Pokemon 8-A tournament; round 3: Charmander vs. Honedge

[Arceus0x]

Charmander vs. Honedge

Round 3

Fight!
Charmander:
Honedge:

 

[TrashManlololol]

Hmmmm yes interesting

 

[Arceus0x]

Both are damn tough though Charmander does have a lead with his fire typing

 

[Imaginym]

Spoiler: All 4 of Honedge's Pokedex Entries

X Omega Ruby	Apparently this Pokémon is born when a departed spirit inhabits a sword. It attaches itself to people and drinks their life force.
Y Alpha Sapphire	If anyone dares to grab its hilt, it wraps a blue cloth around that person’s arm and drains that person’s life energy completely.
Sword	Honedge’s soul once belonged to a person who was killed a long time ago by the sword that makes up Honedge’s body.
Shield	The blue eye on the sword’s handguard is the true body of Honedge. With its old cloth, it drains people’s lives away.

Charmander has like twenty Pokedex entries, so it might be just easier to summarize them:

Charmander prefers hot places. From the time it is born, its tail has a burning flame (Which you can supposedly only hear it in quiet places.) which shows the strength of its life force, burning weakly if weak, brightly/vigorously (even if it's a bit wet.) if healthy. This tailflame also indicates Charmander's emotions: It wavers when Charmander is enjoying itself/happy, & burns fiercely if Charmander becomes enraged. Obviously, steam spouts from the tail during rain, & Charmander's life would end if the flame were to go out.

Put simply, Charmander's emotions & state of health are very easy to read if you understand it's tail flame. & frankly, I don't know why Honedge would have a clue.

Spoiler: Wordy Honedge move/tactics analysis

Honedge, meanwhile is apparently predisposed to grabbing people & drinking their life force, especially anyone who grabs its hilt. Honedge does so with the blue cloth, wrapping it around their arm. Notably, Honedge's soul is that of a person killed a long time ago by the sword that's Honedge's body, & the blue eye in the sword's handguard is Honedge's true body.

So yeah, Honedge MIGHT try to grab Charmander? But the only remotely-grabbing moves it learns are Pursuit (Which also doesn't exist anymore.) & Destiny Bond.
Charmander probably doesn't know better than to attack against Destiny Bond, but sitting around hoping your opponent draws with you isn't a very good way to win.


What moves they'll actually use doesn't seem very clear, so what options do they have?
With stuff like Autotomize & Shadow Sneak & Flight, Honedge has the speed/mobility advantage.... But No Guard means Charmander will hit it anyway, & as it probably won't dodge, even if it outspeeds.
....Dare I say, even if Honedge could speed blitz, it might not actually help here, lol.
(Plus, while Autotomize is +2 Speed Stages, Charmander can use Scary Face to drop Honedge's Speed by 2 stages, & can boost its own Speed & ATK by 1 Stage with the Egg Move Dragon Dance.)

Honedge's other attacks include: Tackle, Fury Cutter (More power with each hit, but it's NVE & weak to start.), Pursuit (Unsure Charmander would retreat.), Aerial Ace (Evasion? You have No Guard.), Retaliate (Honedge has no allies.), Slash & Night Slash (+1 Crit Ratio. In the newest games, this is a 12.5% chance,), Iron Head (30% chance to flinch if faster, NVE.), & Sacred Sword which ignores the foe's stat changes, a mostly useless effect here since No Guard & Charmander's only DEF boost being from Egg Move Ancient Power's 10% boost-all-stats effects.

Honedge also has Metal Sound. If it's dumb enough to use this, it'll drop Charmander's Special Defense by 2 Stages. Honedge has no Special Attacks, by the way.

Put simply, in the majority of circumstances, Honedge won't dodge nor miss & can only attack by getting up close & slashing, & none of its attacks have relevant effects except the 1 in 8 crit chances of Slash/Night Slash & the 30% Flinch chance of Iron Head, & it has no Ghost-type moves besides Shadow Sneak, which is fast, I guess?

Honedge also has set up options with Swords Dance & Iron Defense.
& its usual tactic of wrapping its sash around Charmander's arm to drain its life force might confuse/puzzle/unnerve Charmander at first, but Charmander may not even do what normally sets this off. Plus, it puts Honedge's true body close to the open flame of a Fire-type.

Spoiler: Charmander's move analysis

Charmander's Level-Up move vary slightly by generation, but the only moves that aren't Fire-type are Scratch, Slash, & sometimes Dragon Rage, Dragon Breath, or Metal Claw.
As for it's Fire-type moves, it's Ember, Fire Fang, Flamethrower, Fire Spin, Inferno, Flare Blitz & has also included Flame Burst.

