerful Psycho Cut and high base Sp.Def, so it can be tough to beat. However, Nidoking is faster and the AI sometimes opens with Swords Dance. This gives Nidoking a chance for a 2 hit KO with Shadow Ball. Otherwise Gallade probably wins.

Infernape and Poliwrath
Poliwrath is a 2 hit KO with Thunderbolt. It can beat Nidoking easily with a Surf + Vacuum Wave combo, but in my experience the AI will more likely go for Hypnosis on turn 1. Assuming Hypnosis misses, Nidoking won't have any trouble. I considered Sleep Talk as a safety net but didn't end up trying it.

Infernape has a Fake Out set. It can be handled by Protecting on turn 1 against Fake Out, then using Earth Power. This is why I used Protect in the Fire set.

Individually they are fine. The problem is, Nidoking doesn't have enough move slots to cover both at once in the Fighting set. I needed to pick Thunderbolt OR Protect as Earth Power, Shadow Ball and Flamethrower weren't safe to drop. (Flamethrower for Breloom, Shadow Ball for Gallade.) Fortunately I went with Protect and got only Infernape. If I had gotten Poliwrath in the same set I'd likely have lost.

Scyther
This is why I used Icy Wind in the Bug set. Scyther is faster than Nidoking and can 2 hit KO with Aerial Ace. Flamethrower + Sucker Punch isn't enough for a guaranteed KO, but Icy Wind + Flamethrower is.

Weezing
This is why I used Rest in the Posion set. Weezing has a specially defensive build, Levitate and Black Sludge. Nidoking needs about 5 turns to take it down with Ice Beam. Weezing can 4 hit KO with Flamethrower. Nidoking eventually wins by stalling with Rest unless Weezing gets two critical hits in a row while Nidoking is asleep, which didn't happen to me.

Latias and Latios
This is why I used Outrage in the Dragon set. Outrage is a guaranteed 2 hit KO on the dragon jet duo, while Dragon Pulse needs 3 hits. (Outrage is also a guaranteed 2 hit KO on Kingdra. All other dragons get Ice Beam.)

Blissey and Normal set
My strategy for Blissey was... not ideal, given that I was committed to using a Modest Nidoking. But if Nidoking has Atk EVs, Superpower can do over 50% damage on the first hit. I retrained to 252 Atk/252 Spd just for the Normal set and then could take Blissey out using a Super Fang + Superpower combo. I did successfully beat Blissey during the run using this strategy. Super Fang has a chance to miss, but it's more reliable than Focus Blast, which would need to hit at least 7 times. Blissey also has Minimize and Softboiled, so screw that.

I think I planned to use the same Super Fang + Superpower strategy on Snorlax, but Snorlax did not come up during the run. I did use Focus Blast in some cases, such as Lickylicky and I think Slaking. Most things were handled well enough with Superpower, and overall I used Superpower more than Focus Blast. Thunderbolt was there for Flying coverage.

EV note here - I also considered a mixed attack investment. The goal would have been minimum Atk to do at least 50% to Blissey with Superpower, around 168, while leaving the rest in Sp.Atk. I chose not to bother with the split spread, to make things simpler. I don't think the leftover Sp.Atk EVs were achieving much.

Argenta Round 1
Electabuzz. An easy win with Earth Power.

Argenta Round 2
I was expecting a legendary, but I'm like 95% sure it was Exeggutor. Anticlimactic, but I won my Hall gold stamp so I can't complain!

Going in after match #170, my plan was to complete another Electric set to extend the streak as long as possible with the easiest opponents first. Unfortunately I did not thoroughly research what would happen after clearing the board. What I expected was that the matches would continue in the same way, where you'd select a type category and could battle up to 10 opponents of that type consecutively. Of course that's not how it works. You have to select a new type for each battle. Nidoking needs a fairly specialized moveset to succeed against most types, so I wasn't prepared for that situation.

I went in with the Electric moveset. I was able to win in Electric, Fire and I think Flying. Then I promptly lost in Water to, if I recall correctly, Lax Incense Whiscash.

Despite the relatively short streak, I'm happy with what I achieved. My goal was to reach 170 with my favorite Pokemon and I succeeded. I don't have the motivation to seriously attempt another Nidoking Battle Hall run yet, but maybe I'll come back to it someday. I'd like to give Nidoqueen a shot too!
 
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Long time lurker, first time poster here as well! Got inspired into Gen 4 battle facilities again after werster finally completed his 4th gen All Gold Prints speedrun. (It's not quite as impressive as it looks--he RNG manipulates all his fights--but still the crowning achievement of all Pokemon speedruns in my opinion.)

But I'd like to spread awareness of a new Battle Factory speedrun category that's been popular recently with how accessible it is. No routing needed, no RNG manipulation, just dive right in.
https://www.speedrun.com/pkmngen4ext#Battle_Factory_HGSS

werster's 2:12 BF Gold is ridiculously impressive, would love to see anyone try to top that.
 
Messed around yesterday and won the first 70 on a 'blind' (haven't looked up any trainers/sets and was just randomly stopping the roulette) Arcade run.

Gyarados
Adamant, 80 HP/252 Atk/176 Spe
Lv. 50 stats: 180/194/99/x/120/123
- Dragon Dance
- Waterfall
- Earthquake
- Thunder Wave

Blissey
Timid, 84 HP/252 Def/174 Spe
Lv. 50 stats: 341/x/55/x/155/106
- Substitute
- Double Team
- Softboiled
- Seismic Toss

Drapion
Careful, 252 HP/58 Def/196 SpD/4 Spe
Lv. 50 Stats: 177/110/137/x/132/116
- Substitute
- Rest
- Acupressure
- Crunch

Thoughts:

- This would have to be the worst generation to run a blob with the physical/special split, 2x critical hits, and no items, but obviously it pulls its weight with Natural Cure and stopping special attackers. Blissey with +6 evasion behind a Sub for the final two doesn't feel like nearly as secure of a win condition as it does with Eviolite Chansey, to the point that making it a pure PP waster and facilitator for teammate sweeps with Flash and some other non-attacking move instead of Seismic Toss/Double Team has crossed my mind. However, the AI just seems a little too bad/random to count on it depleting the 'right' moves with enough time to fully set up before Struggle, plus it's hard to pass up Blissey essentially being a 'skip battle' button against any team without strong physical attackers regardless of what you do on the roulette.

- Blissey's presence makes Thunder Wave feel like more of a luxury. With Garchomp in Blissey's place I used it mostly to tilt the matchup towards Drapion against all those special attackers it sets up against on paper due to not getting 3HKOed but has to worry about secondary effects and lack of passive recovery. 100% paralysis against all-non Grounds when there's no Lum Berry/Bright Powder to worry about is nice, but at the same time 2-3 Intimidates is enough to set up Drapion on any non-boosting physical attacker and Blissey being Blissey is enough to set up on most special attackers without needing the speed drop or parahax. Thunder Wave synergized particularly well with Garchomp where it could Sub down against something it already could OHKO and a single full paralysis would be enough to turn the battle from 'in the driver's seat' to 'assured win,' but with less offensive team members I'm definitely open to alternatives.

- so what other options would there be for Gyarados? My first thought was Protect for scouting/PP wasting purposes, but I'd definitely appreciate the input of someone who's played the 4th gen battle facilities more recently than like 8 years ago for how much Protect scouting would really help compared to just looking up the trainer's roster; I guess that depends both on how many trainers are using all 4 sets of a given Pokemon plus which sets can be stat boosters you definitely wouldn't want to use Protect against. Maybe even Roar to get rid of some rare bad matchups in favor of set-up bait for Drapion/Blissey would be more useful. Some of the dicier battles I've had involved getting Sandstorm/Hail on the roulette, which limits how much I can set up against a lead; Rain Dance would take care of that, plus after a DD Rain Dance powers up Waterfall more than a second DD.

- If Gyarados isn't sweeping much and isn't using Thunder Wave much either, it begs the question of whether something like Salamence that's faster and can hit harder off the bat with STAB Outrage (and can still use Scary Face if speed control is necessary) would be better in its place. I guess the situations where Gyarados would be better would be resisting Meteor Mash from Metagross and doing better against physical Ice or Dragon attacks, but those might be rare enough that in a format where 200 straight wins would be the record that 'just hope you don't get crit turn 1 by Metagross' would be a winning strategy.

- Drapion's spread obviously is not tailored to the Arcade and could probably be better, but there's a lot of moving variables. Maybe making it fully physically or specially defensive would maybe increase its setup opportunities.
 
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Messed around yesterday and won the first 70 on a 'blind' (haven't looked up any trainers/sets and was just randomly stopping the roulette) Arcade run.

Gyarados
Adamant, 80 HP/252 Atk/176 Spe
Lv. 50 stats: 180/194/99/x/120/123
- Dragon Dance
- Waterfall
- Earthquake
- Thunder Wave

Blissey
Timid, 84 HP/252 Def/174 Spe
Lv. 50 stats: 341/x/55/x/155/106
- Substitute
- Double Team
- Softboiled
- Seismic Toss

Drapion
Careful, 252 HP/58 Def/196 SpD/4 Spe
Lv. 50 Stats: 177/110/137/x/132/116
- Substitute
- Rest
- Acupressure
- Crunch

Thoughts:

- This would have to be the worst generation to run a blob with the physical/special split, 2x critical hits, and no items, but obviously it pulls its weight with Natural Cure and stopping special attackers. Blissey with +6 evasion behind a Sub for the final two doesn't feel like nearly as secure of a win condition as it does with Eviolite Chansey, to the point that making it a pure PP waster and facilitator for teammate sweeps with Flash and some other non-attacking move instead of Seismic Toss/Double Team has crossed my mind. However, the AI just seems a little too bad/random to count on it depleting the 'right' moves with enough time to fully set up before Struggle, plus it's hard to pass up Blissey essentially being a 'skip battle' button against any team without strong physical attackers regardless of what you do on the roulette.

- Blissey's presence makes Thunder Wave feel like more of a luxury. With Garchomp in Blissey's place I used it mostly to tilt the matchup towards Drapion against all those special attackers it sets up against on paper due to not getting 3HKOed but has to worry about secondary effects and lack of passive recovery. 100% paralysis against all-non Grounds when there's no Lum Berry/Bright Powder to worry about is nice, but at the same time 2-3 Intimidates is enough to set up Drapion on any non-boosting physical attacker and Blissey being Blissey is enough to set up on most special attackers without needing the speed drop or parahax. Thunder Wave synergized particularly well with Garchomp where it could Sub down against something it already could OHKO and a single full paralysis would be enough to turn the battle from 'in the driver's seat' to 'assured win,' but with less offensive team members I'm definitely open to alternatives.

- so what other options would there be for Gyarados? My first thought was Protect for scouting/PP wasting purposes, but I'd definitely appreciate the input of someone who's played the 4th gen battle facilities more recently than like 8 years ago for how much Protect scouting would really help compared to just looking up the trainer's roster; I guess that depends both on how many trainers are using all 4 sets of a given Pokemon plus which sets can be stat boosters you definitely wouldn't want to use Protect against. Maybe even Roar to get rid of some rare bad matchups in favor of set-up bait for Drapion/Blissey would be more useful. Some of the dicier battles I've had involved getting Sandstorm/Hail on the roulette, which limits how much I can set up against a lead; Rain Dance would take care of that, plus after a DD Rain Dance powers up Waterfall more than a second DD.

- If Gyarados isn't sweeping much and isn't using Thunder Wave much either, it begs the question of whether something like Salamence that's faster and can hit harder off the bat with STAB Outrage (and can still use Scary Face if speed control is necessary) would be better in its place. I guess the situations where Gyarados would be better would be resisting Meteor Mash from Metagross and doing better against physical Ice or Dragon attacks, but those might be rare enough that in a format where 200 straight wins would be the record that 'just hope you don't get crit turn 1 by Metagross' would be a winning strategy.

- Drapion's spread obviously is not tailored to the Arcade and could probably be better, but there's a lot of moving variables. Maybe making it fully physically or specially defensive would maybe increase its setup opportunities.
I lost that streak at 141. There was a whole carnival of hax and misplay afterwards as well, but the main reason I was even in position for that to matter was that I messed up on 'breeding' the Blissey and somehow was using a Hasty one the entire streak that got taken out by a crit that it would've survived otherwise (even if Hasty it would've survived if I hadn't also stopped the roulette on a -HP square). However, I ran it back with the right-natured Blissey (and changed Drapion's EVs to just maxed Sp. Def) and have an active 196 streak, so it does seem to have real #1 potential for anyone who wants to try it on cartridge.

I've done a spreadsheet of 150+ battles so far; don't expect a ton of exciting logs (the ones with the most writing are generally "I did something dumb and had to stall for longer with Blissey or sacrifice Blissey/Gyarados to set up Drapion"). However, I'm curious about how much strategy/skill there is in the roulette.

Based on what I recorded, I hit the square I was aiming for around 20-25% of the time. That's a very fuzzy estimate because A) landing on squares that change the movement can affect up to 6 subsequent spins in a round B) having a lot of matchups that can't be lost by any in-battle hax when played correctly makes for quite a few spins where I either don't care at all where the roulette lands or am more concerned with avoiding a square or two than hitting the 'best' one. I'm sure anyone with some combination of having better reflexes/playing on cartridge/practicing more would significantly improve upon my own roulette precision (which I'd also have to infer from the #1 streak holder saying that after the gold print "pretty much anything negative towards your team is certain death"), but hitting the exact square and/or correctly evaluating which one would be best to hit every time is obviously unrealistic.

