[Challenge] The Monotype Challenge v8, Tera Edition

[StenirRPG]

Ultimate Fairy Run
Y / FIRST AND FINAL / I'm a Fairy Odd Parent

In this post (i.e., TL;DR)

Spoiler:

1.) The First Gym
2.) The Second Gym
3.) The Third Gym
4.) The Fourth and Fifth Gym
5.) The Sixth Gym
6.) The Seventh Gym
7.) The Eighth Gym
8.) The Elite Four
9.) The Champion

The full read:

Spoiler:

-- The First Gym --
Nothing much to say here. I start with Chespin so Serena gets Fennekin as hers...I feel like this was the best "worst" option, since that means I don't have a strong move against it (the others, being part-Fighting and part-Dark would be weak to my Fairy moves). Doesn't help that many of the Fairy types tend to get Grass moves, which makes it even harder. Well, I do get one option to deal with her Fennekin as it evolves - my first Fairy type, Azurill. And it comes with Huge Power...which I didn't realize until after the first gym was over with. This will be a beast.

-- The Second Gym --
On the way to the second gym, I pick up a Flabebe and Ralts on the route into Lumiose, grab a Bulbasaur and throw it into the box, and then move on to the next route. I am stuck with these three for now, but once I get past the Snorlax (that whole section is sluggish, honestly), I'm able to pick up a Spritzee. Once I'm on the other side of the mountain and get into Glittering Cave, I pick up a Mawile. The last two before the gym I manage to pick up are Eevee and Snubbull. I do just a tiny bit of leveling before challenging the gym, and this gets Flabebe to Floette, Ralts to Kirlia, and Snubbull to Granbull, which helps me a lot through here. Floette has Magical Leaf and Razor Leaf, so it does a nice chunk of damage. Kirlia only has Magical Leaf, but still better than nothing. All in all, a relatively easy gym, but much of that could be chalked up to the fact there's so many little events to get through that I go from L8 Azurill to an average of level 23/24 for a six member team just between these two gyms.

-- The Third Gym --
It's fighting...what do you want me to say here? Kirlia is now a Gardevoir, and I'm now rocking a Carbink, Dedenne, and Mr. Mime. Eevee also finally gets it's Fairy move so it can evolve, so I'm now rocking a nice team of 10 Fairies to choose from. The two remaining (Jigglypuff/Wigglytuff and Klefki) are Mountain so I'm not there yet (though I only end up getting the Klefki due to how little training Jiggly/Wiggly would get before endgame).

-- The Fourth and Fifth Gyms --
Couramine's Grass gym isn't much to deal with, neither is Lumiose's Electric. So, I figured I'd just slam them together. They are pretty much back to back, with only a very small "mini-dungeon" in between that's the Power Plant. And that is chock full of Dark types, so Fairy just rips right through it. These two gyms are basically just experience grinding.

-- The Sixth Gym --
Fairy against Fairy. The only thing of note here is that I am starting to determine my final team. I'm almost certain I want Azumarill and Gardevoir, and while Mawile is okay, I'm holding out to see how Klefki is going to do. It'll be helpful to have one team member that is NOT weak to Poison. That seems to be the biggest hurdle - oh, let's fight this Fightihg/Psychic type and it should be weak to OMG IT KNOWS POISON JAB....yeah, facepalms like that. The gym itself isn't any challenge.

-- The Seventh Gym --
More experience grinding, honestly. I do have a few Pokemon faint, but I'm stocked up on Revives and Hyper Potions right now, so nothing to worry about. What does stink is the result of the seventh gym, which tells you it's time to go take down Team Flare. Time to get a lot of experience for my new Klefki, which comes with a lovely Steel move in Mirror Shot. Very nice. About an hour or so later, including multiple dungeons and some teleporter maze (it wouldn't be Pokemon without one, right?), Team Flare is taken down and I'm back heading after the final gym badge.

-- The Final Gym --
Fairly straightforward. Use some Mirror Shots, and it's easy peasy. The only real thing that I hate about Ice types is Cryogonal...tanky is good when it's on my side...never good when it's on the opponent's side. Ha.

-- The Elite Four --
Honestly, rather easy. Malva goes down to my Azumarill easily. Drasna is Dragon type so that's obviously super easy. Siebold goes down to my numerous Grass moves that I still have, and then I'm left with just Wikstrom. Obviously, this is just a survive-as-best-you-can battle, given how Steel absolutely destroys Fairy. But I do make it through, albeit with Azumarill the only one left standing, simply due to Surf.

