Pokémon Scarlet & Violet - Coil Runnings - Aug 3 24 D

In case you hadn’t noticed the pattern, I most commonly put up Pokémon battle videos on the first and third full weeks of each month. Of course, the months don’t always line up such that they’re always on alternating weeks when a month rolls over, hence there being two weeks without them between this session and the last one. Sometimes, I schedule them otherwise, such as if there’s a Wi-Fi Competition that month or something else takes precedence, but if nothing else is out of the ordinary during the month, it’s the first and third full weeks, and this month is no exception.

Type: Double Battle
Opponent: Testra
Battle Court: Pokémon League (Interior)
Music: Terarium Pokémon 2
My Pokémon: Laverne (Dragalge), Keyser (Klefki), Bucky (Sawsbuck), Angus (Tauros) (Blaze Breed)
Opponent’s Pokémon: Stcii (Overqwil), Tanap (Vikavolt), Sheio (Milotic), Arcanine (Kantonian)

This is a strange team, with strange strategies. This is likely already evident through their use of Vikavolt, Overqwil, and Grafaiai, three Pokémon that have never been in the top 75 and instead have spent most of their time either hovering near the bottom of the top 150 or are not on the list at all, though Vikavolt has had a taste of the limelight in Generations VII and VIII, being in the top 50 for Generation VII VGCs in the lower age brackets and having a small but noticeable presence in tournaments last generation. As the Pokémon World Championships 2024 hasn’t started yet at the time this video goes up, I don’t know if we’ll see Vikavolt now. Certainly, it was a surprise to see someone bring in Brambleghast—it proved to be a hard counter to Incarnate Tornadus thanks to Wind Rider, and subsequently, it caused a surge in Brambleghast in the Ranked popularity listings as reported on Pokémon HOME.

It becomes evident in this battle that I could not read my opponent at all. Though I knew Overqwil (nicknamed Stcii) would have Intimidate and would likely be an opening Pokémon, thus I brought in two special attackers (sort of), I didn’t think Tanap (Vikavolt) would use Struggle Bug.

Combined with Sheio (Milotic) using Life Dew and increasing physical endurance with Coil, this turned out to be a team designed to outlast, hence the relatively long running time of this video. (The battle itself was 12 minutes and 11 seconds long.) You’ll also see that they have been trained defensively as well, with their attack damage not being that great, but they don’t need to be. My misjudgment of what they’re going to do allowed them to entrench themselves, making it very difficult for me to get any headway that won’t be healed off or soon reduced to nil by offensive stat drops.

I also made a miscall on the last turn: instead of predicting that Arcanine would use Extreme Speed on Laverne (Dragalge), I thought they were going to attack Bucky (Sawsbuck). In hindsight, using Extreme Speed on Laverne would’ve been the more pragmatic choice due to him having lower HP.

All of my opponent’s nicknames are five letters long. I actually played against this opponent again immediately afterwards, in which they used their other two Pokémon: Garganacl’s nickname is “Barge,” and Grafaiai’s nickname is “Graff.” Together, not counting the un-nicknamed Arcanine, they are “Tanap,” “Barge,” “Sheio,” “Stcii,” and “Graff.” I have no idea what these mean, and attempting to search for their meanings get me unrelated things that I doubt are correct. (Vikavolt probably doesn’t have anything to do with the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline, for instance, nor is Overqwil likely related to the Scag Tiger Cat II, a professional grade model of lawnmower.)