Even if it were possible to hit the best square every time, you're still bound to run into a battle where every square has some kind of downside (especially when something like giving your team items can really backfire) and resiliency to bad squares makes more of a difference. I really think the Drapion/Blissey combo offers more of that resiliency than any other Arcade team; aside from the obvious utility of Blissey being able to Natural Cure away whatever status and either solo teams or stall out leads to the point that even a statused Drapion can safely boost if the backups have a chance of taking out Blissey, it probably benefits from a relative scarcity of squares like burning/poisoning the opponent that are desirable for most teams but some of the very worst squares from my perspective in terms of limiting the number of turns to take advantage of a set-up fodder lead. On the flip side, this team probably welcomes the fog more than any other since it makes setup with Drapion/Blissey even easier and I can cripple most things without even needing to connect on an attack.

The more battles I did, the more I felt my initial instincts with Gyarados were good. When you're facing one of four possible Lapras, Dragonite, Salamence, or Gyarados leads that can either hit really hard or Dragon Dance, Thunder Wave is a more proactive choice than the other options I thought of plus it's not like there's a reliable attack that Gyarados (or Salamence) learns to deal with all of those. The EVs on Gyarados were just an arbitrary 'max attack, find the highest empty speed tier that makes sense, and put the rest in HP' so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a better spread more tailored to specific Arcade threats. However, it's possible that this team might be able to get a substantially longer streak than the record and that variations with a different lead and/or a better roulette button pusher are still more than good enough to be #1. IMO Gyarados with Thunder Wave is the happy medium between a heavier hitter like Salamence (and even then it can OHKO something like lead Rampardos when Salamence can't) and an all-out crippling psychic type that's screwed over by Clear Body or Hyper Cutter.)
 

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Reporting completed streaks in Hall singles of 204 wins with Gengar and 175 wins with Scizor.

Hall was the second facility I visited on my trip to earn all colored prints in Gen 4. Shortly after I'd obtained the Factory Gold print for the first time, I beat the battle hall with Gengar and lost the streak soon after. Around a month back, I decided to give it another go, aiming for distance this time.

The set:
Gengar @ Focus Sash
Ability: Levitate
Level: 58
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 5 Atk / 30 Def
- Shadow Ball
- Sludge Bomb / Focus Blast
- Thunderbolt / Energy Ball
- Hypnosis
Level 58 is chosen because it's the lowest level that satisfies the two conditions that a) it hits a jump point in the damage formula (occurs at levels whose last digit is 0, 3, 5, or 8) and b) after Argenta, the AI mons are at a lower level than the mon I'm using. There's a few other nice things that work out about level 58, such as that this Gengar's imperfect defense IV doesn't matter.

Now, I can guess what you're thinking. Focus Blast and Hypnosis, really? Well, as it turns out, in a facility like Hall where you have VERY limited options to deal with certain threats, having a catch-all like Hypnosis is really good. Hypnosis works on mons of all types regardless of their stats or attacking moves (Counter is useless against Heatran) and is always available as a Hail-Mary play.
Focus Blast was exclusively used post-170, when I'd have to face mons of multiple types during a single session and so couldn't swap in a better move for each type on a case-by-case basis.
Energy ball was exclusively used pre-170, for the Ice, Electric, Water, and Ground rounds.
Dark 10
Rock 10
Normal 10
Psychic 10
Steel 10
(switch to energy ball)
Ice 9
Electric 10
Water 10
Ground 10
(switch to thunderbolt)
Fire 10
Bug 10
Poison 10
Ghost 10
Dragon 10
Flying 10
Fighting 10
Grass 10
Argenta

past 170:
must use sludge
dragon, grass, fly

must use focus
elec, steel, rock, fire,

doesn't matter:
fight, ghost, bug

post-170 type order and actual mons:
grass(exeggutor), fight(heracross), fly(scyther), ghost(banette), dragon(altaria), poison(roserade), bug(scizor), water(seadra), psychic(xatu), ground(steelix) (tbolt/sludge)

fire(ninetales), ice(jynx), elec(luxray), steel(forretress), rock(rhydon), normal(lickilicky), dark(umbreon), fight(primeape), bug(venomoth), rock(lunatone) (tbolt/focus)

grass(ludicolo), flying(tropius), ghost(banette), dragon(altaria), poison(swalot), water(sharpedo), psychic(exeggutor), ground(torterra), ice(abomasnow), normal(girafarig) (tbolt/sludge)

fire(ninetales), elec(jolteon), steel(registeel), dark(houndoom), ghost(dusknoir, loss), rock, fire, steel, electric, dark (tbolt/focus)

Highlights:
187 (Dark, Umbreon): Gengar spams Hypnosis to PP stall Sucker Punch for an easy win.
199 (Ice, Abomasnow): I miss an 11/16 chance to OHKO with Sludge Bomb, but Smart AI decides to use Iron Tail to keep my run alive.
203 (Steel, Registeel): Running the odds reveals Hypnosis to be the optimal play here. I miss my first attempt, then break through paraflinch to land a 3+ turn Hypnosis on my last chance to keep the run alive.
205 (Ghost, Dusknoir): On what's supposed to be a breather battle, I run into the only thing in Ghost that I don't win against 100% of the time. Which then activates its Quick Claw to end the run.

After that unexpectedly successful streak (seriously, there were multiple times when I should have lost well before I actually did), I decided that I'm going to get 170 wins with each individual member of my Tower/Arcade/Castle team. Next up was Scizor.

Scizor @ Focus Sash / Choice Band / Choice Scarf / Life Orb
Ability: Technician
Level: 58
EVs: 80 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 4 SpD / 168 Spe
Adamant Nature
IVs: 22 SpA
- Bullet Punch
- Aerial Ace / Bug Bite
- Superpower / Aerial Ace
- Bug Bite / Swords Dance / Night Slash
Level 58 is chosen for being the lowest level that gains a level advantage against the AI post-170. In Scizor's case, it happens to line up nicely, as no EVs are wasted and I actually hit a jump point for the Adamant nature.
Scizor abuses the hell out of the fact that you can change your moves, EVs, items, even which specimen you're using, in between rounds of 10 battles. Scizor makes solid use out of all of its moves and items, somewhat unusually for a Hall Pokemon.
1: fire(sash AoA) (Everything can kill you in this round. I have died to magby of all things because i didn't want to sit through the "attack fell! defense fell!" text and clicked aerial ace, only to get burned by fire punch)
2: dragon(sash, AoA) (I do Dragon this early because Altaria becomes troublesome when it gains enough bulk to survive the 2HKO from bullet punch)
3: water(sash AoA) (Scizor really hates gyarados)
4: poison(band AoA) (Done this early because weezing and skuntank are pricks)
5: dark(sash AoA) (Scizor hates skuntank)
6: flying(sash, -bb) (Scizor hates everything in flying. I legit lost to pidgeot once)
7: steel(LO, -bb) (LO is for Skarm and Magnezone. Watch out for QC Bastiodon)
8: fighting(scarf -bb) (Scarf scizor is a really cool strat that basically nullifies Infernape as a threat. I would do this later but replacing moves is a huge pain)
9: ground(sash, -aa) (i hate gliscor)
10: electric(sash, -SD + NS) (fuck hall manectric. you think you have a cool strategy? scarf night slash scizor to deal with electrics? nope, fuck you, sash flamethrower manectric exists. go directly to battle 1. do not pass go. do not collect 200 dollars)
11: ghost(sash, -superpower +AA) (night slash is for rotom specifically.)
12: psychic(band, -superpower +AA) (band is used cause i'm more scared of flamethrower burns from slowbro than i am of being crit by starmie. CB bullet punch OHKOes everything faster than you except starmie.)
13: bug(sash, -NS +SD) (be sure to chip forry with bullet punch before setting up on it)
14: rock(sash, -aa) (basically harmless)
15: normal(sash, -aa) (mostly harmless, a few things have fire moves)
16: ice(sash, -aa) (completely harmless)
17: grass(sash, -aa) (completely harmless except argenta)

170: argenta, slaking

171: grass, bellossom
172: ice, lapras
173: bug, vespiquen
174: normal, chansey
175: psychic, slowbro
176: rock, regirock. SD/thunder wave, FP turn 2, didn't get the roll for BP turn 3.

post-170: (sash, -aa) grass, ice, bug, normal, psychic, rock, ghost, ground, electric, fighting, steel, dark, dragon, poison, water, flying, fire
Scizor doesn't get as much mileage out of swapping between 2 movesets post-170, and in this case I didn't even get far enough for it to matter anyway.

Hall Scizor is an interesting mon to route because of how it essentially has to tailor itself to each type. In this case, I switched between 6 moves and 4 items. Also you will develop a healthy hatred for any moves that have "burn" as a secondary effect.


Haven't done a hall chomp streak yet due to the fact that I haven't yet RNG'd two of the Garchomps I'm planning to use on that one.
 
Battle Tower: 126 (ongoing)
Battle Arcade: 91 (ongoing)
Battle Castle: 55 (lost to DD gyara flinches)

Cresselia @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
Level: 50
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD / 4 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 30 HP / 0 Atk / 30 SpA
- Psychic
- Thunder Wave
- Flash
- Moonlight

Articuno @ Bright Powder
Ability: Pressure
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 30 Def / 30 SpA
- Sheer Cold
- Mind Reader
- Substitute
- Roost

Garchomp (M) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Sand Veil
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
IVs: 12 SpA
- Outrage
- Earthquake
- Dragon Claw
- Fire Fang

The strat is to twave/flash to -6 and try to sub and sweep with Articuno. There's a few problem pokemon but it is nice not to have any trouble with enemy evasion mons. If Articuno can get in and sub up vs enemy ohko users they shouldn't be a problem either, but the problem is hard switching while Cresselia is in vs something like Dewgong is super risky because if the ohko move lands on articuno I'm in big trouble. I usually just twave what they have and Psychic until they land the move or I just straight up kill them to get Articuno in. Fighting vs ohko mons faster than Cresselia (which I think is only Rapidash and Gliscor) means I need to get lucky or that hopefully Garchomp can sweep the rest of their team. Even when something with sturdy pops up it's usually a shitty rock type that's slow and easily pp stalled.

Scizor 1, Gengar 2/4 and Gliscor 3 are all extremely bad leads to see, I definitely need Garchomp to come up big vs the rest of their team to have a chance if I see Gengar and Scizor, and if Gliscor lands guillotine vs Articuno I think I just straight up lose, but if I can get just one free turn I can substitute stall until he runs out of guillotines then he can't hit Articuno at all.

I really didn't have a good item to put on Articuno with item clause leftovers, I tested Ganlon Berry on emulator which actually seemed to have some good use cases with subbing down to 1/4 and then I could roost off rock slides easily, but I can't get one on cart lol. Bright Powder is definitely not bad, though I rarely actually need to rely on it to win.

I also think Adamant scarf Garchomp is probably superior, but I had already rnged the jolly one and it still has some use cases like +1 mence and +2 some other dd stuff that Adamant can't beat.

I lost in a very avoidable way in Castle by me not twaving my first turn vs a gyarados that happened to flinch Cresselia with waterfall 3 times in a row afterwards. I started that set with like 0 cp because I skipped as many battles as possible before Darach, which for a continued streak beyond him was pretty bad and I need to continually restore Cresselia and Articuno's pp after every match they're in because Sheer Cold/Moonlight is so essential and so low. Castle is also just super boring don't think I'll ever try it again.

The team doesn't use trick so it seems to be pretty high ranked for Arcade because everyone who was abusing it for tower couldnt do that there lol. It's also has a lot better matchups because of no life orb/lum berry/quick claws that can annoy Cresselia.

EDIT: I guess I should include a warstory, well just had my closest battle yet on 126 just now was vs veteran Alfred, and Cresselia easily oustalls and kills his Ursaring lead so I thought I had a very comfortable advantage, but out comes Rhyperior3, which I cant twave so I figure I'll just Psychic as much as I can until I kill him or he horn drills me. I Psychic and do about 1/3, and he immediately horn drills and kills me from full health. I realize I'm in big trouble now because if he's solid rock he's going to live a Garchomp EQ and kill me with avalanche so I have to go articuno here.

Now his set is Horn Drill, Avalanche, Payback, Counter, so I'm not in danger of being killed by anything other than horn drill. I sub turn 1 to see if he goes for horn drill, and he does avalanche instead and kills my sub. I say ok, if hes just going to regularly attack me I want to be as healthy as possible for his last poke, so I'll just Mind Reader here, and since he just regularly attacked last turn he probably wont horn drill. Oh how wrong I was, after mind reader he of course immediately horn drills and kills me, so now I'm down to just Scarf Garchomp vs a 2/3 health Rhyperior with avalanche that will definitely kill me if he uses it, and an unknown last poke. I know he's going to live with solid rock if I EQ and if I choose EQ his last poke might totally wall me, so I have to go for outrage, and hes lives with a little bit of red health left. Instead of avalanching he horn drills instead and misses, so I actually have a chance. His last poke turns out to be Rampardos, which after looking at Frontier Informant does not have ice punch so there's no way he can OHKO me but its still not over because I can't ohko him and confusion is coming next turn. Luckily my outrage crits and I don't even have to worry about it.

