Pokemon Silver - 0 Exp Challenge Part 3: Bugsy
30After the second Rival battle which was very demanding in terms of strategy and execution, you might think Bugsy, among whose Pokemon are the usually laughable Kakuna and Metapod, isn't much of a challenge, but I learnt the hard way that underestimating him doesn't grant you a victory.
An amazing Pokemon for this gym is Gastly. Due to his excellent typing, he takes no damage at all from Metapod, resists Poison Sting and the poison status as such, and is immune to all Scyther's attack besides Fury Cutter to which he is 4x resistant. Gastly only knows Lick and Hypnosis so he can't really do any fighting on his own, but he operates as a support sleeper very nicely and definitely better than Jigglypuff, who should be dropped at this point.
Spearow is the only Pokemon who can penetrate any weakness in this challenge, thanks to STAB super-effective Peck, and the highest-levelled Spearow is only lv. 6, unfortunately. This means we need sleep support and Screech from Onix to actually give him a chance to deal a bit of damage. Spearow shouldn't even think to solo Kakuna and Metapod who may be laughable in a normal game, but aren't that here due to the sharp level difference. Metapod 3HKO's Spearow and if it starts using Harden, Peck's damage will be so miserable that the bird won't stand a chance at all.
Finally, Scyther, Bugsy's strongest Pokemon by far. Fury Cutter's base starts at 10 (15 with STAB) and doubles every time it used until it gets so overpowered it isn't funny anymore - everything falls in one hit to the fully powered-up Fury Cutter, even Onix with his super-high defence and Gastly with his 4x resistance to bug. In a normal game, Fury Cutter isn't to be taken seriously because you can kill Scyther before Fury Cutter gets remotely dangerous, usually in one single Rock Throw, here if you've watched our previous battles you'll know we need several turns of setup in order to be able to penetrate the enemy's defences more or less decently.
The first question is, what to do with Fury Cutter? Its accuracy is 95% and every time it misses, its attack will go back to the base. This should be intensified by using Flash on Scyther to lower his accuracy even further. Sleep is a great help to keep him from doing anything while we attempt to reduce his accuracy, and Gastly is relatively safe trying to connect a Hypnosis unless Fury Cutter combos have already started.
Wooper is perfect for reducing accuracy as he has plenty of health, enough to survive a Quick Attack at least, and Togepi, while frail, knows both Flash AND Charm, the latter being the best attack-lowering move. Sadly, Scyther wakes up the earliest and kills Togepi before I'm able to fulfil that plan.
Acuracy reduction, even taken to the max, still doesn't grant Spearow certainty that Scyther doesn't connect a Quick Attack in spite of the improbability of that happening. That's why Gastly should be switched in every time Scyther wakes up - we don't really have any better way of dealing high damage to him at this point.
And with Bugsy defeated, we can finally leave this wretched area of the game and actually catch some better Pokemon. Imagine facing Miltank with the same team - that just wouldn't be possible.
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