[] Gym Battlers Open

Sure, count me in!

Chaotic can have mystery element #15.

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I pretty much had my team set in stone the moment I was handed my type. It's a good thing I already had a couple of Dragons raised, but getting the rest up to par will be a bit time-consuming.

I'm still trying to figure out if I can make Shelgon a half-decent tank.

EDIT: I've been meaning to ask this, but do we go about challenging anybody we please, or is there some sort of structure as to who we'll be facing next?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Oh, gotta post my friend code before I forget.

3737-6076-6955

There probably should be a list of friend codes on the first post for convenience. Anyway, if anybody would like to get an early start on their Gym Leader match, I'll be available for the rest of today. Just be sure to give me your friend code beforehand so I can add you.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Josiah appears to be offline, so I'll provide the details of our match!

Josiah vs. Identity Crisis:

Round One (6v6):
Here I'm introduced to Josiah's dragon slayer, we'll call him Sir Kills-A-Lot. I start off with one of my walls, but my precious defense is OHKO'd thanks to Sir Kills-A-Lot's special ability. It takes down another dragon and cripples another before taken down. Then, I bring out Wyvern to seek vengeance. None of his Pokemon could bring Wyvern's HP down to 0 before it could sweep the rest of his entire team.

Round Two (3v3):
Our first Pokemon wind up going relatively nowhere, especially when his Pokemon suffers from Paralysis three turns in a row. Mine is still KO'd before his, but his Pokemon is crippled beyond safety. After his first Pokemon goes down, Sir Kills-A-Lot comes to sweep away the rest of my team.

Round Three (3v3):
Josiah brings out Sir Kills-A-Lot first. This one wasn't even close.

Round Four (3v3):
I anticipated he'd bring out Sir Kills-A-Lot first, so I brought out a Pokemon that could outlast the initial onslaught. My Pokemon kills Sir Kills-A-Lot mostly due to an error on Josiah's end but can't take down his next. His next Pokemon gets in a most unfortunate flinching against one of mine (probably the deciding factor) and takes it down. The match ends when his Pokemon freezes one of mine even though I wanted to freeze his first. D=

Match Summary:
Josiah wins 3-1!
Josiah loses 9 Pokemon
Identity Crisis loses 12 Pokemon.

EDIT: Oh, ha, he came back. I'm still not going to delete this. I already spent some minutes typing it out.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I'd participate. I like the ava/sig I already have going, but the theme, uh, unspecified amount of time should definitely get me out of my recent design lethargia. I might even make a custom badge sprite for myself if I can muster up the creativity.

I was speaking idiomatically.

On a slightly unrelated note, Kairyu and I have been designing gym badges. Kairyu has drawn the design concepts, and I've converted the sketches into sprites. If anybody is interested in having one for their own type specialty, feel free to contact either of us and submit some sort of design prerequisite for us to follow by.

Here are a couple of examples:
(Dragon)
(Ground)

They're relatively small, so they could easily fit in signature space without taking up too much room.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Uh, I can't take all of the credit, so be sure to thank Kairyu too. He came up with the sketch behind the badge!

FELIPE NO

I also finished my Gym Leader match with radcliff13. However, he doesn't have enough Pokemon for a 6v6, so all of our matches have been 3v3.

radcliff13 vs. Identity Crisis:

Round One:
His prime choice knocked mine out without so much as a second thought with a powerful strike in addition to a critical hit. However, Eddy was the next to come out for my team, and his Pokemon couldn't KO Eddy in time before sweeping the opposition.

Round Two
We started with the same two Pokemon from the last match. Mine was able to cripple his before both of us switched out our Pokemon for more fresh competition. Wyvern withstood a super effective attack from radcliff's Pokemon and was able to sweep the rest of his team.

Round Three
Since we had the same starters for three times in a row, we anticipated each others' proceeding moves. Instead of going on the offense by switching out, I kept playing defense and was able to save my Pokemon from the brink of annihilation at one point. Then, radcliff's Pokemon finished it off, but not before my Pokemon left its mark.