-- The Champion --
Hawlucha goes down to pretty much anybody who wants to use Moonblast. Gourgeist spamming Phantom Force took some figuring out how to get around as I had Kelfki out, but I finally got into a pattern where I'd heal and hit on the reveal. This brings out Tyrantrum, who of course goes down to OHKO. Aurorus is next, who also goes down to a Moonblast. Goodra is next, and does get off a Fire Blast, but still goes down. This leaves Gardevoir. At this point, it's just spam best moves and let the battle play itself out.

MVP: Huge Power Azumarill, for sure. I was wondering at first why I was doing so much more damage with physical moves...and then I noticed it and was like "Well, that's alright then!"

Team Stats:

Spoiler:

Fairy, overall, was fun. I'm actually looking forward to using the type again when I inevitably get around to Gens 8 and 9 and doing the mastery there.

Next up: Grass type. We're at the point after 1/3 of the types have been done that my daughter and I put the remaining types into a spinner and randomly spun it.

User: StenirRPG
Type: Grass
Game(s): Red, Gold, Sapphire, Brilliant Diamond, White, Y, and Sun
Challenge Type: Ultimate
Standard Mode / Free Mode: Standard

 

[Reginald Cosmic]

FAIRY!

TYPE!

POKéMON!

 

[GhostMadison7]

Hey! It's been a long while since I originally signed up, and in that time I've reset and moved all my games/rom hacks to my homebrew 3DS since Citra is poof lol, and I wanted to do a fresh restart if that's ok?

 

[Explorer of Time]

Hey! It's been a long while since I originally signed up, and in that time I've reset and moved all my games/rom hacks to my homebrew 3DS since Citra is poof lol, and I wanted to do a fresh restart if that's ok?

That's completely fine. Do you want me to remove your Type Mastery challenge from the challenger list, or do you still plan to do that challenge?

 

[Reginald Cosmic]

Actually, that's weird to think about, right? In 5 to 10 years, there might still not be any good 3DS emulators, and with people eventually getting nostalgic for XY or (more likely) ORAS and (U)S(U)M, will we see a decline in Gen 6 and Gen 7 playthroughs due to the "one save file" rule and inflated "used" prices? We currently allow people to do "the ultimate run" without Paldea and Galar due to how expensive the Nintendo Switch and a copy of SwSh and SV are compared to the 3DS games (or an emulator/repro cart of earlier games). I'm not trying to argue for rule changes at this time, but it's interesting to think about (or maybe I'm just weird like that).

 

[GhostMadison7]

That's completely fine. Do you want me to remove your Type Mastery challenge from the challenger list, or do you still plan to do that challenge?

Ty, and I'm staying with Type Mastery :D! Gonna start with Fairy this time though, lemme format it right-

User: GhostMadison7
Type: Fairy
Game(s): Eternal X [Rebalanced Mode]
Challenge Type: Type Mastery
Standard Mode / Free Mode: Standard Mode

 

[StenirRPG]

Actually, that's weird to think about, right? In 5 to 10 years, there might still not be any good 3DS emulators, and with people eventually getting nostalgic for XY or (more likely) ORAS and (U)S(U)M, will we see a decline in Gen 6 and Gen 7 playthroughs due to the "one save file" rule and inflated "used" prices? We currently allow people to do "the ultimate run" without Paldea and Galar due to how expensive the Nintendo Switch and a copy of SwSh and SV are compared to the 3DS games (or an emulator/repro cart of earlier games). I'm not trying to argue for rule changes at this time, but it's interesting to think about (or maybe I'm just weird like that).

I'm not certain there will really be any issue with it - there are multiple ways to play, and if you really are just crazy about doing an ultimate, you can still do the individual pieces. Like, I've got it set up now where once I do all the type masteries, I'll also have technically done the game mastery for each region. So, there are different ways to come at it. You could do an ultimate as seven singles and point out you've completed an ultimate (it would just be a backwards version of quitting an ultimate mid-run where the individual completed games become single completions).

I honestly think the one save file issue isn't that much of an issue - right now you can still throw your pokemon up on Bank/Home and do a restart. Whenever Bank officially kicks the bucket, it'll probably be even more of a moot point then - just delete the save file and restart.

I can't really argue on the used prices, of course. Good thing I'm not doing any challenge runs on games that cost hundreds of dollars like EarthBound...

Just as times can change, rules can as well. I think we have a lively group here that could put our heads together if it comes to the point that we see a sharp drop-off in runs due to those sorts of issues.

