Here we are in lovely Celadon City, about to face off against Ericka, who prefers grass-types. I figure this to be my easiest gym yet: my Matthias' Ember and Flamethrower could take out her gym single-handedly. Rather than taking the easy way out, though, I'll be letting two of my other Pokemon take the lead. First, let's see the team.
As you can see, the face of my team has changed for the first time. I officially dropped Harry from the roster following the battles with Giovanni and Gary. Looking back over the records of other gym battles, Harry's the team member who has contributed least, and I can imagine no real use for him in the future: I usually drop my Butterfree in favor of a Drowzee in Vermilion, anyway. I'd need a surf-enabled Pokemon at some point, and my encounter with Giovanni made it clear I need a Water-type. I debated between Seel (for the novelty), Gyrados (for the awesome), and Blastoise: I decided in favor of Blastoise given that I didn't want to spend forever training a Magikarp. The Squirtle some random pedestrian gave me was at level 20, and came out of the box with Bite and Water Gun. That made training in Lavender Tower fairly easy.
He soon evolved into a Wartortle, then a Blastoise, and learned "Icy Wind" along the way -- making him useful against Plants, despite his water-type weakness. Ericka's trainers learned that the hard way.
None of her trainers offered anything substantial in the way of resistence: Hornblower exhausted his Icy Wind, and soon I switched to Gaia.
Gaia's "Toxic" is a plant-killer.
Given my raging rampage of success, I decide to attack Ericka without returning to the Pokecenter to refresh my troops. Gaia's got plenty of Toxic left, and if she falters Matthias can take down Ericka's entire team easily.
Take that!
As potent as "Toxic" usually is, it doesn't take down this Victoribel quickly enough: it puts Gaia to sleep and then knocks her out with a critical-hit Sludge Bomb. I sigh.
Fine, I say. Matthias can have Ericka's team all to himself.
...except, this guy's giving me trouble. He takes Flamethrower with dignity, and it looks like I'll need three or four Karate Chops to take him out. Fine. Not like a plant can throw anything at my trusty Magmar in the meantime.
Wait, what? Oh, shit.
So I bring out Thaddaeus, my ever reliable "Plan B". He'll show these frickin' plants what-for.
He is a little out of his element, though....these Grass-types just don't fall apart like I expected them to.
Still, Thaddaeus is a good bruiser. He can hang on.
And thus my second "Oh, shit!" moment of the night.
This is not looking good. My three champions are out of action.That Blastoise's "Icy Wind" PP is all worn out means he's just a liability, meaning two out the three 'mons I have left are in no way suitable to face off against Grasses. I decide to send Blastoise out in the meantime: he's got good defense, and has two non-water moves available. Maybe can he can take these seedy types out with brute force.
When Ericka's next demon knocks my Hornblower to sleep, I start pawing through my bag. Ho hurr! I can restore his Icy Wind! The day is saved!
Also I have a Pokeflute! Forgot about that. Tee-hee.
Only...Giga Train knocked my battle-tank to its knees before I could send the winds of death at the Vileplume, so I had to send in poor Dodrio. He's not a bad choice, acutally: his "Tri-Attack" has freezing and burning elements.
....Buddha bless your heart, you mean little bird, you saved my ass!
And I concede that I was almost defeated by a Grass-type leader and only survived because my Dreikopf is a badass.
Seriously, WTF? How could a Grass-type leader do this? Half of my team could've taken this gym by themselves!
In thinking back, I realize it was ill-considered of me to engage Ericka without refreshing Hornblower's "Icy Wind". Forgetting about the Pokeflute was stupid. What would have happened had Dodrio failed? Well, I still had a couple of revives: I'd send in Eris as cannon fodder while I applied those to Matthias and Blastoise. While my failure was still quite possible in such a scenario, I figure one of them would've gotten off their power-move before falling again.
Well. That was a real learning experience. By the way, had I gone to the Pokecenter before challening Ericka, this would've been the result:
See you in...Saffron City? I think?
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