Introducing Dr. Walnut

WARNING: THOSE OF YOU WHO DO NOT KNOW POKEMON MAY FIND CONTENT YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND IN THIS POST. NON-POKEMON CONTENT WILL COME LATER.

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing pertaining to the Pokemon franchise. I am simply here to share thoughts about the strategy behind the competitive metagame of the main-series game. Most specifically, Pokemon Black and White.

Who am I again?

Ah yes, I'm one of the many men and women who study Pokemon, Dr. Cordelius Walnut. Additionally, I'm one of the few who have furthered their studies enough to obtain a Doctorate. Mine was established through close study of the Pokemon genetic code. My ongoing studies continue to include this field, but have also broadened to battle techniques.

This next month will see my studies narrowed to a laser point. The Pokemon World Championships approach, and I intend to enter and, with any luck, win. My friend, another Professor, plans to enter as well. With our combined knowledge and study skills, we will put together two separate teams and throw all we have at this tournament.

As such, while this blog is to be about much more than Pokemon, it will start out with documentation of my days of research. Something new will come the month afterward. Those of you who are not interested in Pokemon (although I don't think many of the current readers fall under that category) feel free to keep acting like there have not been any updates until I get around to something new. Without further ado, I will begin with the strategy that I believe will be the most common in the tournament, and I will end with the first solid decision of the team I will be bringing to the tournament.

Common Strategy 1

Through my time spent online searching for and gathering information, a common strategy for an entire team will be Trick Room. With Trick Room, the Pokemon with the lowest Speed goes first, paving the way for powerful-but-slow Pokemon to dominate all those normally fast destroyers. Truly this is the tortoise's favorite strategy to employ against the hare. Plenty of extremely slow Pokemon have access to huge attacking stats and moves. Examples include Reuniclus, Conkeldurr, Ferrothorn, Jellicent, and quite a few others. Talk abounds in Pokemon circles everywhere of plans to abuse this strategy, which leads me to believe it will be like seagulls to the Championship's beach, and it'll be about as unwelcome, in this Professor's opinion. This strategy will be the most frustrating to shut down. Why, you ask? Well, let's look at common methods of setting it up:

The Setup

The most important thing a Trick Room user needs is the ability to take and survive a hit. Trick Room is a move that will almost always go last, and almost guarantees the Pokemon will take a hit before using it. The move, and the Pokemon using it are obviously pointless if it falls before using it. For this reason, most users of Trick Room are both slow and heinously defensive, usually with a powerful offensive stat thrown into the mix. However, in double battles, the user of Trick Room doesn't even need to worry about being hit. Why? One reason, right here:

"I'm about to piss you off."

 

Amoonguss.

This mushroom fellow who sports the design of the Pokeball "ironically" is made of HP, and has enough defenses to back it up. It has access to a handy little move called Rage Powder, which forces any attacking Pokemon to target it. Worried about Taunt (a move that prevents its target from doing anything but damaging attacks) stopping you from using Trick Room? Worry no more! The Taunt user is forced to target Amoonguss after Rage Powder. Rage Powder even acts on high priority, so even something Taunting from Prankster (an ability that gives priority to non-damaging moves) moves second.

Amoonguss is the sole reason Trick Room is such a powerful team option in double battles. Otherwise, it'd be easily stopped and a gimmick at best.

After Amoonguss has sprinkled his powder full of wrath, its partner is free to set up Trick Room, transferring all your strong, snail-slow Pokemon to strong snails strapped to rocket packs. But just who are these dangerous Pokemon with low speed? Let's examine that now.

The Major Players

Jellicent.

All the best trainers recognize the power of a Pringles mustache.

This jellyfish is actually one of the fastest Pokemon on a Trick Room team with a base Speed of 60. That said, it's one of this generation's best users of Trick Room, with great HP and defenses, along with just enough Special Attack power for its Water Spout to create some major dents in an opponent's team.

Reuniclus.

 You'd be smiling that wide too, if your brain could level a building.

This Psychic goop-beast is the other most powerful Trick Room user in this generation. With a base Speed of 30, he's among the slowest of the generation, making him among the fastest when Trick Room goes off. With a base 125 Special Attack and immunity to Life Orb recoil thanks to its ability, Magic Coat, its Psychics, Focus Blasts and Hidden Power are each like an individual mental truck, slamming into the opponent.

Ferrothorn.

 UFO, with 400% more spikes, 300% more tentacles, 500% more deadly.

Being another base 30 Speed Pokemon, after a Trick Room, this powerhouse is one of the fastest Pokemon around. This beast is such a good defender and powerful attacker that it finds its way on many other teams, as well. With a Choice Band boosting its 120 base power Power Whip, it blasts away many threats while taking almost any hit thrown at it, barring Fire moves, to which it suffers a four times weakness. A Pokemon this powerful being able to attack first is a danger to almost anything your opponent throws out.

Conkeldurr.

 "I will punch you so hard, all you'll be able to say any more is the last part of my name."

With a base 45 Speed, he will move a little slower than the last two Pokemon, but he'll still move before the vast majority of other Pokemon. With a massive 140 base Attack, the instant it arrives on the field, your opponent is guaranteed to start his or her weeping. With access to Hammer Arm, he can even hit hard and slow himself down even further, which, in a method that seems extremely backward, makes him faster and faster under Trick Room.

Cofagrigus.

What do you suppose those hands are for?

If you said, 'beating you mercilessly,' congratulations! You're about to be beaten mercilessly.

Yet another Pokemon with a base Speed of 30. I think you're beginning to catch the theme here: 30 is an extremely low speed, and Trick Room exploits that. Cofagrigus is yet another that can actually set up Trick Room, and has defenses to spare, along with enough Special Attack to Shadow Ball and Psychic its enemies into submission. Additionally, having a reliable Pokemon that can use Will-O-Wisp to burn and thereby cripple physical attackers is a generally good idea.