I win! 3-0
Pokemon I lost: 2
Pokemon radcliff13 lost: 9

Good games. It's kind of a shame you didn't have more Pokemon to fight with though. I left my choices as is thinking it would be more fair if you knew as much as possible about my team as I did about your team.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Josiah

When this is all done, perhaps the winner (or top X players) should challenge Miles to a match with their team. Having a title like "leader of all gym leaders" without being a participant in this tourney seems like rather big talk to me.

I think the term would be Champion (or Elite Four if Miles suddenly acquired schizophrenia). He'd have to face those of us with badges if he was willing to make his title official. The order he faces us would be determined by the ranks in the tournament. Oddly and conveniently enough, the total badges made for this ava/sig chain comes out to eight.

But enough with the pointless digression.

The only matches that I still need to complete are with Crash Landon and Xardion. Also, wasn't my name fine as is in the first post? Icy in parentheses rather than as my main name should clear up the confusion as to who I am/was.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Holy crap, Crash and I just had some epic games. The match was decided by one very small increment of HP!

Crash Landon vs. Identity Crisis:

Round One: (6v6)
Crash and I wound up exchanging each of our Pokemon over time. I'd KO his Pokemon, he'd retaliate by KO'ing mine, etc. Eventually, I came out ahead on an exchange in KO'd Pokemon and won by numbers. He almost had me, too, since I incorrectly assumed Eddy would be fast enough to outrace one of his Pokemon, and Eddy had to take another hit for the team.

Round Two: (3v3)
Boy, did I ever choose the wrong Pokemon for this match. I was mercilessly swept by one of his Pokemon without even so much as KO'ing it.

Round Three: (3v3)
I started off with one of my Pokemon with a bit more endurance this time. Unfortunately for me, so did Crash. His particularly unique strategy stopped my team dead in its tracks. I was even able to KO his deadly Pokemon at one point, but I incorrectly assumed he'd switch out. I paid the price, and his cleanup crew took care of whatever was left.

I'd hate to be this vague for the preceding match, but I want to hear about future matches with someone else getting squashed by this strategy.

Round Four: (3v3)
Even after a slightly discouraging KO from Crash's Pokemon, I managed to pull out of that slump thanks to Wyvern's endurance. Crash's Pokemon weren't able to outlast Wyvern's sweeping potential.

Round Five (3v3)
Closest round ever. Wyvern won the match with one HP left!

It's a good thing for me that I switched some of my items around because I wound up winning off of HP recovered from Leftovers and Focus Sash keeping my last Pokemon alive long enough to deliver the finishing blow. Life Orb still didn't really do as much as I'd hoped though.

I win! 3-2
Pokemon I defeated: 13
Pokemon Crash defeated: 13

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I wouldn't mind losing two points overall from that decision if it'll yield more precise results. At worst, I get knocked out of a high-ranking spot in a tournament with no monetary gain (oh noes, I face Miles that much sooner). I had fun at this tournament, and that's all that matters to me.

It'd be kind of a shame if Black Mage doesn't come in contact with Crash soon enough. That's probably the only match left I'm eagerly waiting to see the results for (no offense to the rest of the participants who still need to battle).

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

From your chart, Sane Brain, I'm only finding one aspect of it possibly unfair. Granting absolutely no points to someone who supposedly dominates over a certain matchup doesn't seem right. We only have one battle that is affected by this (Kairyu vs. Black Mage), but making a battle completely pointless to play for one side is a bit much. I dunno. I haven't had a match affected by the scoring on that degree, so I'll leave it up to Kairyu's and Black Mage's discretion.

As for the second Gym Leader tournament, I'll need some time to read through all of your rules thoroughly before reserving judgment. There's definitely plenty of thought put into this, and I'd hate to see something possibly awesome go to waste.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by Sane Brain

And the rules are clear this time: whoever wins this match goes on to the next round.

I'm probably splitting hairs, but next round? Wasn't the top three already established? Even if we do settle on letting Kairyu and radcliff13 play their sudden death match, why do we need drag on Kairyu's and radcliff's placement further?

EDIT: Bah, nevermind. The first post answered my previous questions. Disregard them.

Originally Posted by Sane Brain

If I had known this would have been a tie, I would suggested a two on one match to Kairyu and discarded the secret rules to begin with.