And I hope to have Gen 1 Grass done tomorrow...but Lorelai...c'mon...stop using Ice moves like I'm weak or something.

 

[Explorer of Time]

As someone who just played through an emulated version of X on Citra myself, it worked quite well, with the only technical issue being some minor audio stuttering in a couple places. I don't have experience emulating ORAS or the Alola games yet, but from what I understand they work well enough too.

 

[GhostMadison7]

I had no issues emulating XY or USUM, haven't done ORAS, but I have carts of all of these games too. Mainly just lag especially with USUM during cutscenes
-------------------------
As for my Fairy monotype run, I started with a fodder Fennekin (I wish it was Fire/Fairy), thankfully this hack has an early Fairy with Cottonee in Santalune forest as well as Petilil who is now Grass/Fairy. Although, we are very vulnerable to Flying and Fire types, and some trainers had Fletchling and Litleo 😓. Jigglypuff was available on route 3 though, but it's moveset early on is so bad lol. Route 22 has Azurill which is very weak now but a Water type will be valuable, especially Huge Power Azumarill. Haven't fought the gym yet, Viola is so buffed in Eternal X 😭gonna train to around lvl 15, not using hard level caps but I don't like to overlevel.

Team:

• Petilil (Madeleine), Grass/Fairy, lvl 9
• Cottonee (Beignet), Grass/Fairy, lvl 9
• Jigglypuff (Profiterole), Normal/Fairy, lvl 9
• Azurill (Chouquette), Normal/Fairy, lvl 9

Maybe you can guess my naming theme

 

[Explorer of Time]

Maybe you can guess my naming theme

French pastries and desserts?

 

[Reginald Cosmic]

Before I reply, I'd like to re-emphasize that I am not proposing anything be done right now. I was thinking about the Citra situation, and I hit "Post reply."

I have a copy of the Citra emulator because I archived the files in the "Local" and "LocalLow" folders, but I thought the creators of the emulator were forced by Nintendo to issue takedowns to Internet Archive (which might not exist in a few years due to legal issues) and other sites. I think a lot of younger Gen Z (as much as I hate generational politics) are unable to pirate things properly due to ease of streaming (or at least streaming was easy prior to the great television exodus of the late 2010s), so even though I'm sure plenty of people would know how to download old copies of Citra, the vast majority who are inclined to emualte the games simply will not bother/know how to find the files/etc. That said, there could be a big change in the future. "The only thing that's for sure about Nintendo is that nothing's for sure."

Sorry for derailing the thread by the way.

 

[Explorer of Time]

but I thought the creators of the emulator were forced by Nintendo to issue takedowns to Internet Archive (which might not exist in a few years due to legal issues) and other sites

Citra's developers were required to shut down all of their own websites by a settlement over unrelated charges regarding their other emulator. This settlement is nonbinding on anyone except Nintendo and the Citra/Yuzu team, the latter of which is barred from any new work on Nintendo emulation.

Citra itself remains legal in the United States, and will remain legal short of an actual law banning emulation and/or a federal court decision, the latter of which did not happen because a settlement was reached before the lawsuit actually went to court. Because of Citra's open source GPL license, anyone else can distribute or develop it without permission from the original developers. It'll eventually be worked on more by other emulator devs, though most likely under a different name since that's what tends to happen when an emulator's original developers abandon the emulator for any reason.

 

[StenirRPG]

Ultimate Grass Run
Red / FIRST AND FINAL / Mowing the Gen 1 Lawn

In this post (i.e., TL;DR)

Spoiler:

1.) Gyms 1 and 2
2.) Gyms 3 and 4
3.) Gym 5
4.) Gym 6
5.) Gym 7
6.) Gym 8
7.) Elite Four
8.) Champion

The full read:

Spoiler:

Well, Gen 1 is short, but a few things stick out across the entire run: I wish there was more moveset variety between 'mons, trainers having unlimited PP sucks, and Lorelei is gonna do what Lorelei done did. But let's get a little into the weeds. Pun very much intended.

-- Gyms 1 and 2 --
As expected, Brock isn't that hard with a Bulbasaur that knows Vine Whip. A couple of Vine Whips and I'm moving on. I pick up a Paras in Mt. Moon and spend some time leveling it up to about where Bulbasaur was (which actually was an Ivysaur by that point). Before doing the Gym battle against Misty, I head north and pick up an Oddish. I figure I'll go ahead and clear out the trainers on the way to Bill, so I don't have to backtrack. The Rival there wasn't that bad, actually. Got through on the first attempt.

