Character: Armin Arlert | schachmeister
Elite/Regular: Elite Team, challenge happening this weekend.
Team: Amadeus the Noctowl holding Pecha Berry, Magellan the Incineroar holding Expert Belt, Juniper the Dragalge holding Poison Barb, Hannibal the Piloswine holding Icy Rock, Hildegard the Skarmory holding Rocky Helmet, Aurora the Dragonair holding Never-melt Ice; Armin's lit of held items here



As it turns out having a very water-heavy roster is not great when you’ve got to take on a Grass-based gym. Not great at all. But let's have an attempt at it anyway.


Starting things off, Armin will bring out his Noctowl against Gardenia’s Roserade. Noctowl resists Grass damage, while Roserade is weak to Flying and Psychic attacks.

One big thing in this battle will be to prevent/keep Noctowl from being poisoned. Not only will it continuously damage him, but with Roserade’s Venom Drench move, it could also be used to lower Noctowl’s attack, Special atk, and speed. And das no good.

Unfortunately, Noctowl doesn’t have much in terms of healing itself from poison/negative statuses. It has Psycho Shift, being seeing as Roserade is immune to being poisoned, that won’t work. So, Armin will have to depend on Antidotes and berries for this. To begin, Noctowl will start off the match holding a Pecha Berry. Additionally, Armin has bought a bunch of antidotes. Essentially, if Noctowl gets poisoned, Armin will cure him on the next move. Unless it is super at the end and he’s got Roserade’s HP down to within a knockout.

Another unfortunate thing is that Roserade is quicker than Noctowl, so in general, it will move before Noctowl does, making any moves with flinch as a side-effect not all that useful.

So what’s a boy (owl) going to do? He’s going to try and put Roserade to sleep and/or confuse it. So right from the start, Armin is going to use Hypnosis and Confusion hoping to land either status effect. If Roserade ends up asleep, Armin will use Dream Eater to restore any of Noctowl’s lost HP or Psychic if his HP is doing pretty well. He also has Roost as a back-up should Noctowl need to recover a bunch of HP. Should he run out of PP on any of Noctowl’s Psychic-type attacks, he’ll switch to using his Flying-type attacks, another thing Roserade is weak to.

All in all, Armin is prepared for this battle to be one of long attrition and healing on both sides. But he thinks he’s got Roserade covered. If not, his back up for this match is his Incineroar who will just burn everything down.

---

Against Gardenia’s Carnivine, Armin will bring out his Incineroar (unless he’s already in the field from taking down Roserade)

Now, the choice for Incineroar is pretty straight forward. He’s a fire-type. Grass-types hate fire. Carnivine also has a few Dark-type attacks, but because Incineroar is a dual Fire/Dark-type, it means those won’t hit hard either. And finally, Incineroar is wearing an Expert Belt to boost the power of his super-effective moves.

Armin is going to start things off with Fire Fang, which has the dual chance of both burning as well as causing Carnivine to flinch. Once Carnivine is burned, he’ll switch to Flamethrower. He’s also got Flame Charge and… well, a lot of Fire-type moves. Just. So much fire.

(he also has Drain Punch, should Carnivine manage to lay into his HP at any point, but really, this is the one match that Armin is pretty confident in.)

---

For Gardenia’s Tropius, Armin will be recalling Incineroar (he’s his back-up pokemon for basically all other battles) and instead will bring out his Piloswine

Now, the good news is that Tropius has a double weakness to Ice. The bad news is that Piloswine has a weakness to Grass. So the key to this battle is to exploit Tropius’ weaknesses before Tropius can exploit Piloswine’s.

Starting off, Armin will have Piloswine use Hail. Piloswine is holding an Icy Rock, so this will extend the duration of Hail. He will also reapply Hail when it ends or when Tropius tries to change the weather. Because not only does Hail do a small amount of damage on each turn (handy) it also means that Blizzard, that oh so powerful Ice attack, always hits (mega handy). Blizzard only has a small pool of PP, but considering its strength and Tropius’ big ass weakness to ice, Armin hopes this will be enough. If else, Piloswine has some other ice-type moves to help out.

---

Woooaah, we are halfway there. Woaaah, living on a— shutting up now.

Against Gardenia’s Tangrowth, Armin will bring out his lovely Dragalge. You see, despite starting out as part Water, when Dragalge evolves, it becomes a dual Poison/Dragon type. So no weaknesses here! At least, not on Dragalge’s side. Tangrowth has a rather unfortunate weakness to Poison.

Starting things off, Armin will have Dragalge use Toxic. As a poison-type, Toxic will always hit and leave Tangrowth badly poisoned. He will also repeat this move if Tangrowth heals/is healed at any point. Once the status effect is in place, Armin will have Dragalge use Venoshock which does double damage if the target is poisoned. He’ll continue this until Tangrowth is down.

One thing he’s on the lookout for is Tangrowth inflicting any status effects on Dragalge (especially sleep), so Armin’s got items standing by should that occur.

---

In order to deal with Gardenia’s Breloom, Armin’s got his Skarmory standing by.

Breloom is a lovely pokemon, but its dual Grass/Fighting type means it has a huge weakness to Flying-type moves. Meanwhile Skarmory super resists Grass-type moves, One thing to keep in mind is whether or not Gardenia’s Breloom has Effect Spore as an ability. As this can leave Skarmory with status effects that might require a few more turns of healing. Additionally, Skarmory is holding a Rocky Helmet which will inflict damage on Breloom whenever one of its moves make contact with Skarmory.

In any case, Armin is going to start with having Skarmory use Agility. This raises her speed stat by two, which hopefully will give her the edge she needs to go first when it comes to attacking. After that, he’ll going to focus on bringing Breloom down with Flying-type moves. Air Slash is going to be a favoured one for its ability to make the target flinch. Also, Armin has Brave Bird standing by for when Breloom’s HP is starting to dip. He’ll take the inflicted damage on Skarmory if it means taking care of in one fell swoop.

---

Onto Gardenia’s final pokemon!

For Torterra, Armin is bringing out his Dragonair. Dragonair does resist Grass-type moves, but that is not actually why Armin brought her in. You see, Dragonair, despite being a pure Dragon type, actually has a pretty broad move pool. This also includes some Ice and Fire-type moves. And let those be the things Torterra just happens to be pretty weak too.

Armin is gonna start off with Dragonair using Ice Beam. She is quicker than Torterra so she should, if everything goes well, be going first during this. Ice Beam inflicts Ice damage (duh) but also has a small chance of freezing the target. He’ll keep on using Ice Beam until it runs out of PP, at which point he’ll switch to using Fire Blast. It’s not as accurate, but it does a good amount of Fire Damage when it hits. Should this run out too, Armin will settle for using Dragon-type and Normal-type moves. Also, if at any point, Dragonair’s HP is looking dire, he can have her use rest.

---

Hopefully, all of these match-ups will take care of their respective opponents, but should something not go as planned, Armin has his Incineroar (who he expects to have a fairly easy time of things) as a back-up. He’s also got a few revives to heal him if necessary. And the rest of his pokemon are always there to serve as back-up to the back-up.