So... why did the rules need to be a secret to begin with? If you planned on giving radcliff13 a handicap, what exactly was preventing you from telling Kairyu and radcliff13 about it up front?

I was speaking idiomatically.

I'll be fine with second place. The tournament has gone on long enough, and Crash probably already figured out how to answer my Focus Sash shenanigans. Besides, Josiah listed his team off already, and I don't want to start of with an advantage of knowing what his team consists of (although I already faced off against most of them anyway).

Identity Crisis' Dragon Gym Team

Spoiler:

Dragonair (Aurora)
Shelgon (Katamari)
Flygon (Quartz)
Kingdra (Eddy)
Dragonite (Wyvern)
Salamence (Steven)

Alternate:
Altaria (Cumulus)

Team Summary: I consider a majority of my Pokemon a success. Dragonair provided some nice utility in the form of Light Screen and Thunder Wave, and Dragonite was a powerhouse with a Dragon Dance and Outrage one-two punch.

I tried to have Altaria learn Haze via leveling, but in the middle of training it I completely forgot that Haze was actually an Egg Move. Rather than having to start over and find parents within a day, I stuck with a regrettably crappy Toxishuffler intead. Also, putting Dragon Dance on Shelgon was a pretty bad idea since its speed is so horrible that with 2 Dragon Dances it still couldn't keep up with an Espeon.

All in all, this tournament was pretty fun. I look forward to the next one that's in store!

How ya doing, buddy?

I like that idea, Sousuke. I was sort of curious how my team would stack up against a regular team not specifically designed to destroy dragons. However, it would really depend on whether or not Kairyu would be up for this sort of structure since he'd have to face all of the challengers by default. The rest of the Elite Four would be left with the challengers who defated Kairyu, which may be a significantly smaller amount (this is definitely true as the ranks get higher).

I have a few questions though. Would items be interchangeable for the challengers? For example, if someone left Choice Band on a Slaking for the first match, would that Choice Band stay on the Slaking for the remainder of the matches?

Also, how would we determine who the "real" Champion is if more than one person defeats us? I don't think we should have more than one person as the Champion if that was the case. Otherwise, the title sort of loses what little meaning it has already.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Sane Brain

It's funny because all I suggested was doing three battles (the original idea that Kairyu had to begin with), none of which you would be involved in. But Sousuke's idea would - if you wanted to be, "champion". Personally, I think there could be more than one champion without the need to argue who's best after that.

There are already some clear results for who earned what place. I don't see the need to have Kairyu prolong the tournament if nobody participating feels up for it. It's not like there's anything at stake.

The reason I support the Elite Four idea is that I'll be facing against one normally diverse team per player. At least the battles will be different from one side of the field, and I won't be spending that much time on them as I did with this tournament. However, I don't speak for the rest of the top four (or anybody else), so they may be as supportive as I am towards Sousuke's idea.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Sane Brain

Then there has to be the draft itself, but what happens if someone becomes inactive in the process of drafting? Should we wait until they become active again?

We could probably meet up in the IRC room #pokeymans to make sure everybody is available. Once everybody in there is confirmed to be present, then they can send their selections from there. Not everybody has an IRC client, but ChocoChat should provide a decent alternative.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I'll throw in my endorsement for Crash's drafting idea while I'm here. I don't have any questions to ask him though. Everything seems perfectly clear.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Sane Brain

Every Pokemon that you KO is worth the cumulative base stats of that Pokemon, made into a system of "points".

Heh, I just remembered that Slaking is hosed by this scoring system with its extremely great stats but an awful ability. Since it only attacks every other turn, would it have a special calculation attributed to it? I don't plan on using it if I can, but someone who is a giant Slaking fan or something might be greatly opposed to this.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I remember the sleep clause phrased more like this:

"No two Pokemon on a team can be put to sleep at the same time by an opponent."

This is a bit more eloquent than the current explanation. However, with your current clause, it seems a bit extreme to limit the use of sleeping move to only once per opponent, especially since we're not drafting alternates.

It is your tournament to run though, so I'll shut up and sign up.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.