waltzoid: Clemont (Pokémon TCG - alternate art of "Clemont's Quick Wit") (Default)
I was this close to getting swept in my first Pokémon Violet Gym Challenge last night. (Or, to paraphrase an infamous Hulk Hogan tweet from eight years ago, I almost "worked myself into a shoot.")

For the first step on my journey to rule all of Paldea, I went for Brassius' Grass-type gym in Artazon, hoping my Growlithe and Fletchinder would carry the day...and they almost did - Growlithe rolled over his Petilil and Smoliv with Flame Wheel spam. But then the dramatic music swells up and he pulls out a...Sudowoodo? "But wait! Sudowoodo's a Rock-type! Don't these Gym leaders all use same-type Pokémon?"

A few Rock Throws later, my Growlithe and Fletchinder are sprawled out on the floor (along with my Quaxwell, which I foolishly Terastallized thinking Sudowoodo's natural Rock Type would even out its Tera Grass type and allow Quaxy to deal normal damage [spoiler alert: it doesn't]), leaving me to rely on Drowzee's Hypnosis Confusion, and a few well-placed Headbutts to keep me from leaving the gym with my tail tucked between my legs.

With my first Badge in the bag, I wonder where I should go next... Do I take on the Stony Cliff Titan since I actually have Pokemon able to handle Rock Types? Or go after Mela and her Fire-type crew? Or head back home and go west to scoop up some badges in that direction? Decisions, decisions...
 

waltzoid: Clemont (Pokémon TCG - alternate art of "Clemont's Quick Wit") (Default)
...telling me not to buy Pokémon Scarlet/Violet right away when my Twitter timeline started blowing up with clips of the game glitching out Cyberpunk 2077-style (or, if you want to go back another several years, Assassin's Creed Unity). I was out on a joyride with my sister yesterday and the Target at the Springfield Mall still had boxed copies for sale and figured "What the hell". Honestly, I feared a scenario like this was inevitable as this year alone, The Pokémon Company released three (really only two) games set during the fourth-generation titles in Pokémon Legends: Arceus (the prequel spinoff) and Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl (the remakes, which I remember also having performance issues at launch). Having a team as large as the ones at TPCi/Game Freak pump out that many games within that time frame was going to bite one of these games hard, but I still wound up buying it because it has potentially interesting ideas, and God knows I've stuck with products with similarly buggy launches and wound up enjoying them in the long run -- The Sims 4, Street Fighter V, I'm looking at you two -- so maybe this one will eventually turn out alright and won't take as long to fix as those three did (the only reason I stopped playing TS4 is because my computer is set up in a weird way where the main game is stored on one drive and the expansion packs are stored in another, rather than putting them both on the same drive). For now, I'm just going to pace myself and play a little bit at a time and pray to RNGesus that my copy stays mostly stable.

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waltzoid: Clemont (Pokémon TCG - alternate art of "Clemont's Quick Wit") (Default)
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