FINALE!
After defeating the last Elite Four member, it was time to meet the Champion. I didn't really know what to expect, so I decided to keep TACTICA as the party leader. When I was walking up the stairs to the final room, I tried to figure out who the champion might be. I doubted that it would be someone who we never met, so I was thinking about potential people who we have met before. I was pretty confident that it will be Steven, but Scott seemed like a viable option too.
"We are entering the Champion's room! Is it going to be Steven? Is it Scott or May? IS IT FREAKING WALLY?!"
"What?! Who is this guy? Wallace? You're drunk Wallace, get outta here."
But wait. Wasn't Wallace the previous Water-type gym leader before Juan took over? Well, get rekt Wallace, I bet you never heard that my strongest pokémon is an Electric-type. 8) It was really VORTEX's time to shine here - I thought to myself.
HOENN LEAGUE CHAMPION WALLACEIf there's one thing I love about Pokémon games, it's the music. But let's talk about the strategics now. First matchup:
Lv.58 TACTICA vs Lv.57 WAILORD. The opponent's levels were satisfyingly high. For the first matchup, I wish that I could send out VORTEX right away, but I already assigned TACTICA as the party leader, so I needed to get rid of Wailord first. Just for caution, I started with a Barrier. Wailord, on the other hand, decided to use Rain Dance. Heck, if VORTEX would be in play, I wouldn't even need to cast Rain Dance for the Thunder boost, because they are already doing it for me. (Looking back, the perfect strategy would have been to instantly switch in VORTEX, so that he can spam Thunders after they cast Rain Dance for me. That would have required me to know that they will cast Rain Dance on the first turn though, which I didn't.) Luckily 2 Sludge Bombs were enough to get rid of Wailord (the second was a critical hit).
(I added a banana for scale. These things are enormous!)For the second matchup, I was ready to send out VORTEX, but then this happened:
"Champion Wallace is about to use Whiscash. Will you change pokémon?"
"Umm... let's not send out VORTEX just yet. >_>"
I wanted to save VORTEX for another fight for 3 reasons: 1. Electric doesn't affect Ground, so I would be stuck with Swift; 2. Ground is super-effective against Electric; and 3. Even if VORTEX would win against Whiscash (which I'm pretty sure he would), he wouldn't be able to 1-hit kill the opponent. Against Whiscash, I needed something that was super-effective against Ground, but was not weak against Water and Ground. Considering these factors, SWIRLY seemed like the best option.
Lv.58 SWIRLY vs Lv.56 WHISCASH. For my first attack, it didn't really matter if I used a Water or an Ice-type attack, but because the rain was still falling, I decided to use Surf, which dealt a significant amount of damage, leaving Whiscash in the orange zone: low enough that another attack can kill him, but high enough that Wallace won't use a Potion to heal him. Whiscash wasted his turn by using Amnesia - which raised his Sp.Def sharply -, so next turn I moved first and went for the kill. I was afraid that my Special Attacks wouldn't have enough power to finish him, so I used Return, which paid off nicely. Two down! Four to go.~
Wallace was about to send out Ludicolo. I
REALLY wanted to send out VORTEX, so after some contemplating, I did so. Third matchup:
Lv.62 VORTEX vs Lv.56 LUDICOLO. It was a dumb idea! Not only the rain stopped, but I also forgot that Grass-type resisted Electric. And even though Grass was super-effective against Water, SWIRLY with Ice Beam or TACTICA with Sludge Bomb would have been much smarter ideas to start with. After the rain stopped, I was left with no other good option than Spark. Spark did jack-doodly-squat though (which is slang for nothing), and to make things even WORSE, it started chaining Double Teams! (For reminder, Double Team on a different Grass-type pokémon was the main reason why I first blacked out.) After the first Double Team, I dropped the idea of trying Spark and started using Swift, but it did even less than Spark did.
"Let's make things worse. Disable any stalling strategies by using Leech Seed on the player." <-- the AI, probably.
Leech Seed really ticked me off, so I decided to go into YOLO mode and use Thunder. For my biggest surprise, it struck!
He was finally in killing range, but... ermm... Okay, what the hell was I doing back then? Instead of doing the right thing (freakin' 2 times in a row!), I decided to switch out VORTEX to get rid of the Leech Seed. TACTICA seemed like a good substitute with her Sludge Bomb, so I switched her in. She managed to resist some damage from the upcoming Surf, which was nice, but then I was slapped in the face by reality when Sludge Bomb missed. And then Ludicolo used Giga Drain to heal back even more HP. Things were not looking good at all for me.
This was a very annoying moveset.
