Random Noob tactics

Snorlax
-Amnesia
-Thunder
-Blizzard
-Self Destruct

When I was new amnesia Snorlax was my favorite. Started out with the standard suggested by smogon of course but got tired of cloyster forcing me out. So I started predicting switches after the first amnesia and hammering them with thunder lolz. On players I knew to always pack the clam of course. I thought i was such a mad genius. It actually seemed to work. After playing for about a month I got into the top 25 with about 1525 rating. But inevitably this trollin Snorlax was inconsistent and I dropped all the way to rock bottom lol.
So I'm wondering who else tried some funny crap that seemed to work great for a little while as a noob?

 

Well I've gotten to a master tour finals using victreebel in half my games and a dragonite in one game too :joy:

 

Victreebel is legit tho. XD I played with venusaur a lot at first.
I remember telling my friend at work , "I see no reason why venusaur isn't OU."
Man ignorance was bliss.

 

Vic is legit but still


There was that one time I ran vic with SD / Razor Leaf / Sleep Powder / Stun Spore...

(aaaages ago though)

 

Amnesia lax with Body Slam, Rest and Fireblast. Burn luck made it invulernable when it worked.

 

I used Nidoking sometimes, but only because Focus Energy doesn't work properly on the Azureheights PBS. It boosts your critical hit rate to 100% (really slow Pokemon were an exception, I think, but they still had a really high crit rate too).

I've probably won a few games with Raichu. I used to use Venusaur every now and then too.

In the final days of Netbattle Supremacy, I wreaked some havoc with a SD/Spore/Dig/Hyper Beam Parasect, Lickitung, and Wigglytuff.

I won a couple of tournament matches with an Amnesia/Psychic/Ice Beam/Rest Snorlax.

 

Ice Beam/Substitute/Reflect/Softboiled Chansey.

 

and... well I've used Sub / Ice Beam / Twave / Softboiled Chansey to beat Mister Tim in master tournament games before...

 

Does sub actually block freeze?

 

it blocks the secondary effects of any attacks w/ a secondary status effect. So, yes. Also blocks tbolt's para and stuff

 

Nice.. man there is a lot of fine print in rby. still learning its querks

 

yeah I didn't learn that one till I played RBY 5U (where sub seadra is an important set)

 

One noob tactic that I've seen a lot, and have done a lot, is leading Alakazam against other Alakazams and staying in on it. Now, for those who don't understand this is risky for one reason:

You get Thunder Waved 75% of the time.

Now, this is obviously a problem, mainly because you most likely have a perfectly good Chansey in the back to soak the paralysis. Having your Alakazam paralyzed makes your match up against Chansey a lot more difficult, and it lowers your speed, which is a problem since Alakazam out speeding everything is really important for Alakazam, since it can Thunder Wave threats like Tauros and Snorlax.

Basically, it's very risky to leave your Alakazam to leave your on other Alakazam leads because if your Alakazam gets paralyzed, it can ruin the game for you.

 

You actually have an 87.4% chance to be paralysed (74.8% that both of you are, 12.6% that you are and they aren't, 12.6% that they are and you aren't, 0.002% chance that neither of you are).

Now, that quibble aside, I'm not sure you're taking everything into account. First off, those chances to be paralysed are symmetrical, which means both of you staying in is actually pretty much a neutral result - they've got exactly as much to lose as you do, and most of the time neither of you will get an advantage. Second, you seem to equate "you stay in" with "both of you stay in"; in the case that you stay in and they don't, your chance to get Thunder Waved is exactly zero.

Third, and most importantly, you're ignoring the other potential switch at t1; the switch to Exeggutor. Switching to Chansey is itself risky because if they switch to Exeggutor you're forced straight back out by the incoming Sleep Powder. Staying in with Alakazam is a played move because it lets you paralyse and damage the incoming Exeggutor in return for that sleep (this is also why lead Zam always runs Seismic Toss).

 

Staying in w/ zam against other zam is the standard play

 

Yeah, as far as paralysis absorbers go, Zam is one of the better ones tbh because it still has the bulk to do stuff and it's great at blocking Egg's sleep. As for Chansey, some teams might prefer that it not take para, since the fact that it can't get paraslammed means that it's actually pretty great at stalling if you can keep it free of status. Also there's the fact that a paralysed Chansey is begging Snorlax to come in, whereas Lax is at least wary of switching directly into Zam

 

Eh, I'd say that staying in or going to Exeggutor together make up the standard; staying in is perfectly solid, of course, but going to Egg is not really unexpected or poor either (it's the sleep-first vs. para-first conundrum). Switching to Sing Chansey isn't an awful idea, but I wouldn't go to non-Sing Chansey; too much momentum given up for questionable gain. In Zam vs. Starmie staying in is absolutely the correct move, though; the Starmie is most likely switching out to Exeggutor, which makes going to Chansey idiotic for the Zam player (I can't count the number of times I've seen noobs do that, though), but on the off-chance that they stay in the TWave trade is nearly always in your favour and going to Egg would be a bad idea.

I experimented with an awful lot of things back when I was playing (Surf monoLax, Leech Seed Egg, Psychic/Withdraw Slowbro, Rest Rhydon, Psychic Starmie), but I don't really know if any of them fall into the "noob tactic that worked for a bit" category. I worked out that Surf monoLax sucked in a hurry, I knew all along that Leech Seed Egg was absolute shit on most teams but it kinda worked on the team on which I was using it, Withdraw Slowbro and Rest Rhydon I still consider legit, and Psychic on Slowbro and lead Starmie has become the standard.

 

Here I actually disagree with you, I think switching Egg into a TWave is a poor long term play, as the para combined with a subsequent SToss ensures your Egg is going to be of limited use in checking stuff like Lax- you get like one switch in max. By contrast switching to Chansey is just... meh. The opponent will either immediately bring in Lax or try to cheese you with Zam. In both scenarios you often end up switching out to Egg anyway, but you stand a good chance of coming out ahead, as to accomplish the same as a direct Egg switch Lax needs to get a paraslam (assuming it doesn't scout for Counter, also I'm assuming the opponent hasn't subbed Lax out for GolDon or something), while Zam needs to either predict correctly or get a crit Psychic (best case scenario is Egg enters on a Recover).

You do have the option of responding to a Lax switch with something besides Egg which is notable. Then there's the question of which pokemon you want blocking sleep... actually Egg might be preferred here, although it's worse at it than Chansey it's still adequate while it's not a doormat for Lax.

Also I find the idea of relying on a paralysed pokemon hitting Sing repugnant

 

yea chansey with sing has a lot of trouble even sleeping zam and there's just better ways to use the set. You could go Egg but you are losing a lot in doing that; it's not a bad play persay but 95% of the time you can, should, and will just play the zam ditto.