Pokémon Sword & Shield - Blaster Master - Mythical Melee #6

Channel:

Overhazard

Subscribers:

36,500

Published on September 17, 2021 7:00:04 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcfNy1eYPwI

Game:

Pokémon Sword and Shield (2019)

Duration: 6:57

249 views

14

This is the last Mythical Melee match I'll put up, as despite my opponent being the one with the lowest Ranking value at the time I battled them (1362; you begin with 1500 and go up or down depending on your wins and losses and the opponents' Ranking values), I found this to be the most interesting battle. My teams are so unconventional that, as I've played these Wi-Fi events, I noticed that my wins and losses are completely irrelevant to the opponents' win-loss history. Case in point--the HIGHEST Ranking value I encountered in this was 1689, whom I defeated 3-0, but the match itself was not interesting so I didn't show it.

This will wrap up Pokémon battles for the next two weeks. In the period in between, scheduled up are, in chronological order, Tetris 99, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Game Builder Garage, Cris Tales, Ninjala, and WarioWare: Get It Together! The entire 16-day period has been scheduled in advance. Hopefully I don't fall behind.

Type: Single Battle
Opponent: Salben (77)
Stadium: Default Stadium
Music: Legend 2
My Pokémon: Zygarde (10%), Moltres (Kantonian), Zarude
Opponent's Pokémon: Celesteela, Regieleki, Zarude

Well, I found it interesting, at least. I don't know if you do or not. This is a Celesteela designed for defensive purposes, albeit using Max Airstream to increase Speed when the opportunity arises. I am not sure if this is a hard-hitting Celesteela due to the damage done to Moltres or a wall due to its inability to do much to Zygarde, but the fact remains that, with a defensive strategy, this would be one of the longer, more drawn out battles. In other multiplayer genres, this would be known as "turtling" and is either derided or tolerated; in Pokémon, it's known as "stalling" and is deemed a perfectly valid strategy. It's roughly equally pronounced in 3-on-3 battling and full-team battling, though in different ways. (Full teams have a lot of switching going on; when it occurs in pick-3, it's because one or more Pokémon has set themselves up as a fortress, like what happened with Celesteela here.)

I think it comes down to whether the game is turn-based or not. Defensive strategies dominate chess and go, for instance, and matches can take hours, sometimes days. Starcraft matches have long build-up periods due to them valuing preparedness and long-term planning. It also depends on the nature of the spectators too, I'd reckon--top-level pinball games can also last for hours, much of it consisting of resting a ball on a flipper while deciding what to do next; with no time limit, people could and have done so for 15+ minutes. The viewers are all pinball fans who expect this anyway, so no one complains. Gary Gin is the person who has won the most combat robot competitions (with 10 1st place finishes, all of them at events with 100 or more competitors) and builds his robots strictly for endurance with no weapons at all. All of those 1st place finishes, however, are untelevised events; BattleBots and Robot Wars require active weapons on all robots because, of course, many people who watch only the televised ones find defensive robots as boring.

All these games and competitions, of course, have ways of keeping things highly strategic even when defensive (or, in the case of robot combat, MORE strategic than rushdown high-offense builds). Something like Street Fighter X Tekken is different, where stalling is a single strategy without much variation and where the winner can be determined early into a match.

In any case, particular circumstances led me with no other option but to fight Celesteela with Zygarde, even though Zygarde had no moves that Celesteela doesn't resist or isn't outright immune to. Since Celesteela had a lot of trouble making much of an impact on Zygarde's HP for that matter, I figured the best course of action was to keep using Dragon Dance until those Outrage attacks DO score good hits. What resulted was that Zygarde's Speed and Attack became high enough that, by the time it could take on Celesteela, none of Salben's other Pokémon, neither of whom have priority moves, stood a chance.

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