 Double Team |  Giga Drain |
 Surf | Leech Seed |
Sludge Bomb missed 3 times in a row, which gave Ludicolo 3 free turns to GiGa Drain himself back to above half HP. After these 3 turns I lost hope that I could hit him with TACTICA, so I decided to look for alternatives. Switching in SWIRLY was my third poor choice against the same opponent. Blizzard missed, he used another Double Team, then I finally realized that only VORTEX has even a slight chance to win this matchup. Switching in VORTEX game Ludicolo an extra turn for a free Giga Drain, which healed him back to almost full HP. >_>
"Do we have any chance to come back from this situation though? Our attacks cannot even land on our foe, except Swift, which cannot outdamage the healing of Giga Drain and Leech Seed combined."
Well, we do have one thing actually, which I should have used in the first place. I decided to go for the Rain Dance + Thunder combo again. It was a risky move, because the long preparation time gave extra time for my opponent to attack me, but I had no other options left. A new Leech Seed was deployed, which didn't cease to be annoying.
"And finally we were ready! VORTEX, use Thunder!"
And it worked! Thunder hit, and it hit for more than half of Ludicolo's HP, but he was still alive in the orange-zone (which was at least not the zone where Wallace uses his potions). I only needed to survive his next attack + the damage from Leech Seed, and then I was ready for the kill. Luckily, he was so confused that something could hit him that he decided to use Double Team again, which was luckily a waste of a turn on his part. At the end of the turn though, Leech Seed recovered a dangerously decent amount of HP to Ludicolo, so the kill was not guaranteed yet. It was still raining on the next turn, so it was time to use Thunder again. The moment of truth... ! And finally we got rid of Ludicolo!
(I was very close to death here, because if last turn Ludicolo decided to use Giga Drain instead of Double Team, I might not have been able to kill him this turn, giving him enough time to deal even more damage combined with an extra turn of Leech Seed.)
We managed to defeat Ludicolo, but this matchup was longer than it should have been. If I used Rain Dance + Thunder from the beginning, TACTICA and SWIRLY wouldn't be heavily damaged now, and if at that specific turn I decided to use Swift instead of switching out VORTEX, I might have also been able to finish the match.
Fourth matchup:
Lv.62 VORTEX vs Lv.56 GYARADOS. VORTEX was still suffering from Leech Seed, but I had to keep him out against Gyarados. This was a matchup that only VORTEX could deal with and he only needed one turn. The rain was still falling, so I went for Thunder. Even though it successfully killed Gyarados, VORTEX was down to 33 HP after Leech Seed (redzone) and he was still affected by Leech Seed and Intimidate, so I had to switch him out. It became questionable if he could fight again against any of Wallace's remaining pokémons.
Wallace's fifth pokémon was a Tentacruel. ANUBIS, TRIPLETRAP and TERAFUZE were both weak against Water while TACTICA and VORTEX were both low on health. This left me with SWIRLY as my best option. Fifth matchup:
Lv.59 SWIRLY vs Lv.55 TENTACRUEL. Rain continued to fall, which enabled Wallace's Tentacruel to hit me with a boosted Hydro Pump. Ouch. I replied with a Surf, but it barely did any damage to him. At the end of the turn, at least the rain stopped. Next turn I remembered that Tentacruels have low Defense without using Barrier, so I went for Return. That was only after he used Sludge Bomb on SWIRLY though.
"SWIRLY was poisoned!"
You've gotta be kidding me, right? My most favourable matchup was looking really bad. After we exchanged attacks, he still had his HP in mid-orange, but I was down to the red AND I was also poisoned. To make things even worse, Tentacruel was faster than SWIRLY, so even if we decided to fight back, we would just die before we could even move. I had 2 options: sacrifice SWIRLY or switch in someone who has full health, but is weak to water. I obviously couldn't sacrifice anyone just yet, so I decided to switch in TRIPLETRAP.
Lv.58 TRIPLETRAP vs Lv.55 TENTACRUEL. It was a really risky move to switch, because this gave a free turn for them to use something against us that we're weak against. But luckily for us, Hydro Pump (wtf that would have been lethal, 1HKO) missed!
The reason why I switched in TRIPLETRAP was because she knew Earthquake, which was supposedly super-effective against Tentacruel. I also hoped that we were faster than them, which was exactly the case (luckily). To my surprise, this small strategy was enough to take out Wallace's Tentacruel. Well done, TRIPLETRAP!
Wallace was down to his last pokémon and we also managed to survive without any casualties so far. Wallace was about to send out MILOTIC, which was probably Champion Cynthia's
most annoying pokémon in Diamond. With no other real options left, I decided to keep TRIPLETRAP in battle, land as many hits as possible and then switch to someone else before the last moment. Sixth matchup:
Lv.58 TRIPLETRAP vs Lv.58 MILOTIC. Against a pure Water-type, I only had Ground, Dragon, Dark and Steel attacks, but I forgot which was not very effective against Water. I decided to go with Dragon Claw, but thinking back about it, I should have used Earthquake, because Dragon Claw barely did any damage. I was awaiting a counterattack after this, but none of us saw what was coming next...
