Yeah, Serperior wasn't too great before Contrary, but Snivy was just too cute to pass up. Also, Serperior reminded me of the term "snake in the grass," but in her case, she actually was the grass too. Back then, when I played for fun for my play-throughs, I used an Action Replay code to unlock the starter Pokémon's hidden abilities. The Snivy line with Contrary was just so fun and op. I disabled the code when playing competitively though. I focus on cores sometimes too when building competitive teams. If not that, I use specific strategies, such as Baton Pass, Psych Up, and/or weather. When doing a regular play-through though, I mostly just try to focus on using Pokémon with as much coverage as possible offensively. During my regular play-through, I only limit myself to one story/box legendary, and only use it for a little while. Otherwise, I don't like using legends during normal play-throughs, but Reshiram always get special privileges. Competitively however, I use legendaries as often as I can depending on the rules. If they're allowed, it's almost impossible to reach Master Rank without them. As for ROM games, I'm willing to try it, but you have to tell me how I play them. As for the million $ ?, I prefer Black 2. I prefer Pokémon White in the first series because I love Reshiram, but I got Black 2 to get my own Zekrom as well.