Lucked out pretty hard in the end but I felt like I deserved it. The horn drill hits he had and the turns he used it on were insanely bad luck so I guess it balances out. I could have tried subbing more with Articuno, but I have to mind reader eventually and if I tried to fish for him missing with horn drill or bright powder miss with more subs then I'd get low enough to where he could kill me with avalanche or payback, so I don't think there was any true correct play there. Currently at 126 wins.
 
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atsync

Where the "intelligence" of TRAINERS is put to the test!
is a Pokemon Researcheris a Contributor to Smogon
That Rhyperior set seems like it would be a bit hard to predict - in my experience, the "smart" ai seen after round 4 tends to be somewhat random when handling OHKO moves, Counter/Mirror Coat and Avalanche/Revenge (as well as some other moves), and Rhyperior3 happens to have all three of them! With that in mind, I probably would have just subbed again with Articuno tbh since it doesn't seem like you had anything to lose from doing so in that situation, whereas you had the potential to earn a free sub if it missed a Horn Drill or went for a Counter.
 
Lost to el classico in the tower, I have a full health Articuno behind a sub and full health garchomp vs his last poke rhydon.

I Mind reader, he stone edges my sub.

Quick claw Stone Edge kills Articuno.

Quick claw Horn Drill kills Garchomp.

pretty insane lol. Streak ended at 127 wins.

My streak in arcade is still going at 112 wins, and I somehow managed to win even when landing on a team switch square. The enemy was a scientist with literally a perfect anti-team. He had Drapion (which hard walls cresselia), Bronzong (which can beat Garchomp 1v1) and Donphan (which hard walls Articuno with sturdy), and I STILL almost lost because i was close to getting pp stalled by articuno while on donphan but hit a lucky crit super power to kill from donphan.

EDIT: I was just going to keep going until I lost today, but I actually just ran through the whole thing and got to 203. A week ago I decided I wanted to get the gold symbols and once I beat it in Arcade, Tower and Castle I figured I would just keep going until I lost, because I need to change my set for Garchomp in the hall and I'm not gonna keep changing my set back and forth lol. Can't believe I actually made it into first on the leaderboard with this team, as much as I would like to credit Articuno I'm pretty sure you could literally use any set up sweeper with substitute with this Cresselia and you'd win, it's just absurdly broken and solo wins almost every battle. I saved the battle video which was battle 108 where I teamswapped and still won lmao which I might upload later, but I'll leave a screen shot for now.



Btw what is the 4th move youre supposed to run on Garchomp in the hall? I know its outrage/eq/firefang but I looked at some sets and lots of people were running different things.

EDIT 2: got 182 in hall with Garchomp, lost to Yanmega bug buzz crit. Very bad facility lol
 
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"We could be heroes, just for one day"
David Bowie

Before I joined this forum yesterday, I was a long-time lurker, and saw something in this thread that inspired me. Atsync did some Battle Hall runs with weak Pokemon like Bulbasaur and Mime Jr, and even won over 80 battles with the latter... That made me curious. How would my favourite Pokemon, Bayleef, perform in the Battle Hall? The gold print, 170 battles, was out of reach, but the Silver Print (50 battles)? Why not? 100 battles? Probably pushing it, but I could always try...

I've never gotten into the SoulSilver Battle Frontier seriously, but I'd like to try that. I won the silver prints with my in-game team, but the gold prints... I'd like to win those too. To do so, I will be using viable Pokemon, like Suicune and Latias. But first, I did a nice, fun warming-up with Bayleef.

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Bowie the Bayleef @ Choice Specs
Modest, 4 HP, 252 SAtk, 252 Speed
- Giga Drain
- Ancientpower
- Hidden Power Ice
- Mud-Slap

Of course this set has no competitive value. This is my in-game Bayleef, bred in Pearl and hatched in SoulSilver to get the right nature and the egg move Ancientpower. I just wanted to use Bayleef in-game for a casual playthrough, so of course I wanted to be able to OHKO and 2HKO things, which is why I EV trained it.

With Bayleef's base stats, wouldn't a defensive EV spread and moveset make more sense? Maybe, but not in the Battle Hall. Bayleef may be slow and bulky, but I don't think a defensive EV spread and moveset would've done better. Maybe some moves that OHKO Bayleef now would've been 2HKO's with a defensive EV spread, and some 2HKO's would've been 3HKO's. However, Bayleef would be unable to dish out any significant damage without his coverage moves, Special Attack EV's and Choice Specs.

The offensive approach and the coverage moves allowed Bayleef to beat several Pokemon a defensive Bayleef would've lost against. A defensive Bayleef with Grass STAB as its only offensive option would be dead weight against most Bug, Fire, Poison, Steel, Dragon and Flying types. With Grass Knot, Leech Seed, Synthesis and Toxic, what would you do against Butterfree or Altaria? Get killed. Outspeeding lots of Pokemon a defensive Bayleef would lose against and nailing them with a super effective Ancientpower, Hidden Power Ice or Mud-Slap is what allowed Bayleef to make it this far in the Battle Hall. OHKO'ing Dragonite with Hidden Power Ice is very satisfying.

The battle with Argenta starts at 0.36, everything before that is proof that I won 50 battles with Bayleef.

And so, Bowie the Bayleef started his adventure in the Battle Hall. Major Bayleef was still able to hear Ground Control and battled weaklings from Rank 1 to 5 without any trouble. When reaching Argenta, he easily defeated her Marshtomp and earned the Silver Print. Of course 50 battles isn't an amazing achievement, but Bayleef won a Print all by himself in the Battle Frontier, and it feels good to do that with your favourite Pokemon.

After winning that print, I continued battling Rank 1 to 5 opponents until I did that for every type, winning 85 battles. Then, I decided to avoid types that Bayleef would certainly struggle with, like Fire and Poison. Bayleef Stardust decided to slay Dragons with Hidden Power Ice. The Starman had no trouble murdering Water, Ground and Rock Pokemon with Giga Drain. Even Steel types weren't safe from Bayleef, whose Mud-Slap made them shiver in fear.

And so, after three failed runs that ended at 69 (Gyarados), 85 (Haunter) and 96 (Aerodactyl), our hero finally reached his goal of 100 wins. How long would Bayleef be able to keep the streak going?

After 108 wins, it was over. Bayleef had to battle Scyther, who defeated Bayleef with Aerial Ace. And so, Ground Control was no longer able to reach Major Bayleef. I knew this was going to happen sooner or later. Most Bug Pokemon were slower than Bayleef and got OHKO'ed by Ancientpower, but Scyther outsped Bayleef and ended a beautiful streak at 108 wins.

Of course I wish my streak would've lasted a little bit longer. However, I'm not bitter about the loss. I'm happy that I reached my goal of 100 wins. Every single win after that was a nice bonus. The battles got harder and harder... 108 wins is much more than I expected. Bayleef achieved something I never thought he would achieve.

Did I make mistakes? Of course. I'm not perfect. If I didn't pick Bug, maybe the streak would've lasted a little bit longer. However, other types I had left had some opponents that Bayleef certainly could not beat.

To prove that my 100+ run was not a fluke, and that Bayleef is able to get structural 100+ winning streaks, I tried to do another 100+ run. This time, Manectric ended my run after 103 wins. Bayleef barely survived a Flamethrower. Giga Drain was about to OHKO Manectric, but the Focus Sash made the asshole doggy survive. Then, Bayleef healed quite some HP, getting it back to 50-60% HP. The next turn, Manectric was stupid enough to use Thunder, which Bayleef should normally survive with ease. However, Thunder was a critical hit and killed Bayleef...

Then, I tried again. One last time, I thought. I easily reached 100 wins. Argenta's Sunflora went down to Hidden Power Ice. However, 104 wins was the maximum I could achieve. I had to battle a Vileplume, who barely survived Hidden Power Ice and killed Bayleef with Sludge Bomb.

However, something felt unfinished. My first 100+ streak ended at 108 wins, which was very close to 110. Would Bayleef be able to reach that benchmark? I decided to try one more time. Bayleef fought very well, destroying Argenta's Skiploom with Hidden Power Ice. It was a smooth run, easily reaching 100 and more. After beating a Vespiquen, I broke my old 108 record. Then, Bayleef escaped defeat and scraped a win against Magcargo, winning battle 110. Sadly, The run ended after 115 wins, when Blaziken's Blaze Kick was just too strong to handle for Bayleef.

Chikorita and its evolutions are often looked down upon, being considered the weakest starter in Johto or even in Pokemon history by many players. Getting such high streaks with a middle evolution from that line... Very, very, very satisfying. I would encourage all of you to give the Battle Hall a try with your favourite Pokemon, no matter how weak or strong it is. You don't have to win a gold print. Just winning a silver print and getting high winning streaks with your favourite Pokemon feels very satisfying.

Realistically, winning 115 battles with Bayleef is probably Bayleef's limit. However, that's also what I thought after winning 100 times, after which I kept trying over and over and over until I got 110 wins. So yeah, maybe I will try to aim for 120 wins...

Ground Control to Major Bayleef...

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Another Battle Hall challenge, this time with Misdreavus and Politoed.

I named this Misdreavus after my friend Judith, since it's her favourite Pokemon.

Misdreavus @ Choice Specs
Modest, 4 HP, 252 SAtk, 252 Speed
- Shadow Ball
- Thunderbolt
- Psychic
- Power Gem / Icy Wind

Pretty straightforward set. All-out offense is the best way to go in the Battle Hall. Shadow Ball and three coverage moves. Most of the time, the fourth move was Power Gem, and the move tutor taught Missy Icy Wind when I battled Dragons and stronger Grass types.

Misdreavus is physically frail, which means any super effective physical Dark of Ghost move from any non-weakling was a OHKO, just like many strong neutral physical hits. However, good Speed and Special Attack allow her to outspeed and OHKO most opponents in the Battle Hall.

After several tries that ended somewhere between 70 and 90 wins, when trying to do runs with ten opponents of the same type in a row and getting defeated by Focus Sash holders or faster physical attackers, I decided to go with a different approach. I battled rank 1 to 5 out of all the types, and some more for types Missy is strong against, like Psychic and Fighting. I wasn't aiming for a Gold Print (170+ wins) anymore, I was just trying to see how many wins I could get. This went quite well, since Argenta's Farfetch'd was easily killed with Thunderbolt, allowing our favourite ghost to earn a Silver Print. Then, Misdreavus kept killing her opponents, until she had to face Sharpedo. Thunderbolt should've OHKO'ed the shark, but that dick had a Focus Sash and killed Missy with Crunch. And so, the streak ended after 111 wins.

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My Politoed is named Holy Diver. Why? The frog in the video clip for the song Love Is All, sung by Ronnie James Dio (amazing live version here), reminded me of Politoed. At first, I wanted to name my Politoed Ronnie Dio or Dio. However, when I listened to the song Holy Diver by Dio, I thought that would be a cool nickname, since, well, a Water Pokemon can dive. ;)

Politoed @ Choice Specs
Modest, 4 HP, 252 SAtk, 252 Speed
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Psychic
- Focus Blast / Hidden Power Ghost

Straightforward moveset. Hidden Power Ghost during the Ghost, Bug, Psychic and Water rounds, to take care of Shedinja, Slowpoke and its evolutions and Starmie. Aside from that Focus Blast, even though I never needed it and just used Surf most of the time.

To destroy Argenta, our favourite headbanging frog had to beat a legendary. Uxie went down after two Surfs. And so, Politoed kept winning and had a streak of 155 wins without too much trouble. Sadly, Frenzy Plant / Focus Sash Venusaur was unbeatable, ending the streak when I had a little bit of hope that I might actually reach 170 wins.

Would 170 wins with Politoed be possible? Maybe, but only if you are very lucky when it comes to the opponents. I actually wasn't expecting to even reach 155 wins, but if I can do this, who knows? I might try this again at some point and see if I can reach Argenta for the gold print, but I have another Battle Hall challenge coming up soon that I'd like to work on first...

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I tried battle factory for a bit but the lower rounds are too demoralizing to keep going through, got to thorton silver twice and lost but ill keep trying.

I'm at 273 on arcade with streak still alive, same team but Garchomp has Swords Dance over Dragon Claw now.
 
