Pokemon Tournament!!!

Several weeks back now the anime club up at York University held a Pokemon tournament. Yes! There was a single and double battle format, and a lot of people were pumped and had been preparing for the thing for a while. Apparently one guy, who did very poorly last year and wasn't up on the game at all... got better. He studied all the tips and tricks, he didn't care if it was cheap, so long as the rules allowed it, he was going with the best of the best. I ended up going against him in the double battle tournament, and I'll get into how that went when I get there.

Mine was basically a water team, a baton passing, dream world Vaporeon, a Whiscash, a Ludicolo (mine's named Eastwood, and is the man), a Kangaskhan bred special for the event with the scrappy ability, a baton passing, quiver dancing Venomoth, and a basic Rotom for light screen/rain dancing.

Getting ready for the tournament, battling Jordan, I continually smoked him with these guys, even with his crazily good trained Espeon, so I was confident going in.

However, the first guy I fought, a dude actually dressed up as Red from the first game, started off with a Skill link Cloyster with shell smash and focus band. I didn't stand a chance. He swept my entire team with that one guy. In retrospect, what I probably should have done was lead off with a rain dance, then next turn when he probably kills rotom, switch to kangaskhan, sucker punch attack to break the focus sash, and then when kangaskhan gets killed switch to Eastwood, who has the double speed from the rain dance, and mega drain the guy, whose already terrible defences are made worse by shell smash.

But even IF I knew about the focus sash, and did all that... well, that's ONE of his guys down, and I've lost two already. Do-able.... except the OTHER guy he had (we showed our teams after the match to each other) was a dream world ditto, which would match me if I ever tried to power up a guy with baton pass and attempt a sweep of my own. Which is something I almost certainly would have tried. Basically, this was the worst possible match up for me. Boo.

So I was knocked out right away from the singles tournament.

While waiting for the doubles a couple of girls from the psychology department entered to ask anyone in a relationship to fill out a survey. Darkly hilarious- the anime club? Relationship? At a pokemon tournament? These two were barking up the wrong tree. We bullied PJ into filling out a form, he's got a baby with this girl, he's definitely relationship statused. This other club guy, Richard (cool guy) was also spoken for, but didn't volunteer to help. When I realized he just didn't want to fill anyhing out, I had to mentally applaud him for keeping his cool.

For my part, I was sorely tempted to ask one of the girls out, just for the sake of immediately after taking a form and filling it out. It woulda been... sort of funny? Yeah, probably for the best that I didn't.

Meanwhile, this guy Zack was freaking out that he lost. Which was something he does everytime he loses things. It's, uh, pretty annoying. He let loose some pretty major sighs to try and get some attention, but I wasn't having any of it. It's not all about you bud. You want a conversation, I can make that happen, and I'll even ask you about yourself, there'll be a whole back and forth.. thing.

Jordan was impressed that I didn't tell the crazy depressed guy anything horrible. So I see my bar is pretty low with that guy.

At the beginning of the tourney we had to record who we were using for the single tournament so we could get started. Fine by me, since I'd had that planned for weeks. It was just the doubles format that I still hadn't decided on.

"Do you also want us to tell you our doubles picks???" said Jordan.

"Oh, yeah, so everyone also add your doubles picks." said event organizer person.

And I just looked at Jordan with acid tipped daggers flying from my eyes. "I TOLD YOU I WASN'T READY TO CHOOSE THAT!"

"Oops." Classic Jordan.

Fortunately, they didn't force me to pick then, so it was all good. But man, that goombah.

So for the doubles I went with my Reuniclus Akira, my Cofagrigus Kiyoko- both hefty pokemon, slow as molasses, both with Trick Room to switch speeds around for 5 turns or so. These two were actually holdovers from my team from the last years tournament. We only needed 4 for the doubles match, so then I went with my Conkeldurr Mr Myx that Jordan bred for me with Mach Punch, AND a guy I'd just transferred from my gold version, who was himself sent forward from one of the Hoenn games, my Crawdaunt named Longshot!

What happened to me last year with this team is that either Akira or Kiyoko would get dog piled on, and because I didn't use Trick Room with both of them (as doing that cancels out the effect) there was a 50/50 chance of even getting the move out... a move essential to the success of my team.

My solution? Have both pokemon use Trick Room, even if that's stupid. AND IT WORKED!

My first matchup in doubles was against Jordan. He used fakeout, so one of my guys (Akira, the guy actually vulnerable to fakeout) wasn't able to use his move. So Kiyoko did it. And that was all she wrote, all my guys were faster, I took him out.

My next match was against Mike, the fellow I mentioned at the beginning who had dedicated his recent life to becoming "the very best/Like no one ever was". I've actually got this match saved on my DS due to the awesomeness.

Mike started with Haxorus and Hitmontop. PJ was watching my moves and thought I was being a stupid idiot to have two guys use trick room... but again IT WORKED. Hitmontop faked out Akira, and Haxorus used outrage on Kiyoko (to be fair, outrage goes where it wants to go, no choice on that).

Well, hefty being that it is, Kiyoko takes the hit, uses trick room, and now I'm the fastest thing alive. I use Destiny Bond on Kiyoko, killing the formerly full HP Haxorus, and Psychic attack the fighting type Hitmontop. mu- mu- MWHAHAHAHA.

Oh yes.

And that was it basically. I tore apart his opener, and finished with both My Myx and Longshot still alive... which was quite a trick for Longshot, who was burned and took an earthquake from my own other guy and yet still lived. Dude, Longshot is a boss, just throwing that out there.

PJ was dumbstruck at how stupid the strategy of using Trick Room with both guys, but also figures it would work on him too because of it's stupidity. Which, you know, really means its genius.

My next match, the finals were against this really cool guy Nam. Very chill, but was a finalist for a reason. Let's see, he started with Gyrados and... someone. Can't remember. I took a long time with my first move, because I didn't think fake out was coming (again) so I needed to decided whether this was the time for two Trick Rooms again. Eventually... I went with no. I got Akira to trick room, and Kiyoko to shadowball (I'm pretty sure that's how it went down). Nam used taunt... on Kiyoko! My trick room goes off, and things are swinging from there.

Unfortunately, he's got a Staraptor on his team, who's got super effective attacks for both My Myx and Longshot. I aim a stone edge at him... and it misses! Augh! That was what cost me the match. He couldn't take my own hit, I couldn't take his, I was faster, but I missed, he didn't.

Curse you rock moves! Curse your lack of perfect accuracy!

Regardless, it was a great match, I was happy to play against the guy and I earned second place in doubles, the prize being a $10 Best Buy gift card and a little foam luxury ball. Score!

It's called being a Pokemon Master, brah.

I got way too into this post.