-- Gym 3 and 4 --
Since I won't be getting my remaining team members for a bit, Serge and Eirika are gonna be just these three. By the time I clear out the SS Anne and the route east of Vermillion, Paras is now a Parasect and Oddish is now a Gloom. Of course, their movesets haven't changed much, but it is Gen 1. As for Gyms, Serge isn't much of a problem given that I resist Electric, and Eirika is a cinch with Leech Life on Parasect.

-- Gym 5 --
After all the stuff at Pokemon Tower, I head straight south because I forgot to get the bike, and clear out all the trainers along the way to Fuschia. There, I head into the Safari Zone and pick up an Exeggcute. I had the foresight to pick up Psychic earlier, so I immediately teach it to Exeggcute. Yay STAB Psychic move. Which helps out for the few Poison types in the supposed-to-be-Poison gym. It doesn't get many levels, so I'm going to be a little behind on it, but defeating Koga does net me the ability to Surf.

-- Gym 6 --
I head back to Pallet Town and Surf slightly south to that odd patch of grass and pick up my final team member, Tangela. This one is honestly a hot mess. It has Constrict and Bind to start with, iirc, which is kinda bad. I give it the TMs for Take Down and Skull Bash to give it some semblance of damage output.

You'll see in my chart that I never quite figure out who to give Body Slam or Mega Drain to. It is what it is.

The Psychic gym is a little rough to get through due to 2/5 members of my team being Poison types as well, but Sabrina herself easily gets her team taken down. I was actually very verbally frustrated in the gym, but Sabrina was over in barely a couple of minutes.

-- Gym 7 --
Ah, the one I bet you're all waiting for to see how I dealt with it. Well, by this point Parasect has Dig and Spore...but honestly it was just a mix of Sleep Power, Hypnosis, and Spore that got me through. Well, and Gen 1's sleep timer. Fighting all the trainers was helpful, but I had to keep going out and healing up. Much easier to do in this gym than Sabrina's, that's for sure. Anyways, Blaine's Arcanine is the one that irked the heck out of me. I honestly got lucky, because it's faster and either would use Fire Blast or Fire Spin - I had to hope for a miss from either one to get a sleep move in, and I got very lucky with a Fire Spin miss. From there, I managed to (thankfully) knock it out for the win.

-- Gym 8 --
Okay, let's be honest, this is a Ground gym, and while there are some Fighting types, when I have Grass and a powerful Psychic move...yeah, this was easy.

-- Elite Four --
Lorelei was honestly the hardest part of the Elite Four. For Agatha and Bruno, I have my Grass and Psychic moves. For Lance, it's just a matter of wearing the other down. Lorelei was a matter of lucking out against her Ice moves. True, my Grass moves are super effective, and I honestly should have taught someone Mega Drain. I actually relied a bit on Razor Leaf to massively increase the chance of crits. This made it relatively simmple to get through her first three, but Jynx isn't weak to Grass, and can easily punch through my team. Lapras isn't honestly that bad, so I guess you could say that the Jynx was the hard point.

-- Champion --
The Champion was easier than Lorelei, but definitely harder than the rest. Pidgeot knows Wing Attack, so I have to come out swinging. I manage to Spore it to sleep, swap over to Venusaur, and start spamming Growth. Then I try to push through as much as possible on the team with Razor Leaf. If it Crits, true, I won't get the +6 Special bonus, but if it doesn't...which does get me through most of the team until Gyarados. I get taken down, switch back to Parasect for more Spore. Then I use Slash a few times to take it down. Exeggutor is the second to last to show up, and I have Leech Life ready to go. Charizard, at that point, is just a matter of spam attacks...and using Poison Powder. Very beneficial at that point. I did sort of cheese it with using Hyper Potions to stay healed up at the end, which gave the poison status a few extra turns to deal some damage.

The hard part of all of that, even though it sounds simple, is being able to get Growth up as high as possible without Pidgeot waking up, or rather, without it KOing me along the way.

But, hey, I survived Gen 1 for the seventh time in an ultimate, right? Gotta count for something.

Off to catch the ship to Johto.

Team Stats:

Spoiler:

 

[Reginald Cosmic]

Place your bets (in PokéDollars) on whether I completely my Game Master Challenge before Stenir completes all 18 of his Ultimate Run challenges! The odds are 78-1 in Stenir's favor.