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Battle Factory: 64 wins
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I spent over 200 in game hours on Battle Factory alone (not counting numerous rage quits/soft resets), but I finally got the Gold Print :)
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Not only that, but I got ridiculously lucky on some matches and smashed my former record of 44 wins/17 switches. Here are the teams I used to get there:

...
789 Staraptor 4: Adamant,Choice Band,Brave Bird,Giga Impact,Close Combat,U-turn
366 Quagsire 1: Adamant,Rindo Berry,Earthquake,Aqua Tail,Brick Break,Counter
738 Lapras 3: Adamant,Lum Berry,Waterfall,Outrage,Zen Headbutt,Dragon Dance

...
I started with Staraptor and Lapras, Quagsire was added along the way to cover my weakness to Electric types. My main strategy was using Intimidate to hopefully weaken the opposing lead and stay in for a OHKO with Brave Bird/Close Combat if possible. If a OHKO was not guaranteed, Staraptor U-turns out into Quagsire/Lapras, depending on whether the incoming attack is Electric/Ice. Quagsire and Lapras were bulky enough to take out the opposing lead. Once I got a 3v2 advantage, I could maintain the lead and win through switches.
...
Fortunately I didn't running into any OP sets on the way to Thorton. This was his team:
901 Regirock 1: Impish,Leftovers,Rock Slide,Earthquake,Brick Break,Sandstorm
825 Rapidash 4: Jolly,Chesto Berry,Flare Blitz,Megahorn,Double-Edge,Hypnosis
818 Armaldo 4: Adamant,Life Orb,Stone Edge,X-Scissor,Earthquake,Cross Poison
...
I'll upload a recording of the battle later, but here's how it played out.
  • Regirock's Clear Body suppressed Intimidate, and it could definitely OHKO Staraptor with any Rock attack. I U-turned out into Quagsire, who took the Rock Slide like a champ. I Countered his Earthquake, then finished him with a STAB Earthquake of my own.
  • Thorton sent out Rapidash, which easily revenged with Megahorn. I sent out Lapras, lived through the Flare Blitz and took out Rapidash with Waterfall.
  • Thorton's last Pokemon was Armaldo, who unexpectedly took a lot of damage from Waterfall. He KO'ed Lapras with Stone Edge and took Life Orb damage. I finished the match with Staraptor and used Brave Bird for the win.


...
422 Pinsir 1: Adamant,Coba Berry,X-Scissor,Earthquake,Rock Slide,Swords Dance
460 Hippowdon 1: Impish,Persim Berry,Earthquake,Crunch,Slack Off,Curse
845 Roserade 4: Modest,White Herb,Leaf Storm,Sludge Bomb,Shadow Ball,Weather Ball

...
My team starting out was mediocre. I knew I'd have to pick up better Pokemon, so I picked up Pinsir for physical attack, Hippowdon for bulk, and Roserade for special attacks. After almost losing the first match, I swapped out Pinsir for Lapras for better type coverage and potential sweeping:
738 Lapras 3: Adamant,Lum Berry,Waterfall,Outrage,Zen Headbutt,Dragon Dance
...
The next opponent led with Ludicolo (Impish,Leftovers, Leech Seed,Toxic,Double Team,Rain Dance) who could actually do nothing against Roserade. From there, Roserade went berserk and 1v3'd the whole team, surviving with 1hp while paralyzed. Unfortunately, the next opponent specialized in Flying types, so I swapped her out with an Electivire she'd just beaten:
749 Electivire 3: Modest,Wise Glasses,Thunderbolt,Psychic,Focus Blast,Signal Beam
...
The last addition was Cresselia. Even with +2 DD, Lapras could only 3HKO Cresselia. I landed a lucky flinch, and proceeded to KO and swap her onto my team for Electivire. The rest of the matches were fairly easy because the team was so bulky and had great type coverage.
949 Cresselia 4: Modest,Leftovers,Psychic,Ice Beam,Signal Beam,Moonlight

...
604 Magnezone 2: Impish,Lum Berry,Iron Head,Explosion,Swagger, Pysch Up
557 Politoed 2: Impish,Chesto Berry,Dive,Brick Break,Hypnosis,Perish Song
769 Infernape 4: Jolly,King's Rock,Flare Blitz,Close Combat,Earthquake,ThunderPunch

...
My luck pretty much ran out since Infernape was the best offensive option in the final set. My other choices were Flare Blitz Charizard (worse stats than Infernape), Sleep Talk Walrein (OHKO much?), and Sp Honchkrow (glass cannon). I chose Magnezone for Def and type resistances (at worst, he'd be a suicide lead). Then I picked Politoed just in case I was up against a water or ground type. I won the first match purely by luck and the battle lady told me the next opponent would have Psychic types. I swapped out Politoed for Muk (418 Muk 1: Adamant,Black Sludge,Poison Jab,Shadow Sneak,Minimize,Acid Armor) for the Shadow Sneak against something like Alakazam but that's where everything went wrong.
  • My opponent led with Psycho Cut Gallade. I didn't want Magnezone to get potentially OHKO by a Close Combat so I switched to Muk to absorb any incoming Fighting attack. I saw Psycho Cut and realized 1) this was the only Gallade set that didn't even have a Fighting attack and 2) all his attacks would've been resisted by Magnezone.
  • I switched back into Magnezone, ate the Aerial Ace, and went for an Iron Head. It wouldn't even 3HKO, so I tried to be cheeky and use Swagger + Pysch Up. Boy did this backfire.
  • Unboosted, Psycho Cut could maybe 4HKO. With +2 Atk, Psycho Cut could easily finish Magnezone. To add insult to injury, the Gallade immediately snapped out of confusion the next turn, leaving me with a glass cannon Infernape and weakened Muk.
  • Muk got the revenge kill with Shadow Sneak, but then my opponent sent out Alakazam. I thought maybe I could get a lucky crit or something to extend my win streak, but NOPE. Shadow Sneak missed. The Bright Powder RNG denied me the opportunity.
  • My last hope was Infernape. Maybe the AI will try to gloat and not use Psychic? No way, instant OHKO and GG.


Final Thoughts
Looking back, I got bailed out on a lot of matches that I should've lost during this streak. Lots of game deciding crits, lucky misses, thawing out in the nick of time, picking up OP legendaries, the list goes on and on. So many things could've gone wrong during this streak, but somehow they didn't.

Even after getting a 44 win streak, it still took over 100 hours to get the Gold Print. Guess I finally got my lucky break?

My best team this streak was 36-42:
933 Latios 3: Timid,BrightPowder,Psychic,Thunderbolt,Ice Beam,Energy Ball
949 Cresselia 4: Modest,Leftovers,Psychic,Ice Beam,Signal Beam,Moonlight
631 Swampert 3: Modest,Expert Belt,Muddy Water,Earth Power,Ice Beam,Counter


Even with such a lucky team from the get-go, I remember struggling against a lead Cradily. I didn't know if it had Mirror Coat, so I switched out into Cresslia to preserve Latios. It ended up being the Giga Drain set (Calm,Big Root,Giga Drain,Sludge Bomb,Recover,Ingrain) so it became a stall war. I didn't get any lucky freezes, so I spammed Psychic until I got a Sp. Def drop, then Signal Beam to get a confuse, and finally KO'ed before it could Recover again. If the opponent had a Blissey, I might not have even made it past 42.
 
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Reporting an ongoing streak of 112 wins in Battle Castle Singles.

Naturally, after Factory and Hall, came the Castle, as Castle has probably the easiest gold print in gen 4 to get - I was only running with 2/3 of my team when I got it for the first time. This is because the unique mechanics of the castle allow you to completely skip every battle in round 7 if you're just interested in getting the gold print and going no further. Of course, that's what I did the first time, but after RNG breeding the final member of my team, I decided to give Castle an earnest try at an actual streak just like I had with Hall and Factory before it. And boy, was it absolutely worth it.

Now, usually I'd discuss my team before commenting on my strategies and general thoughts on the facility (obviously not an option for my post on the Factory), but with Castle, this is kind of difficult, since you can effectively edit your team in the middle of a round. More on that later.

Castle is undoubtedly the least explored facility in any generation in terms of pushing strategies to their limits - even less so than Hall, which technically has 600 or more modes of play that haven't even been touched by anyone (i'm guessing 300 species have been unused in hall, in either singles or doubles). This is probably because the complexity of the CP system makes it daunting for newer players. Castle punishes a certain style of team and rewards a very different style of team than what a lot of people are used to. I'd say that the number one thing needed to succeed in the Castle is flexibility. Now obviously, I'm talking about the ability to effectively change items out on the fly, but also you, as a player, need to be able to adapt. Going into post-49 castle stuck in the same "I need to build CP" mindset you had for rounds 1-7 will not fly. You are extremely likely to lose due to overestimating your team's ability to check something you've up-levelled. This has happened to me before.
Do not be afraid to spend large amounts of CP on maintaining your team. All that CP you've saved by deciding not to replenish your Lum Berries or Focus Sashes is meaningless once something got a lucky swagger or crit on you and caused a loss. Do not be afraid to skip battles you don't have a concrete 100% way to win(even something as small as an evasion item on an important mon can be worth skipping a battle over).

And I haven't even gotten into the way full team preview is such a game-changer. For the measly cost of somewhere between 3 and 9 CP per battle, you can plan out battles before they even begin. You can straight up discover that a normally-risky strategy wouldn't work before committing to it. You can optimize the best way to spend your resources without feeling the pressure, with full information at your fingertips.
And of course, the Skip option is the icing on the cake. Imagine if you could back out of a ladder game on Showdown at team preview without incurring a loss. That's what the Skip button lets you do. 50 CP may seem expensive, but you will build that right back like it's nothing. Hell, if you somehow manage to accumulate more CP than you know what to do with, you can just skip battles to bump your streak number up an extra 20 or 50 or 80 with no effort required.

You don't need to upgrade all your services ASAP. I don't bother upgrading the healing service since my team rarely gets within danger of running out of PP on any moves. Even if I did end up needing a PP heal, level 3 healing is just completely not worth it.
Level 3 items, on the other hand, absolutely are. With level 3 items, you gain access to wonderful things like choice, focus sash, and pinch and type-resist berries. Even level 2 items are good thanks to Shell Bell of all things being uniquely suited for early round castle.
Ranking up team preview is unnecessary - you already have access to the two most important functions - species/HP check and stats/item check. DO NOT USE STATS/ITEM CHECK ON DARACH. He uses species picked such that both of the sets he can choose from have identical stats and item.

Now, the team.
Garchomp (M) @ Shell Bell / Yache Berry / Persim Berry / Sitrus Berry / Lum Berry / Leftovers / Liechi Berry / Salac Berry / Haban Berry / None
Ability: Sand Veil
Level: 50
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
IVs: 22 SpA
- Earthquake
- Outrage
- Swords Dance
- Substitute
As you can tell by the large amount of items, this Garchomp is used to take on a wide variety of threats in a wide variety of situations. Usually my gameplan revolves around getting this set up to whatever level I need to sweep the enemy team, although its high natural speed and attack let it often defeat a threatening lead that Scizor can't set up on. A lot of items are only used in extremely specific situations and I've only included them for posterity.

Shell Bell - Used in rounds 2-7, where Garchomp will usually be able to set up a Swords Dance on their lead while tanking an attack and heal off the damage by OHKOing the backups.
Yache Berry - I don't like using this often because it leaves me open to getting crit or frozen, but sometimes there's an Ice move that I have no choice but to let Garchomp tank.
Haban Berry - Dragon moves don't come with an effect that's equivalent to instant fainting, but a lot less things that Garchomp has to take attacks from will carry Dragon moves, so this ends up getting used less than Yache.
Persim Berry - I consider this the default item for Chomp post-49, since it costs less to replace than Lum and Garchomp will very often be put in a position where it's likely to be confused, either from its own Outrage or from Swagger or Confuse Ray.
Lum Berry - I only really use this when there's two different types of status I need to protect from (ex. something's contact ability and my own confusion). Obviously I try to avoid Outrage in scenarios where something has a contact ability, but it's not always possible to do that.
Sitrus Berry - Used in scenarios where Chomp is likely to use Sub a lot, or to give it extra tanking power against neutral moves. Not too expensive to replace either.
Leftovers - I think I've used this exactly once. I forget the exact circumstances behind it, but what makes it prohibitively rare to be used on chomp is the fact that it costs 20 CP to buy, and I usually need a different item in the very next battle. Additionally, it's in direct competition with Shell Bell as a recovery item, which restricts it to scenarios where I desperately need Chomp specifically to be able to recover HP over time.
Pinch Berries - Sometimes after Chomp fainted or was left at low health in the previous battle, I'll be able to defeat the opposing team with only a +1 boost in the corresponding stat, and that's where these come in. Equivalent to holding a scarf or band without costing 20 CP like the actual items would. I've also used these in the normal sense before, where I'd tank hits while setting up and occasionally sub till I'm in pinch range before sweeping.
No Item - Yes, really. Sometimes Chomp doesn't need anything special to sweep and I don't want to spend the CP on something that's likely to be replaced without seeing any use.

Gengar (M) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Levitate
Level: 50
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 30 Def
- Shadow Ball
- Energy Ball
- Thunderbolt
- Destiny Bond
Normally Gengar is used as a lead to ensure a 2-1 advantage. Here, the extreme upkeep of doing so (20 CP per battle, plus however many CP I miss out on due to having a fainted Gengar) has caused me to use it as a defensive pivot instead. While Gengar is still certainly capable of doing the things it normally does in other facilities, I've gained a lot of appreciation for Levitate Ghosts in the process. All 3 of its immunities are abused to their fullest extent regularly, and it's definitely earned its place on this team in spite of rarely staying around to use a move.
As for items, I only really run Sash on this thing. I don't bother spending CP on it in the first seven rounds, where it's unlikely to even hit the field, let alone take a move strong enough to activate Sash.
Energy Ball is used because I don't have access to Counter (which would require a move tutor from Gen 3), and it also greatly simplifies dealing with the Ground-type QC OHKO users, since I can come in on a guaranteed Earthquake (or ineffective OHKO move) and proceed to OHKO with no risk of fainting. Donphan4 requires 15 CP to be spend on de-levelling it to get this OHKO, but it's very much worth it. Also this team really hates bulky waters and Energy Ball means I don't have to skip against Sailors as much.

