Haunter Dominated a Huge Tournament. Here's How.

Haunter was a key member of a team that featured one of the most evil strategies of all time. The year was 2013 and a certain Pokémon player needed a team for a

tournament

and not just any

tournament

w

here

the Nugget Bridge Invitational was the main venue. For competitive Pokémon for many years, they published team reports and held tournaments for the community, among other things, all serious players used the site and most participated in these tournaments. T

here

was a circuit set up throughout the year and if you did well enough you qualified for the ultimate tournament, by invitation only 16 players qualified for this tournament and everyone who made it this far was a serious threat as the field was so filled that you would surely need a super powerful team in a format with Pokémon like Landorus Tea and Eruption Heatran only. the strongest pokemon could succeed, don't you agree, right?

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You will be surprised to know that the team that took second place not only had the chaser but also the caddy. What the hell happened to that, Del Caddy is cute and that's all he has going for him, he has really atrocious base stats, a limited move pool and useless abilities, mostly useless abilities, while Delcatty is just your average trash from Normal type Pokémon at the beginning of the game in many ways. There is one unique thing: Delcatty and Skitty are the only Pokémon in the game with access to the normalize ability. Normalize is a truly abysmal ability that converts all moves used by the user into normal types.

Although this may seem exciting, it is not well normalized. It means you can't do super effective damage to any Pokémon and you can't perform any coverage moves. The list of Pokémon that can escape without performing cover moves and are still good is like just regialeki. Do you know what it's like to run a Pokémon without coverage moves? watching my videos and not subscribing, I mean, come on, you're almost there anyway. I work very hard on these videos and I would love to make more, so if you are enjoying the content I hope you do.

Consider leaving a substitute, so why was Del Cady on this team despite having one of the worst skills of all time? Well, actually he was on the team because of how bad his skill is. Let's talk about the second Pokémon crucial to this strategy. Gengar Pond's older brother. he was a crucial member of the strategy because he met two important criteria: first, he was a ghost guy, we'll talk about why that's important in a second, he had access to both skill sharing and roleplay. Role-playing is a move that replaces the user's skill. targeting ability seen in vgc with kyogre mainly where tornadus will use a joker rpg to copy drizzle or c primordial reset reign so kyogre does high damage skill swapping is one of my personal favorite moves it changes skills of the user and the goal, I actually took second place in the world championship with skill sharing in 2012, using it to levitate my heatran here, however, it is doing something more sinister.

You start with gengar and delcatty, delcatty uses feign while gengar uses roleplay to copy, normalize and then gengar. ability switches to normalize an opponent and convert all of their moves to normal type, of course your opponent could just switch to reset their ability, except the third Pokémon on this team is gothitel, which has the shadow tag ability. The shadow tag prevents your opponent from switching. So in this case, any Pokémon you normalized would be stuck on the field with a worthless ability. Roleplaying does not override the target's ability. Gengar can do the same to both opponents, leaving them both trapped using only normal type moves and because Gengar is a ghost type Pokémon, if you succeed, neither opponent will be able to harm Gengar because it is immune to normal type moves, without However, there is still a major problem.

Gothitel is a psychic type, meaning it is not immune to normal type moves that the opponent can focus on. go down to gothitel and once he goes down, they will be free to switch, regain their abilities and win the game, which is where reflection finally comes into play. Until now we have been using role play to copy, normalize, but once we have given both. normalized opponents with skill sharing and roleplay, then we can use gengar roleplay to copy gothitel's shadow tag, now gothitel is no longer needed and it's time for the hunter to come in, let's do a little recap because with all the skills changing, things have gotten a little Confusing both opponents has the normalization and Gengar has the shadow tag skill.

With this, our configuration is complete. We can switch to Axeman and use skill swapping to give him shadow tag. Now both opponents are stuck on the field unable to switch and all their movements are normal. types against both types of ghosts, meaning they are unable to do any damage, of course they still have Pokémon on their backs, so the game is not over yet, luckily we still have a few tricks up our sleeves before we knock out our opponents what we should do. some prep work, both Gengar and Haunter have split pain, allowing them to heal any damage they've taken next, we're going to want to normalize Gengar once again that way, when the opponent sends out their next Pokémon, we'll be ready immediately. to take its ability, we are finally ready to take our first ko, it is important to only ko one Pokémon at a time to avoid receiving two Pokémon with non-normal type moves.

In this match, the opponent sent out select scarf rampards, allowing them to Unfortunately for them, thanks to the gengar's pain split from earlier, it still has all of its HP and thanks to its focus item that prevents a Pokémon from being KO'd. a single hit, he can survive and go on rampage. normalized once again making both ghost pokemon invincible now it's just rinse and repeat use role play to copy normalize pain split to heal again and when you're ready take a ko to send the final pokemon in this case gastrodon now the game it's like Well, that's it, as one last exchange of skills is made to seal the deal, eliminating your opponent's last hope of victory.

Now I know what you're thinking. What kind of sick, depraved scoundrel could even conceive of this team that would unleash such horrible acts of violence against the gaming community, well I promise you won't be mad, but yes, it was me, but enough of that, let's talk about the last two members of the team. You see, this normalized trap was difficult to achieve consistently, this tournament was best of three. So even if you got it once, there's no guarantee your opponent wouldn't adapt. If you lost a single set in this tournament, you would be eliminated, so you had to win each of the three best Pokémon I selected to complete the team.

Polytode and Kingdra Polytoaded access the Move Parish song which puts a timer on each Pokémon on the field for three turns once the timer reaches zero. All Pokémon are weakened. You can remove the timer by changing your Pokémon, but we have Gothitel on this team to prevent it. The last and least important changes were Kingdra. Kingdra was a solid offensive Pokémon in 2013, but I chose to use a very strange set of substitute protection and disable with leftovers. The deactivation could be combined with Godzilla's shadow tag, but actually an offensive set would probably have been better.