 

[Explorer of Time]

Pokemon Sapphire Cross (Standard Mode)
Mono-Water - Fisher Marina
Update 3 (Slateport City -> Mauville Gym)

I got another gym badge from my very slow-paced phone playthrough. It'll probably be a while until I get the next one, but not nearly as long as the wait between the first two. No new Pokemon this time, even though I could catch Marill now and Gyarados with a lot of grinding, but Marshtomp evolved and learned Mud Shot, Wingull learned Steel Wing via TM, Lombre learned Thief and Attract, and Tentacool learned Acid and Thief. My other two placeholder Tentacool also learned Thief, but they still haven't seen battle.

Brendan's battle was long enough ago that I don't remember how it went other than that I won first try, I think, and Wattson was a pushover thanks to Marshtomp. He 1HKOed Magnemite and Voltorb, and 2HKOed Magneton, all with Mud Shot. He was low on health by the end, though, since he got hit by a Sonicboom from Magnemite and its evo, and also a Rollout from Voltorb that did much less damage.

Team

Spoiler:

Marshtomp (♂) | Water | Level 23
Moves: Water Gun, Mud Shot, Rock Tomb, Tackle
Stats: 71 HP / 51 Atk / 41 Def / 33 SpA / 46 SpD / 26 Spe
Ability: Torrent | Nature: Sassy | Item: Quick Claw

Wingull (♀) | Water/Flying | Level 21
Moves: Wing Attack, Water Gun, Steel Wing, Supersonic
Stats: 48 HP / 20 Atk / 25 Def / 31 SpA / 23 SpD / 44 Spe
Ability: Keen Eye | Nature: Bold | Item: Soothe Bell

Lombre (♀) | Water/Grass | Level 21
Moves: Bullet Seed, Nature Power, Thief, Attract
Stats: 63 HP / 30 Atk / 32 Def / 36 SpA / 36 SpD / 27 Spe
Ability: Rain Dish | Nature: Quiet | Item: Miracle Seed

Tentacool (♀) | Water/Poison | Level 21
Moves: Acid, Cut, Thief, Supersonic
Stats: 53 HP / 24 Atk / 26 Def / 24 SpA / 52 SpD / 41 Spe
Ability: Clear Body | Nature: Adamant | Item: Silk Scarf

Tentacool (♂) | Water/Poison | Level 10
Moves: Cut, Poison Sting, Supersonic, Thief
Stats: 29 HP / 14 Atk / 14 Def / 15 SpA / 23 SpD / 19 Spe
Ability: Clear Body | Nature: Lax | Item: (None)

Tentacool (♂) | Water/Poison | Level 10
Moves: Cut, Poison Sting, Supersonic, Thief
Stats: 30 HP / 13 Atk / 12 Def / 17 SpA / 29 SpD / 21 Spe
Ability: Clear Body | Nature: Calm | Item: (None)

 

[StenirRPG]

Place your bets (in PokéDollars) on whether I completely my Game Master Challenge before Stenir completes all 18 of his Ultimate Run challenges! The odds are 78-1 in Stenir's favor.

Well, I mean, you have to think I'm done 45 runs (40 that I'm counting because the other 5 I had to redo to get in line with Game/Type masteries so I do them all at once)...and there's still 6 more Grass, 6 Steel, 6 Dark, and 7 with the other 9. That alone is what...81 more? Each run is about 30 hours on game clock, but let's just a full ultimate is about 135 hours...and that takes at least 6 weeks...so you got about a year or more before I'm done.

I still want to do the game mastery for Gen 8 and 9, so there's that as well. Just wanna get it done before I have to add Gen 10.

My son and I had talked about writing up a guide, sort of a condensed walkthrough but point out when you can get new 'mons and any trouble trainers. Wish I would have thought about that before actually getting this far.

It's also a good way to destress after a work day. "What do I wanna do tonight? Press A repeatedly for an hour."

 

[Reginald Cosmic]

I probably could be done with 12+ different monotype playthroughs for the Game Mastery Challenge by now, but I haven't for various reasons.

There's a lot of different factors including some where I don't want to overshare on this forum (like my clinical depression). A big part of it is stamina regarding the Elite Four because for some reason, Gen 3 decided to make the Elite Four Drake's Pokemon ten levels higher than the final gym leader Wallace's ace (never mind Champion Steven Stone's team), so there's a lot of grinding on Victory Road. (I'd still argue Gen 2 is much worse for grinding on Victory Road, but anyway...) The point is that I'll get to a hard part like Gym Leader Wallace or the Elite Four and lose a lot of motivation.