Scizor (M) @ Leftovers / Aspear Berry
Ability: Technician
Level: 50
EVs: 80 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 4 SpD / 168 Spe
Adamant Nature
IVs: 22 SpA
- Bullet Punch
- Superpower
- Bug Bite
- Swords Dance
In spite of being my secondary sweeper and mowing through teams almost as much as Garchomp does, I don't have much to say about this. Maybe that's because this Scizor is more of a one-track mon than Chomp, who has an item for almost every situation. In Scizor's case, there's not really anything that it makes better use of than the classic Leftovers. Sure, I have Aspear Berry as an option, and yes the Leftovers is very expensive to replace, but I value extra security over being stingy with CP.
Leftovers - I give this to Scizor whenever I think I'm likely to use it during that battle for something other than tanking a move with a freeze chance.
Aspear Berry - In case you didn't know, this is the one that cures Freeze. Scizor tanks Ice moves when switching in from Chomp. The math says sooner or later I'll get frozen and I'll have felt real dumb if I don't buy these.

More coming later, either at milestone numbers (250, 500, etc) or when I lose. I'll probably lose long before 1000 since I'm definitely the weak link in this team (this is my third attempt at a castle streak). Playing well in Castle is very hard since it's not just about being good enough to win, it's about being good enough to win in the most optimal way possible. If not for the Skip button I'd have probably given up after my first false start.
 

atsync

Where the "intelligence" of TRAINERS is put to the test!
is a Pokemon Researcheris a Contributor to Smogon
Pokemon HGSS Battle Hall Singles Streak with Slaking: 197 wins

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This is a project I've been working on for the past few months. Slaking was actually one of the very first Pokemon I tried out in Hall, back when I commenced my "road to 10000" project, but I left it after reaching 128 and moved on to other things. After playing around with other Pokemon, I decided to revisit Slaking.

Slaking seems like it should be perfectly suited for the Hall. Slaking's stats are frankly amazing, with enormous attack, great bulk, and a solid speed tier for Hall, and it has a fairly versatile move pool, with strong STAB options, plenty of coverage with only a few gaps, priority access, Counter, Slack Off, and numerous boosting and utility options. Truant is obviously really, really awful, but the 1v1 environment of Hall nullifies the downsides of this ability, right?

Well.....yes it does, most of the time, but not all of the time, and there are numerous match-ups where Truant basically makes Slaking one of the worst Pokemon in the game, and having to account for it against specific threats made building sets for Slaking quite interesting and challenging. I wouldn't go so far to say that getting Slaking to 170 was as hard as it was with Smeargle, but the amount of time and effort put into my Slaking streak definitely seemed to rival that of the Smeargle streak. Slaking is not the kind of Pokemon where you can just slap on STAB + coverage with a Choice Band and expect to succeed without extreme luck on your side, as I tried ages ago. It is very important to have good knowledge of what kinds of Pokemon are threats to Slaking and what you can do, if anything, to increase your odds of winning against them. Having an understanding of how Hall levels and IVs work was also very helpful in crafting pre-170 sets: having a significant level and IV advantage early on really opens up your options.

I don't pretend to claim that this run is truly as optimal as possible. I used quite a lot of sets in this run but this is balanced with my time and willingness to go out of my way to obtain suitable sets, and in some cases, the sets I used were simply those I had access to and that I judged to be "probably good enough as long as I'm not unlucky". Note that set building for specific rounds is further complicated by the level scaling that changes with each round, since a set you built to counter, say, Fire in round 3 won't necessarily work as well if you decided to move Fire to round 11 (because the levels will be higher and therefore some key damage ranges might change). In any case, if someone else wanted to give Slaking a go then this could be a starting point for further optimisation, but ultimately this got me what I wanted so this will do for now.

Pre-170 order

Round 1: Fighting 1-10
Round 2: Grass 1-10
Round 3: Poison 1-10
Round 4: Electric 1-10
Round 5: Fire 1-9 (Fire 10 skipped with Argenta1)
Round 6: Water 1-10
Round 7: Psychic 1-10
Round 8: Ghost 1-10
Round 9: Dark 1-10
Round 10: Bug 1-10
Round 11: Normal 1-10
Round 12: Ice 1-10
Round 13: Flying 1-10
Round 14: Rock 1-9, Steel 1
Round 15: Ground 1-10
Round 16: Steel 2-10, Dragon 1
Round 17: Dragon 2-10 (Rock 10 skipped with Argenta2)

Round-by-round details

Round 1 - Fighting


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Slaking @ Choice Band

Level: 61
Ability: Truant
Nature: Adamant
EVs: 4HP/184Atk/80Def/60SpD/180Speed

Return
Sucker Punch
Earthquake
Ice Punch

I don't know if doing Fighting first is really necessary since most Hall Fighting-types are frail enough to just die to Return before they do anything to Slaking, but stuff like Infernape, Poliwrath and Machamp are acceptable enough reasons to get Fighting out of the way.

Only the first 3 moves really matter. You'll be using Return mostly, with Earthquake covering Lucario. Believe it or not, Sucker Punch is used for Infernape.

H444 | Infernape | Adamant | Life Orb | Close Combat | Flare Blitz | Mach Punch | Fake Out | Atk/Spd

Fake Out is the main reason this thing is so annoying for Slaking, since it can stop Slaking attacking on turn 1 and then force a loaf on turn 2, giving Infernape plenty of time to beat Slaking down. However, the nice thing about Fake Out in earlier generations is that it only has 1+ priority, and that means that Sucker Punch will let this Slaking, which can out-speed Infernape, hit it and possibly take it out with a critical hit. If it doesn't, then it still 2HKOes anyway, leaving me in the same position as I would be had I just used Return or Earthquake. My Slaking will usually beat Infernape since it has enough bulk to tank Fake Out and Close Combat without being put in KO range of Mach Punch (which Sucker Punch covers), although if either of those moves crit then I can lose.

Note that this Sucker Punch strategy would fail if Infernape used Close Combat on turn 1, but in my experience with Slaking and other Pokemon, Infernape only goes for that if it can OHKO out-right (in which case it's basically a 50/50 as to whether it uses Fake Out or Close Combat/Flare Blitz). On stuff it can't KO right away, it uses Fake Out consistently.

Round 2 - Grass

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Slaking @ Expert Belt

Level: 36
Ability: Truant
Nature: Lonely
EVs: 220Atk/4Def/96SpA/8SpD/180Speed

Return
Ice Punch
Flamethrower
Substitute

Note that this Slaking has HP Rock IVs since I planned on using it for Bug as well. The EVs were designed with that in mind so this can be further optimised from what is listed here.

Substitute is used mainly for Venusaur.

H475 | Venusaur | Quiet | Focus Sash | Toxic | Frenzy Plant | Sludge | Protect | Atk/SpA

Protect is bad for Slaking obviously, and Venusaur is one of the few Pokemon that has Protect AND Focus Sash, giving it more opportunities for beat me. The AI is rather random with when it uses Protect so all Protect users can be beaten with a bit of luck. The nice thing about encountering Venusaur this early on though is that it is rather weak. It is so weak, in fact, that it can't even break a Substitute in 2 hits with anything aside from Frenzy Plant, which the AI often avoids using anyway (the AI tends to be random with its usage of recharge moves). This makes Substitute a good option here since it'll punish a Protect or Toxic and keep me safe for a moment, and if it does use Frenzy Plant it'll force a recharge turn on itself anyway.

Other than that, Fire and Ice coverage, supported by Expert Belt, is effective in Grass. Flamethrower is used over Fire Punch specifically because it avoids Meganium's Counter (it holds Focus Sash as well). Flamethrower is also more effective against stuff like Tangrowth and Leafeon.

Round 3 - Poison

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Slaking @ Leftovers

Level: 36
Ability: Truant
Nature: Jolly
EVs: 252Atk/12Def/244Speed

Return
Earthquake
Faint Attack
Substitute

This set is similar in principle to the Grass set, with Substitute blocking Venusaur. Because I don't really need a boosting-item here, Leftovers is used to improve the odds of being Venusaur further. Faint Attack covers Gengar and Earthquake is for most of the other Poisons. Return works for Crobat.

Round 4 - Electric

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Slaking @ Expert Belt

Level: 61
Ability: Truant
Nature: Adamant
EVs: 4HP/184Atk/80Def/60SpD/180Speed

Return
Sucker Punch
Earthquake
Ice Punch

This is the same Slaking I used in round 1, but with Expert Belt instead of Choice Band. Expert Belt's boost is sufficient in this round, and being able to swap moves is crucial for maximum safety against Manectric.

H329 | Manectric | Modest | Focus Sash | Thunder | Flamethrower | Swift | Signal Beam | Spd/SpA

Manectric is a problem set for Slaking since it can't be OHKOed and can paralyse with Thunder. Sucker Punch's priority can help cover that somewhat, although there's nothing I can do about the full paralysis chance unfortunately.

Electric is not the worst typing for Slaking but paralysis can be a streak-ender for anything that isn't Ground-type or otherwise Electric-proof. Doing it early is useful for that reason. Ice Punch is used here for Zapdos. Sucker Punch beats Rotom and everything else is covered by my other moves.

Round 5 - Fire

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Slaking @ Choice Band

Level: 61
Ability: Truant
Nature: Adamant
EVs: 4HP/184Atk/80Def/60SpD/180Speed

Return
Sucker Punch
Earthquake
Ice Punch

Same set again, but back to Choice Band. Fire is actually a scary typing for Slaking because of its numerous Protect users.

H395 | Flareon | Mild | Expert Belt | Lava Plume | Quick Attack | Protect | Will-O-Wisp | SpA
H460 | Magmortar | Mild | Lax Incense | Fire Blast | Hyper Beam | SmokeScreen | Protect | Spd/SpA
H476 | Charizard | Quiet | Focus Sash | Will-O-Wisp | Air Slash | Protect | Blast Burn | Atk/SpA

Take note of Charizard especially, since it has Venusaur's Protect-Sash combo, except that you can't just throw Substitute up against it as easily. There isn't really a reliable strategy that Slaking can use to beat it that wouldn't be overly oppressive to its ability to beat other Pokemon, so you just have to...hope that you don't face it, and if you do, hope you get lucky against it. Note that all of this is on top of Infernape being in this pool too. The strategy against Infernape is the same as before.

The main reason why I do Fire now is that I can use Argenta1's challenge at the end of this round to "skip" the rank 10 Fire battle. Note that all of those Protect users and Infernape can only appear at ranks 9 and 10, and with the rank 10 battle avoided, the odds of having to battle one of them is reduced. In hindsight, it might have been better to do battles 1-9 of Fire in round 1 and then do Fighting here, but whatever.

The other Fire-types are fairly easy to deal with.

In this streak, Argenta1 used Donphan against me.

H417 | Donphan | Adamant | Leftovers | Earthquake | Giga Impact | Protect | Sandstorm | Atk/Def

Another Protect user and one with a bit of bulk on its side, but I won because it set Sandstorm on turn 1 and Protected on the loaf turn.

Round 6 - Water

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Slaking @ Silk Scarf

Level: 36
Ability: Truant
Nature: Adamant
EVs: 96Atk/132Def/204SpD/76Speed

Giga Impact
ThunderPunch
Earthquake
Substitute

Another tailor-made set just for this type, this set also uses Substitute to counter a Sash-Protect mon.

H376 | Blastoise | Quiet | Focus Sash | Yawn | Hydro Cannon | Return | Protect | SpA/SpD

Same principle: it can't break Substitute effectively without forcing itself to loaf (132 Def stops Return breaking Substitute in 2 hits), giving Slaking a safeguard.

Giga Impact is strong as hell and lacks most of its usual drawbacks due to Truant and the 1v1 environment of the Hall, but the accuracy still sucks. The main reason it's used is because it OHKOes Poliwrath with a Silk Scarf, and being able to OHKO Poliwrath is crucial (and Choice Band isn't an option because I need to be able to swap moves for Substitute to work). ThunderPunch is a safer move that will KO most of the other Water-types, with the extra power of Earthquake being useful for the Rock-types in this round.

204SpD is used to tank 2 Hydro Pumps from Omastar, which isn't OHKOed by any of my moves. 76 Speed is used to move before the Focus Sash Sharpedo, preventing it from flinching me with Waterfall.

Round 7 - Psychic

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Slaking @ Choice Band

Level: 36
Ability: Truant
Nature: Jolly
EVs: 252Atk/12Def/244Speed

Giga Impact
Earthquake
Faint Attack
Sucker Punch

The same set I used in Poison but with a change in item and some move tweaks. I use Giga Impact again to OHKO Slowbro. Sucker Punch has a chance to OHKO but it isn't consistent and put Slaking at risk of losing to further hax. Both options are acceptable. Adamant would ensure a OHKO with Sucker Punch for a safe win and might be better here, but I was using this set against Gengar in other types and Jolly is needed to out-speed that.

At this point it might be worth addressing Faint Attack, and why it is being used over the stronger Night Slash/Shadow Claw.