With the team complete, it was time for the tournament in the first round. I played against a team consisting of Latios Glade Delicent and Ferrothorn. This team was really offensive, so I decided to rely on my Paris reign and trap mode to try to win. Could. to deactivate perisong in the middle of the game while I switched my gothitel against gelasin and aerothorn and after some careful maneuvers both pokemon fell my opponent sends to latios and glade but gengar is on the field gengar finishes off the latios with two quick shadow balls and as glade is a gang picked and locked in hand to hand combat, i advanced to the second round, the second round pitted me against alex agloza the 2014 national champion, alex had a trick team with a lot of annoying support and offensive pieces in the first game, that's how I decided. to go with my parish trap mode alex leads passively with amungus and porygon 2 while i lead with polytoad and kindra seeing that i'm not in any danger i change to goth patel and go for the parish song i eliminate both amungus and porygon 2 and alex sends jealousynt and heatran.

I can use kingdra to take out heatran and then beat jellicent with paris song to win game 1. Now at this point I haven't gone for normalized cheating yet and it looks like it's time for alex to lead. with porygon 2 and hitmontop against mai del cady and gengar the perfect leader showdown alex gets lucky and the trails levitate with porygon if i had normalized the trail i would have been doing my job for me i prefer to pretend and role play like alex switches to scizor and flinches turn two alex prepares the swords dance halls and tricks while i give him the scissors normal eyes turn three goes perfect while i protect gothitel and the role play is normalized once again as alex folds in my goth towel now we are getting very close Solo One more turn and we'll be free, except why are we still here just to suffer?

Yes, we were so close, but the only chance we had to get crits happened with Gothitel down, there's no more cheating and I quickly lose the game. Game 3 I return to Polytoden Kingdra now that Alex knows that normal eyes are something he has to respect. The game starts off slow as Alex gets room for tricks and I enter Gothitel. I use Gothiczel to smash it on top and then finish with Polytode Mygothitel. He's taken a ton of damage, but I reveal that my last move rests and brings me back to full HP. Alex Senzo Scizor is a big threat now that I can't take his ability.

I don't have any good way to deal with Scizor, so I'm forced to sacrifice gothitel in exchange for taking half the scissors health with skald I send kindra and alex uses protection with scissors while I give him double jealousy with skald burning the problem is that the cursed body of jealousy activates on kingdra disabling my only attack politodo knocks out scizor and tricharm rise again and alex reveals his latest pokemon heatran. I then reveal that my last pokemon hunter reflects falls heroically, but it has given us enough time to stop the trick room and since the kin are no longer disabled we can eliminate heatran.

The trick room rises again and its two water types were only scalded against the cursed body's jealousy with recovery. It looks pretty terrible, but I have a trick up my sleeve. I can disable Alex's recovery by turning off his healing with politotine kin that gradually wear down. jelly health, I was almost able to achieve victory and advance to the top four, now the top four, in the first game, you saw, I was finally able to achieve the complete trap by dismantling my opponent's team like a child playing with legos , However, I did not. I'm not out of the woods yet, winning a game is nice, but to get to the final I would need to win the set game. 2 starts and I decide to go with my Polytoad and Kinger Kingdrali.

You see, my opponent had togekis with Follow Me. one of the worst matchups for my team, since togekiss could prevent me from giving his teammate normal eyes. However, togekiss cannot protect his companions from Paris Song. My opponent switches turn 1 to Gastrodon and looks for tailwind while I switch to Gothitel and look for parish song. stop the counterparish and takes the first two kos while my opponent sends hip over and rampardos, unfortunately for them, kingdra is faster than rampardos in the rain and disables his pick, scarf, rockslide, rampardos is forced to fight while gothital's hitmontop ko and I win the game and advance to the final, who would I face in the final of this great tournament?

Well, none other than my good friend Aaron Cybertron Zheng, who would finish in the top four at the world championship that same year. Aaron's team was tough. he had thunder therian and I didn't have a single set of electric resistance. I started with polly toad and kindra against aarons thunder and scizor. I make a super aggressive move, use a substitute and scald him in scissors while aaron changes thundurus for kendra and scizor breaks sub turn 2 both kings dress up as polytoad attacks with scissors protect the third turn of the match sees aaron double against my kingdra while I protect and polisapo finishes off with scissors with the help of a timely burn.

I can deactivate kingdra's. draco meteor but aaron makes a good call and doubles my kingdra making the polytoads protect worthless i predict that aaron will attack kindra and change it to gothitel like erence who is related to landorus and i took out the paris song unfortunately thunderbolt did a lot to gothitel leaving it down Half HP, I protect both of my Pokémon and then I get really lucky and get double protection with Gothel, but Aaron knocks out Polytone. I send Kingdra back and disable the u-turn to prevent the Landerus from going out, butthundurus one-shots kindra, making it a 1v1 at the end, aaron sends his kingdra and I reveal my last pokemon.

The fake gengar kanger goes surfing, but gengar survives and is able to perform a skill swap, making gengar the fastest pokemon. "If Gengar can kill Kendra right now, Gengar goes for Shadow Ball and barely misses the ko, resulting in my defeat. Unfortunately, there is no recording of game 2, but as I remember, it was much less close in the end. Haunter and Del Caddy just couldn't." I don't compete with the powerful Pokémon on Aaron's team and that's how Hunter almost won a big tournament. I hope you enjoyed the video and if you did please consider subscribing if you want to see more videos on stories like this let me know in the comments