"Foe MILOTIC used Ice Beam!"
WHAT?!
No! Not the Ice Beam again! I expected a Water-type attack, which we could have probably survived, but I was not prepared for an Ice Beam at all. I guess it's no surprise to anyone that Ice Beam with its 4x super effectiveness killed TRIPLETRAP in one shot. :/ I was lacking options, so I had to send out someone weak again to just deal some damage and then withdraw.
"It's all up to you now, ANUBIS."
That's right, I had to send out ANUBIS next. ANUBIS had crazy high Attack power, so I decided to risk using his ultimate attack, Hyper Beam. This was the moment that I reserved that move for. It was all or nothing. Milotic was faster than us though, so he had a chance to land a super-effective Surf.
"INCOMING!"
Time slowed down as I watched ANUBIS' HP go down as we were hit by surf, but at the very last moment, the damage stopped and ANUBIS survived with
2 HP! After the miraculous survival, ANUBIS released all his power at Milotic! ...only to leave Milotic's HP in the redzone. And then Milotic's Sitrus Berry healed some HP too. I thought that it was all over, because ANUBIS now needed to recharge, but Wallace decided to use a Hyper Potion when Milotic was still in the orange, thus wasting his berry completely. ANUBIS survived the recharge time, but now Milotic had more HP than before, so this miraculous survival was all for nothing.
We were in a very bad position, because it was inevitable to sacrifice someone on the following turns. If I kept in ANUBIS, he would have died because of low Speed, but if I switched in VORTEX, SWIRLY or TACTICA, they would have died too because of the extra turn we were giving to them. TERAFUZE still had full health, but his low Speed and Sp.Def made it sure that by the time we could even attack, Milotic would have already killed us with 2 Surfs, if not with only 1.
"Who should we sacrifice? I don't really want to sacrifice anyone, but I must."
It was kinda obvious that I had to sacrifice one of my Water-type pokémons, because I still had MENOS in the PC as a possible substitute. SWIRLY was unique with her Ice-type attacks, but stat-wise, TACTICA was more useful and she could also take more hits. I didn't like it, but I felt like it was SWIRLY's time to go. I sent out SWIRLY and expected an instant death, but Milotic decided to use Ice Beam, which barely even scatched her. I was getting hopeful that maybe SWIRLY could land one more hit before her death, but then the poison damage - that she was still having from the last matchup - was too much for her to handle.
Now that we had a "fresh start" again (which only meant that we didn't need to worry about free, incoming attacks), I really wanted to just deal some damage to Milotic that sticks. For this, I brought out VORTEX, probably for the final time. VORTEX was carrying me so far, being the true MVP in my higher-tier battles and now he is here, facing the Champion's strongest pokémon. It was truly the only matchup which was worth for VORTEX's potential fainting. There was no time to set up Rain Dance, so I went straight for the Thunder. When Thunder managed to hit, I was relieved, but when it TURNED OUT TO BE A CRITICAL HIT, I WENT NUTS! VORTEX managed to kill the Champion's strongest pokémon in one hit, which had only 4% chance to happen! (70% chance for Thunder to land, 6,25% chance for critical hit, 4,375% chance combined) Even then, it might have been a lethal attack without a critical hit, but I'm glad that we didn't need to test it out. VORTEX is truly the real Champion here.
After his defeat, Wallace had some things to say:
"The pokémon you sent into battle... At times they danced like a spring breeze, and at times they struck like lightning."
You're damn right we struck like lightning, all thanks to VORTEX. I don't know what you meant by the spring breeze part though, because I didn't even have any Grass-type attacks. This dialogue was probably scripted anyways, so let's move on to the next thing.
Just before Wallace could announce Reynold as the new regional Champion, we had a nosy guest.
"Go home May, you're drunk."
It's not what Wallace said, but it would have been hilarious if he said that. We also had a visit by Professor Birch, which led me to the question: How did these guys get in here?? Didn't May notice the Elite Four that was blocking the way here? Did May AND Professor Birch actually defeat the Elite Four? And now that they have defeated the Elite Four, do I have to fight them too as the new Champion? These kind of questions were circling in my head, but luckily Wallace interrupted them and told them to stay while he escorted Reynold to the next room.
Inside the next room was the Hall of Fame, where victorious pokémons were given the chance to free themselves from the Nuzlocke curse. There is one final rule that I never had the chance to implement, because I never actually got here:
"Any pokémon who survives a victorious battle against the League Champion for the first time wins 1 chance for a future revival. This doesn't affect pokémons in teams which already have Champion-winners."
Even without this, it was a real accomplishment to see my final team show up in the Hall of Fame. The final team included:
Fallen in action, but still honorable members of the Hall of Fame:
Surviving members of the Hall of Fame, who earned 1 chance for revival:
And the one and true Champion of this entire Nuzlocke run:
Well done, team! Let's throw some confetti!