H300 | Jynx | Timid | BrightPowder | Lovely Kiss | Blizzard | Dream Eater | Energy Ball | Spd/SpA
H388 | Starmie | Timid | BrightPowder | Hydro Pump | Psychic | Recover | Double Team | Spd/SpA
H408 | Espeon | Modest | BrightPowder | Psychic | Swift | Double Team | Morning Sun | Spd/SpA

I hate BrightPowder. Have lost numerous streaks to it. Faint Attack doesn't care about BrightPowder/Lax Incense, and given that Faint Attack does sufficient damage to its targets, the extra power of Night Slash really doesn't matter much, so I view Faint Attack as superior more often than not.

Sucker Punch is strong than both and can be used safely against 4-attacks sets (there are quite a few of them in Psychic and Ghost). Importantly, it destroys Alakazam, which has Focus Blast and out-speeds Slaking no matter what nature is used (unless it holds a Scarf of course). Earthquake is mostly for Metagross. Bronzong sucks for this Slaking, but I have Earthquake for Heatproof variants and Sucker Punch mitigates Trick Room. Bronzong also has Protect though so...I just hope to not have to face it basically.

Round 8 - Ghost

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Slaking @ Choice Band

Level: 36
Ability: Truant
Nature: Jolly
EVs: 252Atk/12Def/244Speed

Giga Impact
Earthquake
Faint Attack
Sucker Punch

Same set as in Psychic. The moves outside of Faint Attack and Sucker Punch literally don't matter. Froslass has BrightPowder, but I have Faint Attack. Sucker Punch is great for the 4-attacks Quick Claw Dusclops. Dusknoir is a bit annoying but often just KOes itself with a turn 1 Curse. Overall, Ghost tends to be rather easy compared to other types.

Round 9 - Dark

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Slaking @ Choice Band

Level: 61
Ability: Truant
Nature: Adamant
EVs: 4HP/184Atk/80Def/60SpD/180Speed

Return
Sucker Punch
Earthquake
Hammer Arm

This is the set I've used for Fighting/Electric/Fire, but with a move set tweak. Hammer Arm's accuracy makes it a bit risky to go for and it isn't actually needed for many things since Return is sufficient for most Darks, and Earthquake OHKOes Tyranitar in this round. What Hammer Arm DOES do is OHKO Umbreon out-right before it can try to hit me with Confuse Ray. Umbreon is one of the most common high-ranking Dark-types in my experience, so I view the risk to be worth it. Giga Impact can do the same if preferred.

Round 10 - Bug

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Slaking @ Expert Belt

Level: 36
Ability: Truant
Nature: Naive
EVs: 76HP/44Atk/172SpA/216Speed

Flamethrower
Hidden Power [Rock]
Aerial Ace
Slack Off

As I mentioned briefly before in Grass, I intended to use that set for Bug as well, but after losing to Scyther (partially due to Lonely's Defense drop), I decided it would be worth using a dedicated set here. The set that I produced is rather strange and STAB-free but overall I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

To address Scyther...I needed to run a Speed-boosting nature, and since I needed to not reduce my attacking stats for other things, I decided that Naive was the suitable nature since the SpD drop wasn't especially important here, whereas physical bulk is crucial for Scyther and a few other things. So yeah, the Speed and HP investment let me out-speed Scyther and survive 2+ Swarm X-Scissor with enough HP left to avoid being piut in range of Quick Attack. I lose if it crits but otherwise I beat it.

The 44Atk EVs let me OHKO Venomoth with Aerial Ace, which also covers Heracross. Flamethrower OHKOes Pinsir and covers Scizor without risking a Counter, which would be a streak-ender no matter what. HP Rock KOes stuff like Vespiquen, but most importantly it 2HKOes Armaldo, who is a kind of a nuisance for Slaking. Armaldo can still beat Slaking if it crits at least once with Scope Lens Stone Edge but I usually win.

That brings me to Slack Off, which exists here pretty much only because of Shuckle.

H412 | Shuckle | Careful | Smooth Rock | Bug Bite | Rollout | Sandstorm | Protect | HP/SpD

Shuckle is very resilient and can Protect on attacking turns while wearing Slaking down with Sandstorm damage, but because it can't do a great deal of damage right away, Slack Off seems to be a pretty good option against it to recover the residual damage quickly. Given that Protect only has 10PP and Shuckle itself has not recovery at all, it is actually possible for Slaking to just stall it out. I suppose some high damage Rollouts could be annoying but the odds of being in a situation where that happens seems to be low. Bug Bite is more likely to be used first since it does more immediate damage.

Round 11 - Normal

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Slaking @ Choice Band

Level: 61
Ability: Truant
Nature: Adamant
EVs: 4HP/184Atk/80Def/60SpD/180Speed

Return
Sucker Punch
Counter
Hammer Arm

This set makes its 5th and final appearance in this streak, with one more move change. Counter is used for Granbull and Staraptor, both of which have Close Combat and Intimidate. Intimidate prevents a OHKO while Close Combat 2HKOes back. Counter lets me OHKO, as long as they don't crit with Close Combat. Return is generally sufficient for most things, but the extra power of Hammer Arm is occasionally useful. A good example would be Snorlax, who has enough bulk to sometimes tank a Return and has a chance to 2HKO back with Choice Band Brick Break, but is OHKOed by Hammer Arm (note that Snorlax's high HP makes Counter inconsistent as an answer here). Hammer Arm also has a chance to OHKO Regigigas although it's not guaranteed. Sucker Punch isn't used here so you could maybe run Giga Impact over that for the boosted power over Hammer Arm (or just run that over Hammer Arm itself). It's an expensive TM so I didn't want to at the time, but I've since learned how to RNG Voltorb Flip to get coins easily so maybe I would do that differently next time. Low Kick is also an option if you are willing to spend for it and would probably be better for Snorlax than Hammer Arm.

Round 12 - Ice

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Slaking @ Choice Band

Level: 100
Ability: Truant
Nature: Jolly
EVs: 176Atk/184SpD/148Speed

Double-Edge
Giga Impact
Low Kick
Faint Attack

So I got a bit lazy here and decided to use an older set from my first Slaking runs from a while ago. This Slaking was born in gen 3 for Double-Edge, and after doing a bit of theorymon with it and changing a few moves, I decided that it was sufficient for Ice, although not perfectly optimised. For example, Adamant would be better here since Jolly doesn't let you out-speed anything extra whereas the extra power of Adamant would let you OHKO Articuno with Double-Edge.

In any case, Low Kick OHKOes Cloyster, Giga Impact OHKOes Articuno, Faint Attack OHKOes Froslass and Jynx without risking a miss, and Double-Edge works against pretty much everything else.

Round 13 - Flying

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Slaking @ Choice Band

Level: 55
Ability: Truant
Nature: Naive
EVs: 8HP/144Atk/144SpA/212Spe

Ice Punch
Thunderbolt
Rock Slide
Aerial Ace

Another weird STAB-less set (there's more of those to come still). Flying can often be a tricky type for build for due to the diversity in secondary typings present in the pool, although luckily most Flying-types are rather frail and slow and therefore not a threat.

The bulk and Speed is for Scyther. Ice Punch is my primary move here. Thunderbolt is used mainly because it OHKOes Staraptor consistently which is important because of Close Combat 2HKOing back. Thunderbolt still covers Gyarados and Mantine just fine and it works against Skarmory well too.

Rock Slide is another risky option but is the best option I could come up with for Articuno. The risk is worth it for a niche match-up when Ice Punch and Thunderbolt cover the other things just fine. Aerial Ace is a filler option but is useful for Jumpluff to avoid missing from BrightPowder. Strangely enough, Aerial Ace can also be used against Crobat since it'll always 2HKO with assistance from Brave Bird recoil while avoid its Double Team/BrightPowder shenanigans. There's a minor risk here of losing to Toxic and a Brave Bird crit though, so you could also just use Ice Punch and hope that it hits.

Round 14 - Rock

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Slaking @ Choice Band

Level: 100
Ability: Truant
Nature: Adamant
EVs: 152HP/252Atk/104Def

Earthquake
Low Kick
Fling
Slack Off

Rock isn't a great type for Slaking despite the numerous super-effective moves it has to pick from. The pool of Rocks is more diverse than you might expect and it's hard to cover everything, but I managed to come up with something that seemed to work ok.

Note that I only did battles 1-9 of Rock here. I decided to use Argenta2's challenge to skip rank 10 Rock. This made life a little easier when building this set since I could optimise for the lower level/IV opponents of rank 9. I did Steel Rank 1 for the last battle (I believe it was Aron).

So the nice thing about Rock is that Speed investment is mostly useless here. Aerodactyl can't be out-sped without a Scarf no matter what and the next fastest things (Solrock/Lunatone) are slower even with no investment as long as you have a neutral-nature. This gives Slaking a ton of EVs to improve its bulk and maximise its power. The given defensive EVs basically prevent Armaldo from 2HKOing unless it crits twice in a row, while also granting an efficient HP to play with in Shuckle's sand.

Earthquake and Low Kick together do a good job at covering stuff when supported with a Choice Band. Unfortunately Aerodactyl can survive a Low Kick sometimes and I though about Hammer Arm to more assuredly KO it, but Hammer Arm is a little worse against other fighting targets like Cradily so it's just a matter of preference.

One of the trickiest opponents to cover here was Shuckle. I already tried Slack Off against it in Bug but since I needed Choice Band's power, I at first thought it wouldn't be an option here. That lead me to one of my more brilliant ideas: Fling! Fling lets me shed the Choice Band on turn 1 (this apparently works even if Fling goes into Protect) and then I'm free to use Slack Off as much as I want for that specific match-up.

Round 15 - Ground

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Slaking @ Choice Specs

Level: 100
Ability: Truant
Nature: Modest
EVs: 72HP/244SpA/192Spe

Ice Beam
Flamethrower
Hidden Power [Grass]
Water Pulse

The very last Slaking I made for this run, Special Slaking with the given spread, item and moves OHKOes every Ground-type if it lands the hit. The issue is whether it'll actually hit or not. Ground has a whopping SIX rank 10 BrightPowder/Lax Incense holders in its pool, and there's also the Protect Donphan.

In this run, I encountered 2 of the 6 in Sandslash and Piloswine, both of which have the ability to be especially heinous because of Sandstorm/Hail and Dig. I managed to hit both before they could set anything up. I also has some funny lower rank battles: one was against Quagsire that used Endure on turn 1 but didn't managed to hax me after that, and the other was against Dugtrio out-speeding and setting up Sandstorm (I OHKOed it so I don't know if it had Sand Veil or not). I don't tend to think about Quagsire and Dugtrio much since they don't ever appear at rank 10, but that would have been a surprising way to lose!

Round 16 - Steel

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Slaking @ Choice Band

Level: 100
Ability: Truant
Nature: Adamant
EVs: 152HP/252Atk/104Def

Earthquake
Low Kick
Fling
Flamethrower

I got lazy again and brought back the Rock set with Flamethrower over Slack Off. I had a set in mind when looking through the Steel pool that I was somewhat happy with, but at this point I was tired of breeding and training Slaking after Slaking, and I figured that this would be very likely to succeed anyway as long as I avoided the bad Steels.

I replaced Slack Off with Flamethrower to hit the Bugs and Skarmory (which was my rank 10 this time). Even with non-ideal nature and IVs, Flamethrower is good enough for its role. Choice Band Earthquake OHKOes most other Steels, most notably Metagross and Registeel. Low Kick is reserved for Steelix which has a 50% of being OHKOed by it. I don't have great options for Bronzong unfortunately, but I didn't encounter it here.

The round was mostly uneventful. Since I already did Steel 1 at the end of round 14, I used the last battle on Dragon 1, against a Bagon.

Round 17 - Dragon

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Slaking @ Choice Band

Level: 100
Ability: Truant
Nature: Jolly
EVs: 252Atk/8Def/20SpD/228Spe

Double-Edge
Earthquake
Fire Punch
Ice Punch

Dragon is a pretty easy type for Slaking, possibly the easiest one. Nothing can stand up to Ice Punch and Double-Edge and there are no sources of hax that could possibly stop Slaking from winning.

The question of what set to use came down to being as prepared for Argenta's randomness as possible. This set, like the other set I used for my very early Slaking attempts ages ago, was ready to go and I figured that STAB and Ice Punch with Earthquake and Fire Punch for most Steels would be reasonably equipped for the challenge. There are no anti-Ghost moves but I figured that this was acceptable because the only Ghosts that Argenta2 can possibly use are Gengar and Dusknoir, and the chances of me seeing one of those among the large pool of Pokemon in her pool was fairly low.

The round was uneventful. Argenta2 used Arcanine.

H379 | Arcanine | Adamant | Razor Claw | ExtremeSpeed | Flare Blitz | Facade | Will-O-Wisp | Atk/Spd

It didn't have Intimidate so I won easily, and even if it did, the odds of losing were very low since it would need me to roll low with Earthquake and then crit AND roll high with Flare Blitz (or maybe Will-O-Wisp and crit after that) to cause a loss. It was a nice relief to have an easy battle against her here.

Post-170 sets

In the post-170 phase, you have to beat all rank 10s of all types over and over. You can pick the order but you have to challenge every type once every 17 battles. This effectively gives you 2 sets to work with, one for 10 of the types and the other for the remaining 7.