Its Egg Moves have included Air Cutter, Ancient Power, Beat Up, Belly Drum, Bite, Counter, Crunch, Dragon Dance, Dragon Pulse, Dragon Rush, Dragon Tail, Flare Blitz, Focus Punch, Metal Claw & Outage & Wing Attack(???).

Charmander already has a biting move by level-up (Fire Fang), so it MIGHT try Bite/Crunch, if it has them? But notably, COUNTER is among those; AKA, deal to your opponent twice the damage you took from a physical attack. Every attack Honedge uses is an up-close physical attack, & it can't dodge because No Guard.

It might come down to move choice: With Autotomize, Honedge can get in more attacks than Charmander.... But so many of its choices here are lackluster, & it still has to close the distance Honedge doesn't dodge, & when Charmander's probably most likely move is a Super-Effective ranged Fire-type attack. A burn will also drop Honedge's ATK & do it constant damage, & is guaranteed on top of huge damage if Charmander chooses Inferno.

& even if it does set up Swords Dance or such, & land a strong Physical Attack, Charmander having Counter (As well as the Blaze ability giving it 50% more Fire power at 33% or less Stamina.) means if Charmander LIVES an attack, Honedge is in for a world of hurt.
Iron Defense isn't always helpful, & Metal Sound is NEVER helpful.
Shadow Sneak MIGHT help, but it has to realize to use it.
& its tactics of either doing a close range cutting attack, or tying itself to the opponent's arm & draining are probably bad when Charmander's close range attacks include Fire Fang, Flare Blitz, & potentially Bite &/or Crunch. (As well as Counter.)
& at a distance, Honedge is either a sitting duck setting up with No Guard while it's opponent has SE on almost all of their range, or is approaching into said SE Range without dodging.


There's a good chance Honedge could win with set-up, but No Guard meaning it never dodges & Charmander having dangerous moves up close (Fire Fang, Flare Blitz, Bite, Crunch, Counter.) & at range (Flamethrower, Flame Burst, Inferno (Guaranteed burn BTW!), Fire Spin.), plus the risk of Burn means Honedge is never safe to set-up or approach, & set-up only helps if you realize to do it anyway, as opposed to going into melee & slashing/draining-cloth-grabbing.
Also, Counter & Blaze means if Honedge picks the wrong move & Charmander lives. it has to realize to use Shadow Sneak (& hope it hits hard enough.) or realize to use Destiny Bond (An Egg Move.) & hope for a Draw.

Thus, I'm gonna vote Charmander, Medium-High Difficulty.
Pardon all the words, please.

 

[Gilad_Hyperstar]

Charmander FRA

The type advantage should be the thing that'll really help him here

 

[Imaginym]

Charmander FRA

The type advantage should be the thing that'll really help him here

Yeah. Honedge has to invest time into setting up & even after that, by raw power & game mechanics, it's hardest hitting move is 90 BP Sacred Sword, or the 1 in 8 (Night) Slash Critical Hit. Charmander easily hits harder with the majority of its likely moves, & still has a 10% (Or 100% for Inferno.) chance to burn for more damage, & it hits even harder if Honedge knocks it into Blaze Range, at which point, only a strong enough Shadow Sneak saves Honedge.

In theory, it could rival Charmander's power by becoming able to attack more often with Autotomize, but it still doesn't dodge, & taking the time to do so means likely getting hurt because of Charmander attacking.

 

[Lou_change]

Charmander

 

[Imaginym]

Charmander

If that's meant to be a vote, you haven't given any reasoning.

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[Lou_change]

forgot the fra

 

[Coolboy6]

Charmander FRA

 

[Peppersalt43]

Shouldn't the votes be counted?

Also Charmander FRA

 

[Coolboy6]

Shouldn't the votes be counted?

The OP announced he was leaving

 

[Imaginym]

The OP announced he was leaving

Just learned of that now. That's troubling.

https://vsbattles.com/threads/im-leaving-lads.124172/

From that thread:
@Imaginym you've my discord, let's talk about pokemon sometime. I should have gotten to know you better. Sorry that i didn't finish the tournament. You can take it over if you wanna.

I'm not OP here, but I can try taking over the Match Thread Creation part of the tourney, since they mentioned it there.

 

[Imaginym]

Oh, & current vote count seems to be 5 to 0.

 

[The_Axiom_of_Virgo]

Overrated fire lizard FRA

French ghost sword is awesome.

 

[Peppersalt43]

Wouldn't that make it 6 votes? That would mean we only need one more vote

I already voted unfortunately

 

[GlaceonGamez471]

Charmander FRA

 

[Peppersalt43]

Grace

 

[TauanVictor]

Btw Charmander FRA

 

[Peppersalt43]

Grace has been over for a while. This can be added