Escavalier.

You don't wanna know where those poles are going.

The last Pokemon I will feature is the slowest of all of them. With 20 base speed, Escavalier, under the effects of Trick Room, runs right through everything with its base 135 Attack. Scizor proved Bug/Steel typing could be amazing, and once Escavalier gains access to some blistering speed, it proves the fact all over again. With Trick Room, and minimum Speed, this Pokemon will outrun literally everything.

Any Trick Room team hoping to utilize it to its best potential will have some or all of the above Pokemon on it. They are among the best of the best. Additionally, the following Pokemon use and are helped along by Trick Room, as well:

Musharna: 29 base Speed, able to Trick Room, good defenses, good Special Attack.

Gigalith: 25 base Speed, good physical defenses, huge Attack.

Throh: Lots of defense, 100 base Attack, and 45 Speed.

Crustle: 45 Speed, high defense, and moderate Attack.

Carracosta: 32 Speed, 133 physical Defense, moderate Attack.

Stunfisk: 32 Speed, good support options like Thunderwave, but not the best choice.

Druddigon: Slowest Dragon this generation with 48 Speed.

Finally, a Trick Room team usually benefits from one or two faster and still powerful team mates to clean up whatever the opponent has left after Trick Room wears off. What Pokemon those could be, however, would be an entirely new article altogether. Likely, it will be another article, a little later.

Countering the Threat

After battling online and encountering a team that ran off of this exact strategy, I came to realize this type of team truly will be everywhere in the Championships, and it will likely be among the most dangerous. I knew I needed to figure out how to counter it, and initially, I had absolutely no ideas. It worried me, quite honestly. So, as always, I jumped right into the research method. It took time, but I arrived at a few methods, and one that I decided on. But first, I'll look at the other possibilities. 

Archeops.

Amoonguss is shaking under its Pokeball cap.

The most crucial moment in a Trick Room team is the one turn before Trick Room activates. Alongside that, one of the greatest threats in a Trick Room team is the frustrating fact that Amoonguss will be putting everything you send out to sleep with Spore, every turn. With Archeops, you can end that annoyance at the word go. He is the only way to destroy Amoonguss in one hit: Acrobatics + 140 base Attack + Flying Gem is the only thing that will absolutely, 100% destroy Amoonguss, guaranteed. After Amoonguss has fallen, the Rage Powder will no longer be in effect and, ideally, Archeops' partner will be under 110 base Speed and have Taunt on its set to end the Trick Room setup attempt. As an added bonus, Acrobatics will still severely damage whatever comes out, if the opponent decides to switch instead of using Rage Powder with Amoonguss.

This method is likely among the most reliable, as the remaining methods still have a relatively high chance of still having to fight through Trick Room. In fact, this next method relies on either setting up Trick Room yourself, or allowing your opponent to do so.

That's right, the next method is building your own Trick Room team.

 Upon typing Trick Room into Google Images, I found this. I think it's relevant to depicting how Trick Room works!

Proper analysis would give an idea of the most common Pokemon found in the best Trick Room teams. Upon finishing that analysis, you would likely find many of the ones analyzed more in-depth above. The handy thing about these teams is that many of them counter the other quite well. Reuniclus laughs in the face of any Conkeldurr or Ferrothorn, while Ferrothorn generally thinks Jellicent is silly. As such, building your own Trick Room team keeping in mind the most common Pokemon in Trick Room teams makes for an effective strategy. You will, however, have to have nearly perfect prediction in deciding what your opponent will choose upon being faced by your team. This comes with practice, which you may have just enough time for if you start now.

Finally, I showcase the method I've chosen for countering Trick Room.
 

Whimsicott.

 Cute, tiny, fluffy, deadly. One of these things is not like the other. But it's all true.

Whimsicott has one of the most useful abilities introduced in Gen 5. Prankster, which allows any non-attacking moves to nearly always go first, is a great ability for stopping Trick Room teams. When Amoonguss uses Rage Powder, it will still move first, meaning I would be forced to target Amoonguss even though I would prefer to target the Trick Roomer. However, Whimsicott will then target Amoonguss with the move Taunt, which stops him from using Rage Powder again, and more importantly, stops him from using Spore to put your Pokemon to sleep. That said, Trick Room would have also gone off that turn. That's where the next part of the strategy comes into the mix.

This Whimsicott will also have the move Encore, which is sorta like Whimsicott telling the opponent that if it doesn't use the same move it used last turn, something "unfortunate" will happen to its family. Unless that opponenet switches out his Trick Room Pokemon, it will use Trick Room again. When Trick Room goes off with Trick Room already in effect, it actually takes it away, creating a normal playing field again, with slow Pokemon being slow and fast Pokemon moving first like normal. Hopefully, after htis, Whimsicott's partner will be able to take down the Trick Roomer. After that, the opponent's non-rocket snails will fall easy prey to your fast-as-lightning destroyers.

Of course, you'll still have to watch for any speedier Pokemon your opponent put on his team as a fail-safe for this exact situation. A smart opponent would do exactly that. You'll also have to watch for when they do switch out the Trick Room Pokemon, which will leave Trick Room in effect. For this reason, your team should include a Pokemon or two that function well in Trick Room. But that's where further strategy comes in! After all, the counter I just detailed here only really requires two Pokemon, leaving four spaces left to build a truly all-star team.

Stay tuned for more thoughts, tips and tricks coming up in my next blog, where I'll detail how to take on the various Legends that will be allowed in this tournament.

This is Dr. Walnut, signing out!

~CW