For this run, I didn't go to the trouble of theorymoning new sets, and instead used the older sets with Double-Edge from before.

Set 1

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Slaking @ Choice Band

Level: 100
Ability: Truant
Nature: Jolly
EVs: 252Atk/8Def/20SpD/228Spe

Double-Edge
Earthquake
Fire Punch
Ice Punch

Used for: Dragon, Grass, Rock, Flying, Ice, Normal, Bug, Steel, Ground, Fire

The same set I used for Argenta2. Double-Edge is just an amazing move for Slaking. It's not the most convenient move to obtain since it requires access to gen 3 games but it's so worth the extra power over Return if you are willing to go to the trouble, gaining additional KOes and easing the pressure on coverage selection a bit. Earthquake and Fire Punch cover most Steels with Ice Punch covering particular Pokemon for extra damage or to avoid recoil (Aerodactyl is a good example in Flying and Rock).

Before starting this run, I thought about running Flamethrower over Fire Punch since it covers Scizor without the danger of being Countered on turn 1, and the extra power of the physical Fire Punch isn't especially important. It would make the Bronzong match-up even worse than it already is though, so I think it would just come down more to preference than one being better than the other.

The 228+ Speed investment beats level 96/26IV Scyther and Lopunny, which are the fastest things a level 100 base 100 Speed Pokemon can outpace (the next fastest thing is Weavile at 330, Slaking hits 328 max). 8 Defense avoids a 2HKO from Relicanth's Head Smash. Attack is maximised and the rest go to SpD.

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Slaking @ Choice Band

Level: 100
Ability: Truant
Nature: Jolly
EVs: 176Atk/184SpD/148Speed

Double-Edge
Earthquake
ThunderPunch
Faint Attack

Used for: Ghost, Psychic, Water, Electric, Fighting, Poison, Dark

The set I used in Ice but with its original move set restored. Earthquake covers many Normal-resistant Pokemon like Tyranitar in Dark and the Water-type Rocks. ThunderPunch is mainly used for certain Waters for more damage or for recoil avoidance. Faint Attack covers Ghosts and Psychics.

This set is slower and weaker than the other one but has more bulk. The bulk basically makes it so that Focus Sash Manectric can't 2HKO with Thunder, improving my chances of winning against it (can't do much about paralysis though sadly). The Speed lets me out-speed Jynx to avoid Lovely Kiss and the rest goes into Attack.

I chose Faint Attack as my Dark move but Sucker Punch is also a viable option here. Faint Attack is nice because it gets around BrightPowder from the likes of Espeon, Jynx, Starmie and Froslass, while still be strong enough to KO most of its targets reliably. It also doesn't fail on stuff like Dusknoir's Curse. On the other hand, Sucker Punch can let Slaking beat Alakazam safely before it uses Focus Blast, and Sucker Punch would also help against Manectric by nullifying the speed drop from paralysis (but it would also increase the odds of being paralysed in the first place due to Static). Note that Alakazam can't OHKO with Focus Blast with the given EVs so Sucker Punch isn't essential for beating it but it would still ensure a win. I prefer Faint Attack myself but can see Sucker Punch being a good option anyway.

The run

I now present the battles I had in this run, commenting on anything interesting or important on the way.

Set 1

171: Dragon - Dragonite
172: Grass - Vileplume
173: Rock - Regirock

H438 | Regirock | Brave | Sitrus Berry | Stone Edge | AncientPower | Giga Impact | Thunder Wave | Atk/SpA

A bit scary since it can survive a hit and paralyse. However, this time it used Stone Edge and then Giga Impact and I survived long enough to 2HKO.

174: Flying - Vespiquen

H357 | Vespiquen | Brave | BrightPowder | Power Gem | Attack Order | Ominous Wind | Air Cutter | Atk/SpA

Another minor threat because it can dodge but it isn't that powerful either. I DID lose my Dragonite streak to this dodging twice in a row though.

175: Ice - Abomasnow
176: Normal - Zangoose
177: Bug - Yanmega

H462 | Yanmega | Rash | Petaya Berry | Bug Buzz | Air Slash | Endure | Reversal | Def/SpA

I consider Yanmega to be a bit of a sleeper threat to many physical mons in Hall because its EV spread lets it survive things unexpectedly, and if it has Speed Boost it can spiral out of control very quickly if you don't have priority to stop it. Slaking CAN OHKO it unless it decides to use Endure. However, I've never seen Yanmega use Endure on turn 1 or when it's at high HP so I don't find it to be particularly dangerous to Slaking.

178: Steel - Skarmory
179: Ground - Garchomp
180: Fire - Magmar

Set 2

181: Ghost - Banette
182: Psychic - Exeggutor
183: Water - Lanturn
184: Electric - Electabuzz
185: Fighting - Heracross
186: Poison - Venusaur

H475 | Venusaur | Quiet | Focus Sash | Toxic | Frenzy Plant | Sludge | Protect | Atk/SpA

Already spoken about this, but yeah, it's a major threat. I have no counter-measures for this so winning just comes down to luck. The main thing is to not use Double-Edge since the recoil just makes it harder to win and the extra power is worthless. Use Earthquake instead. In this battle it used Toxic on turn 1 and then Protected on turn 2 as I loafed. I KOed it after that.

187: Dark - Umbreon

H409 | Umbreon | Relaxed | Leftovers | Facade | Sucker Punch | Confuse Ray | Moonlight | Def/SpD

Umbreon is among the most common Dark-types in my experience, and it's one of the most annoying for Slaking (and most things without Own Tempo or Substitute). It can't be OHKOed by Double-Edge and if it decides to use Confuse Ray on turn 1 it can be very hard to take down. In addition, it'll get a free turn to use Moonlight no matter what because of Truant, and that combined with 2 turns of Leftovers can let it survive another Double-Edge if Slaking gets bad rolls. The saving grace is that sometimes Umbreon will use Sucker Punch or Facade on turn 1 instead (the usage of Sucker Punch in gen 4 is rather random - the AI isn't really all that good at using it). In this battle it used Facade. In addition, Umbreon will tend to use Moonlight if its HP drops to about 60% or less, which grants another turn free of confusion if you got lucky on turn 1. After it used Moonlight on turn 2, I was able to finish it off with Double-Edge after that.

188: Dark - Shiftry

This battle wasn't interesting. The main thing to address here is why I picked Dark again. After I beat Umbreon, all types were unlocked again, and the nice thing about the Hall is that there seems to be a system in place that makes it so you can't encounter the same Pokemon twice in the same round (unless there aren't any other options, but that isn't going to happen in the post-170 game). This means that Umbreon couldn't appear here again, and since most of the other Dark types are mostly tame, I figured this would give me a likely win. In addition, it would also mean not having to do Dark at all in the next round where I use this set since I would have 4 more types to burn through at the start of the round, then another 6 once the types were all unlocked again.

189: Psychic - Gardevoir
190: Water - Whiscash

H341 | Whiscash | Quiet | Lax Incense | Earth Power | Water Pulse | Future Sight | Blizzard | SpA/SpD

Another dodger, and one I've had many disappointments with when using Garchomp. It didn't dodge here though.

Set 1

191: Dragon - Dragonite
192: Grass - Ludicolo
193: Rock - Rhydon

H294 | Rhydon | Adamant | Sitrus Berry | Dig | Stone Edge | Rock Slide | Megahorn | HP/Atk

This set only has a 25% chance of being OHKOed by Earthquake, but it also can't 2HKO back unless it gets a crit. I consider it a minor threat overall. In this battle I missed the KO range but it missed its first Stone Edge, removing any chance of a loss.

194: Flying - Noctowl
195: Ice - Glalie
196: Normal - Ursaring

H414 | Ursaring | Adamant | Focus Band | Frustration | Rest | Sleep Talk | ThunderPunch | Atk/Def

Usually not a big deal, but it's potentially one Focus Band proc away from causing a loss. It might still be able to win if it prefers to use Rest after Frustration but with the recoil and the damage from Frustration probably putting Slaking into KO range it would likely just attack again on the loaf turn.

197: Bug - Scyther

H389 | Scyther | Jolly | Focus Sash | X-Scissor | Aerial Ace | Swords Dance | Quick Attack | Atk/Spd

One of my most hated sets. I usually win though, so it just comes down to whether it gets a crit after it uses Swords Dance on turn 1. Obviously just don't use Double-Edge on it since the recoil would cause a loss.

198: Steel - Bronzong

H449 | Bronzong | Quiet | Leftovers | Extrasensory | Flash Cannon | Trick Room | Protect | Def/SpA

My losing battle. This match-up basically comes down to luck with Protect usage and ability. It generally uses Trick Room on turn 1 so you'll get that turn for free, but since Choice Band makes using Earthquake too risky, Fire Punch is the only option. Unfortunately, I got stuck with a Heatproof one and did <50% as it set Trick Room, so the match from there came down to how much Bronzong chose to Protect on my loaf turns.

This Bronzong didn't use Protect once. It 4HKOes with its moves, but Truant effectively makes this a 2HKO and I can't 2HKO Heatproof Bronzong back with Fire Punch without a crit. I DID get a Burn on turn 3 but it made no difference.

Shame not to reach 200 but this is still something I'm happy with and I don't intend on re-attempting this for now. Currently I have 4777 total wins in Hall and will be working on new stuff/re-visiting other things.
 
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The true PokeGod is not Arceus, not Lord Helix (Omanyte), but Chikorita. Lord Chiko. So let's see how Lord Chiko performs in the Battle Hall.

Chikorita @ Choice Specs
Modest, 4 HP, 252 SAtk, 252 Speed
- Energy Ball
- Ancientpower
- Hidden Power Ice
- Mud-Slap

I knew getting a proper streak with Chikorita would be a lot harder than with Bayleef (115 wins). So how about 85 out of the 170 battles you need for a Gold symbol, half of a Gold symbol? Let's see if that's possible.

After several tries that ended somewhere between 50 and 60 wins, mostly battling Water, Rock, Electric and Ground types, Chiko ended up beating lots of strong opponents, even a Suicune... And a Shellder, when winning a Silver Print... Things got bad when I reached 85 wins. Win 86 was not possible anymore, since Steelix survived Energy Ball and killed Chiko with Gyro Ball... A few more attempts to reach 86+ wins ended in vein, usually somewhere around 60-70 wins. Eventually, I accepted that 85 wins was probably the maximum amount of wins for Chikorita.

IMG_9916.JPG


 
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Battle Hall: GET THE GOLD [Hall Dragonite]

This is the first win streak I've achieved and for the first Gold symbol that I've ever obtained. I won in the Battle Hall using, the first pokemon I've EV trained for gen 4 and IV bred to have perfect stats, a shiny Dragonite. This is one of my favorite pokémon of all time. I just really wanted to attempt battle hall with it. I won this after my third attempt or if you want you could say it's my second attempt actually. I tried this a few nights ago and thought that it would be good to tackle ice, ground, dark, and water as the first four types. My idea behind this is to get the most threatening type of oppositions out of the way. I thought that Gastrodon/Weavile/Froslass could be the end of me. Better to knock them out earlier. Gastrodon met up with me in battle 39 and almost took me out with ice beam. I tried earthquake first to try and chip it and finish it with outrage. I missed. I then outraged and missed. It missed ice beam after. I missed outrage again and Gastrodon missed ice beam for a second time. Outrage missed for the third time in a row and sludge bomb took me down. Two nights ago I began with ice again after a late night working and passed out on my bed. The DS died when I was a few rounds in and then I woke up the next morning (11/26/20). I was fired up.

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Adamant Nature
Moves: Earthquake, Fire Punch, Extreme Speed, Outrage
IV's: 31 All Stats
EV's: 252 ATK, 252 SPD, 4 HP
Item: Focus Sash (Lum berry as an alternative option)

New strategies: Avoid particular threats that could appear in certain overlapping types. Ice, water, ground, dark, psychic, ghost, and poison are most threatening in this order in my opinion. The first four types I list here could have Gastrodon in water or ground. Weavile could be in Ice or Dark. Wobbuffet can end anyone's run and sitrus berry Slowbro is a pain in later rounds where it is higher level and has better stats/IV's. Gengar can end the run if it chooses hypnosis which is a 1/4 chance. I thought that sleep talk could be interesting to slap onto Dragonite to try and overcome this without ridding it of the focus sash for lum berry hence leaving it vulnerable to other opponents potentially in the ghost round. I didn't have a lum berry or a chesto even at the time to swap onto Dragonite for the round, so I just ran with sash in hopes I would miss that potential roll. These could be interesting alternative sets to run for the ghost round only maybe.

Gengar: Outspeeds me. Could hypnosis and finish me off.
Froslass: Outspeeds me. Could hail first, break sash, blizzard me to death.
Gastrodon: I can never test my luck against this tank of a pokémon. It haxed me so hard on my first attempt.
Steelix: I didn't face this luckily. Gyro Ball would have wrecked me.
Weavile: Another pokémon with a great type advantage and strong priority moves.