Right now, I need to beat Gym Leader Wallace with my Fighting-type team, but I'm not sure when I'll get to finishing that challenge. I hope it's sooner rather than later, and I'll get around to making those monotype challenge videos for my YouTube channel. Nothing's for sure right now, though.

 

[StenirRPG]

I suffer from severe anxiety and clinical depression, also. Hope you are surviving at least as well as I some days feel I am.

The Elite Four always stinks in each generation. It's like "oh, let's take the last gym, add 10 levels, and that's the starting level"...even if the previous gym was five minutes ago.

 

[Explorer of Time]

Pokemon Platinum QOL (Standard Mode)
Mono-Steel - PI Justin
Update 1 (Twinleaf Town -> Oreburgh Gym)

As you can see from JanP's recent announcement, I've been busy learning how to be a moderator, but I still had time to play some Pokemon today. I got a Piplup from Professor Rowan, trained her enough to evolve into a Prinplup in Oreburgh Gym, and caught an Onix in Oreburgh Mine.

My Rival was very tedious to beat since all I had was Piplup and he immediately lowered her attack with Growl twice with Starly, then, after 3HKOing that, spamming Withdraw with Turtwig. I had to slowly KO it with a not-very-effective Bubble of all things. Thankfully his AI was dumb and never used Absorb, or I'd have lost that battle.

Roark's battle went much faster, thankfully. Prinplup 1HKOed his Geodude and Onix with Bubble, then would've 2HKOed Cranidos with Metal Claw, but ended up 3HKOing because Roark wasted a turn with his Potion. Prinplup also took 12 HP damage from Cranidos' Headbutt in-between her first two Metal Claws.

Team

Spoiler:

Prinplup (♀) | Water | Level 18
Moves: Metal Claw, Peck, Bubble, Growl
Stats: 53 HP / 31 Atk / 35 Def / 35 SpA / 37 SpD / 28 Spe
Ability: Torrent | Nature: Careful | Item: Quick Claw

Onix (♂) | Rock/Ground | Level 9
Moves: Rock Throw, Bind, Screech, Harden
Stats: 25 HP / 15 Atk / 34 Def / 10 SpA / 13 SpD / 19 Spe
Ability: Rock Head | Nature: Quirky | Item: (None)

 

[Reginald Cosmic]

Congratulations, Explorer of Time!

Pokémon Sapphire Type Mastery Challenge (Part 5) Fighting Monotype

I don't remember where I was last time I updated you guys, so I'll just continue from where my save file was a few days ago: I had just captured Groudon, and I was ready to defeat Gym Leader Wallace.

I did the ice tiles puzzle right the first time, but for experience, I decided to defeat the water-type trainers in the basement anyway. There weren't any problem trainers here, but I did level up Medicham once (maybe twice?) and Breloom once.

I sent out Heracross first, and I managed to knock out the Luvdisc (which seemingly always starts by kissing the opponent to confuse them) despite the HP being in the red. Then I battled the Whiscash with Breloom. I actually forgot about Amnesia, so I'm glad I didn't get cocky here. The second turn, Whiscash used Earthquake but still survived the 2nd Sky Uppercut. Wallace healed after this, but my Breloom was faster, and I ended up beating it with the next two Sky Uppercut uses. Wallace sent out Sealeo, so I used Sky Uppercut one more time to teach it a lesson not to mess with Grass-type Pokémon. Then, Wallace sent out Milotic early, and I was a little nervous about my Machamp losing. Machamp tanked Ice Beam and used Revenge to put Milotic in the yellow (but not the red, which would be bad cuz of the opponent healing), then Machamp tanked another Ice Beam and used Return. My Medicham attacked his Seaking first with Thunder Punch, and his Seaking used Rain Dance. Wait. Wallace's Seaking knows HORN DRILL?! Holy crap! Maybe I've been too harsh on his team. Well, anyway, I used Thunder Punch again to get Seaking into the yellow, but then Seaking used Water Pulse and made Medicham confused, so I took confusion damage. I click "Thunder Punch" and ... Hoo boy, Horn Drill is scary even when it misses (though I guess I still had the Grass-type and four other Pokemon in reserve, so maybe it wasn't as scary as I thought). Anyway, Medicham hit with one more Thunder Punch, and the 8th and final gym badge was mine. Beautiful!

Spoiler: Team Stats

Uhhhhh, that was weird. Can everyone see the team stats spread in the spoiler tag? The forum freaked out there a minute.