Round Orders: Ice, Ground, Water, Dark 1-8 (Leave 9 for battle 50 and 10 for battle 170 to potentially miss Weavile... It worked!!), I then did psychic 1-2. Finished off psychic to skip Slowbro in later rounds. I saw Wobbuffet round 9 and almost met my end. I thought it would counter me for sure, so extreme speed as my weakest move being countered right after didn't kill me. It dealt enough damage for an outrage to take it out. Flying, Ghost (I missed Gengar), Poison (I also missed Gengar), Rock, Electric (I didn't get stunned thankfully, but zapdos round 10 shocked me), Normal, Steel (Bastiodon has blizzard and could've frozen me. Thankfully it didn't and earthquake took it out), Fire (Ninetails outspeeds me and used confuse ray. I thought I would've been haxed to death when I had 3 more rounds to go. I rolled well and outrage hit on the first attempt being confused), Grass, Bug, and Dragon.

My first Argenta battle at 50 was against Rapidash and nothing it did could handle Dragonite. After, a single outrage was used to take it down. My 170th battle was against Claydol which was also another great match-up. I used outrage from the get-go and took it down after two turns.

I got really lucky in this run not being under any status effects much through opposing mons and dodging higher threats to Dragonite which led me to get the gold in just two-three attempts.

Changes I would potentially make. Flamethrower instead of fire punch to deal with Steelix.

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Hi guys i need some help.

Pokemon soul silver is by far my favourite pokemon game although i have never finished it from start to the end. By this I mean getting all 5 gold symbols from battle frontier. I would like to beat the game(including the battle frontier but only the single format) in my own strange way. I would like to storm the facilities with my ingame team. Obvioulsly i know that storming the facilities with some random pokemon without proper training is impossible. I want to ingame catch a proper mons ( with good ability, nature and average IV[not wasting much time on it, but i dont want 1,1,1,1,1,1 mons), then after beating E4 and red reset their EV and train them properly. Lastly i want to use pokemon i like.

I would like to ask you for help with building such a team. My idea is so far:
Feraligator, Tyranitatr, Scizor, Dragonite. 5 and sixth slot are undecided so far. I was wondering on Gliscor but i am not able to got it( i own only diamond and soul silver). I would be very grateful for build for those mons and propositions for two last slots(i dont want to use legends)

Sweapers will be enough for battle frontier or should i consider some other types of mons?

Thanks in advance for all advices.
 
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It's nice to see that my 646 streak in the Platinum Tower is still preserved in the leaderboards, from all the way back in 2010... it's clear from this thread that gen 4 battle facilities will never again be anywhere near as popular as they were back then, but I'm posting to say that my Pokemon goal for this year is to finally get the Gold Print in the Platinum Battle Factory. I gave up on that back in 2009, and I still think it might be the hardest in-game challenge in any main-series Pokemon game.
 
Reporting an ongoing streak of 112 wins in Battle Castle Singles.
Ended up losing this streak at 231 wins several months ago. I don't remember much about the loss so here's the discord logs.

[7:56 PM] lost at 232 to hax and one misplay
[7:56 PM] saw meganium1/empoleon34/sceptile1234 at team preview
[7:56 PM] my thought was go to scizor to set up to +2 and ohko everything
[7:57 PM] so i gave everything their items, chomp got persim, gengar got sash, sciz got lefties, etc
[7:57 PM] up-levelled scept bc it's not going to be a problem
[7:58 PM] switched to sciz on t1 expecting either sun or beam, ancientpower, that's weird but ok
[7:58 PM] t2, ancientpower crit as sciz set up
[7:58 PM] neither of those got boost
[7:58 PM] t3, bug bite ohko
[7:59 PM] t4, empoleon comes in. i take note that scizor has a ~50% to die to surf from set 3. empoleon gets QC surf, yes it is set 3, scizor dead
[8:00 PM] t5, i check all the scept sets and see that the one that threatens chomp is ruled out because it would have came in against sciz instead of emp, so i decide to sac gengar with d-bond bc i really don't want to risk chomp to QC blizz
[8:00 PM] t6, it gets QC surf on gengar, so yes my decision to d bond was optimal
[8:02 PM] t7, scept comes in. i forget that it has overgrow, so i see l55 leaf blade doesn't 2hko, i go for outrage. outrage doesn't crit and leaf blade 2hkoes. dead
[8:02 PM] my first misplay was not skipping when i saw empoleon3/4. the other misplay that mattered was not SDing against scept since outrage doesn't have a roll to OHKO level 55 scept

Fortunately, I'm back at it, currently at 217 wins with the same team.
 

Another little fun run using a favourite cutie in the Battle Hall...

28.png


Ledyba @ Choice Specs
Modest, 4 HP, 252 SAtk, 252 Speed
- Bug Buzz
- Air Cutter
- Ominous Wind
- Hidden Power Electric

With Chikorita, I got 85 wins... Which was probably too much to expect from the adorable but weak Ledyba. However, I wanted to see if he could at least win his own silver print, and he did. By battling Grass and Fighting Pokemon and some others he has a type advantage against, racking up winning streaks at the start is quite easy.

However, Ledyba is frail. Very frail. Any physical attack is instant death, and a lot of super effective special attacks from middle-evolved or fully evolved Pokemon are fatal as well for the cute baby bug. Luckily, Argenta had a weak, slow Cherubi that died after just one Specs-boosted Bug Buzz.

Ironically, Ledyba lost during its 69th battle against a Ledian using Air Cutter. Ledian got two crits, Ledyba's 95% accurate attack missed... But it was okay. Reaching 68 wins was already a miracle that was only possible because of some lucky wins. Opponents doing stupid things, missing with strong moves... I might try again to see if Ledyba can do better, but 68 wins might be the maximum I can get with Ledyba.

IMG_2308.jpg



A little reward for everyone who read this post... A screenshot of six adorable newborn baby Ledyba, from the anime episode 'The Whistle Stop'. They are so cute! <3
27.png
 
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I have recently joined smogon and as my id suggests I intend to be an apprentice here and learn. This thread is really touching because I never quite expect that by 2021 there are still so many players on gen4 battle frontier.

My unfinished goal is to earn my trainer card star by the tower streak. And I do not intend to do RNG abuse for this purpose although I am extremely impressed and feel allured to try! I am really amazed by how people worked out all the codes and enabled so many players to achieve their dream pokemons. Personally I think the legendary Ray Rizzo might actually have contributed to these too.

I might sound odd and masochistic but factory is actually my favorite and I do want to push for a gold print. Although my reason is really about it being my most reliable source for quick BPs, since I can quite quickly clear the first 2 rounds for 10 BP and I have become used to being thrashed in battle 21 anyway......(well I just found out about some hidden mechanics from a great guide here and I figured that it was due to the fact that I had always avoided trades).

I am right now building my tower team, in the middle of breeding a skarmory. I really would love to achieve my goal with a stealth rock skarmory lead. Although I see that I can check all facility opponents here but I really want to see if I can get my 100 streak without checking (too much I guess). My current team idea is skarmory+scarf tyranitar+machamp (this is most likely sub-prime but I was really intrigued by its guide on smogon and would love to see how much I can punch into the computer opponents with dynamic punch). My reason for wanting to try this specific team is: considering the ways I could get haxed by the computer, I want to account for misses, OHKOs, and critical hits. Machamp can somehow address the first and a sturdy skarmory can somewhat cover the latter 2.

I have also just captured a slightly above average suicune (finally after my last attempt some 3-4 years ago) and a staryu, and I am also actively deliberating a team with a water type. And could someone please share some advice on my thoughts of leading with a baton pass ninjask?

I would like to use the successful experiences shared by others here as my reference and derive my own results. Fingers crossed. On a side note, I really admire the idea of trick team in that it really aims to eliminate uncertainties which is such an ingenuous strategy in PVC games!
 
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The true PokeGod is not Arceus, not Lord Helix (Omanyte), but Chikorita. Lord Chiko. So let's see how Lord Chiko performs in the Battle Hall.

Chikorita @ Choice Specs
Modest, 4 HP, 252 SAtk, 252 Speed
- Energy Ball
- Ancientpower
- Hidden Power Ice
- Mud-Slap

I knew getting a proper streak with Chikorita would be a lot harder than with Bayleef (115 wins). 85 out of the 170 battles you need for a Gold symbol, half of a Gold symbol, let's see if that's possible.

After several tries that ended somewhere between 50 and 60 wins, mostly battling Water, Rock, Electric and Ground types, Chiko ended up beating lots of strong opponents, even a Suicune... And a Shellder, when winning a Silver Print... Things got bad when I reached 85 wins. Win 86 was not possible anymore, since Steelix survived Energy Ball and killed Chiko with Gyro Ball... A few more attempts to reach 86+ wins ended in vein, usually somewhere around 60-70 wins. Eventually, I accepted that 85 wins was probably the maximum amount of wins for Chikorita.

View attachment 294508

Your endeavor is just so impressively admirable! My favorite is chikorita and in my SS game I have also carried mine as my mascot (never leaves party, only ball capsule, first shiny leave crown, first lv 100 and of course never evolved), but I've never thought of getting her to achieve some feats like yours!
 
Your endeavor is just so impressively admirable! My favorite is chikorita and in my SS game I have also carried mine as my mascot (never leaves party, only ball capsule, first shiny leave crown, first lv 100 and of course never evolved), but I've never thought of getting her to achieve some feats like yours!
Thank you! I love doing this with favourites, especially weaker ones that other people often see as worthless. The Battle Hall is a nice way to make these Pokemon shine. Maybe 170 wins and a gold print is too much to expect, but just winning a silver print is a beautiful achievement for some weaker Pokemon (Chikorita). Or reaching almost 120 wins (Bayleef). I'm always happy to see my favourites shine, and I'm very happy you have a Chikorita like that.

If you want yours to achieve something in the Battle Hall... If your Chikorita is EV trained and has a decent moveset, it might be possible. If not... Then it will be less than mine, but you might still reach 40-50 wins and maybe beat the Frontier Brain for a silver print if she has a Pokemon Chikorita is strong against.

I actually did another challenge earlier this month that was even harder than the Chikorita one... See the post below:


Another little fun run using a favourite cutie in the Battle Hall...

View attachment 312607

Ledyba @ Choice Specs
Modest, 4 HP, 252 SAtk, 252 Speed
- Bug Buzz
- Air Cutter
- Ominous Wind
- Hidden Power Electric

With Chikorita, I got 85 wins... Which was probably too much to expect from the adorable but weak Ledyba. However, I wanted to see if he could at least win his own silver print, and he did. By battling Grass and Fighting Pokemon and some others he has a type advantage against, racking up winning streaks at the start is quite easy.

However, Ledyba is frail. Very frail. Any physical attack is instant death, and a lot of super effective special attacks from middle-evolved or fully evolved Pokemon are fatal as well for the cute baby bug. Luckily, Argenta had a weak, slow Cherubi that died after just one Specs-boosted Bug Buzz.

Ironically, Ledyba lost during its 69th battle against a Ledian using Air Cutter. Ledian got two crits, Ledyba's 95% accurate attack missed... But it was okay. Reaching 68 wins was already a miracle that was only possible because of some lucky wins. Opponents doing stupid things, missing with strong moves... I might try again to see if Ledyba can do better, but 68 wins might be the maximum I can get with Ledyba.

View attachment 312603


A little reward for everyone who read this post... A screenshot of six adorable newborn baby Ledyba, from the anime episode 'The Whistle Stop'. They are so cute! <3
View attachment 312606
 
Thank you! I love doing this with favourites, especially weaker ones that other people often see as worthless. The Battle Hall is a nice way to make these Pokemon shine. Maybe 170 wins and a gold print is too much to expect, but just winning a silver print is a beautiful achievement for some weaker Pokemon (Chikorita). Or reaching almost 120 wins (Bayleef). I'm always happy to see my favourites shine, and I'm very happy you have a Chikorita like that.

If you want yours to achieve something in the Battle Hall... If your Chikorita is EV trained and has a decent moveset, it might be possible. If not... Then it will be less than mine, but you might still reach 40-50 wins and maybe beat the Frontier Brain for a silver print if she has a Pokemon Chikorita is strong against.

I actually did another challenge earlier this month that was even harder than the Chikorita one... See the post below:
It's just too bad that many critically player-friendly features were not there in gen4, esp. the fact that you can no longer adjust stats by EV for a lvl.100 pokemon. My chikorita has been collecting exp from random opponents (well mostly Brock's rematch which boosted her straight from some 50-ish to 100), so I guess she won't fare well in the more serious PvC frontier. I carry her for utility purpose with sweet scent, flash, and aromatherapy.

A side query: is RNG abuse the norm here in smogon? I'm wondering the case in both PvP and PvC settings. It seems in PvP it's almost universal since guides frequently mention specific hidden power at maximum power as well as specific IV values. Particularly, I would love to learn how much of a difference one can make by using all pokemons of 186 IVs when playing at the battle frontier. Thanks!
 
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The Mind Electric

Calming if you look at it right.
I'm currently doing some Hall runs on an emulator with the standard Sash Garchomp set, and I've decided to compile a Pastebin with all the major threats I can think of so I don't have to look through the Bulbapedia page every time I need to figure out if something is a threat. Hopefully this is useful to people doing runs with this or a similar Sash Dragon set, let me know if I missed anything.

Edit: I deleted this because I wrote it with a very limited knowledge of the Hall and I don't think it's very good or helpful.
 
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