Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon: Spoilers ahoy ☀

Wait

The preoder bonuses are literally just a keychain and some revives??

That's a real bummer :/ I'm kind of wondering what the thought process was of whoever came up with that, and whether they've actually played any of the games before...

I mean, technically speaking it beats the Potions we've gotten for past releases, but it's still a huge slap in the face compared to what everyone else has been getting for ages now.

Pre-orders have been lame for a while now, haven't they? I've never done them, but I vaguely recall some release getting a neat figurine. Doesn't bother me anyway I suppose. I don't really see the point of pre-orders unless you know you'll be stuck for stock, which I've never been.

Question, is anyone else unable to see any Sharpedo? The banner guy and the thread notification guys aren't loading on my phone and now that I think about it it's been that way for a while. I just assumed I wasn't loading the pages fully. Maybe the URLs expired, I'll have to check.



@octi yes let the worminess consume you, fun fact I typod and spelled "costumed you" initially and now I'm beginning to wish I'd kept it because it's thematically appropriate, aaah worm tho, some of my favourite literature and storytelling ever right there AND ITS FREE TO READ HERE BTW GUYS 10/10 recommends to friends


I'm waiting until next week so I can get the Sinnoh Pikachu hat. You might think I'm the type of person who wouldn't care for useless anime-tie-ins. But this time you would be wrong. I want that goddamned hat even if it means taking a Pikachu with it.


Given half a choice I'd go with USM to follow my preferred BW2 acronym. SuMo is terrible and breaks the commonly accepted pattern - so if the people saying SuMo are also saying USUM, well then, I guess I know on which side my toast is ultra buttered.


I'm going to Iceland... next week! Unrelated to anything, just thought I'd share. Haven't been on a proper holiday in forever. House purchasing is also progressing, though slowly - we're at "contract review" stage; I also have to submit home insurance forms. Almost guaranteed to be in before Christmas, which is kinda neat (though slower than I thought it could go). Scary too though. I've never so much as been a renter - to go from *person-living-with-parents* to *person-with-sole-responsibility-of-a-house* (whether that means I rent parts of it out or just be a hermit idk) is kind of terrifying. Good terrifying?

And amidst all of this the thing I'm most looking forward to is setting up Unlimited format Pokémon TCG Cube tourneys. Priorities, man. They don't get any more adult at 24.

Come to think of it, I haven't seen the Sharpedo in a while, either. I wonder what happened.

I grabbed the Kanto hat, personally. It was the only era in which Ash actually had an excuse for being such an idiot. Although it does irritate me that you can only get one of them; why not have separate events for each and then do the Z-Crystal as its own thing at another time?

Hey, Iceland sounds pretty cool (no pun intended). Anything in particular you're hoping to go see?

Yes! Unfortunately they're all things I can't spell. I still haven't memorised how to pronounce Reykjavik. (Which is actually the one relevant word I can spell.) We (myself, two friends) are doing our own Golden Circle with a rented car; that's a Geyser field I think, and a waterfall, and a national park with interesting geographical features. That's most of one day. Most of another is going to be spent driving out to a camp; then we get collected on a special snow-shuttle which will take us over a glacier, to a point where we can *enter* said glacier. Looking forward to that. Boat trip from Reykjavik Harbour on at least one night in hopes of seeing the northern lights (forecast calls for clouds tho), and a brief trip to a lava cave. After that, mostly just city stuff. There's an indoor arcade/amusement park we want to check out and that's near both a Toys R Us (we don't get those in Europe) and an American wholesale retailer (likewise for obvious reasons, I'm hoping to stock up on American imported Ritz crackers). One friend also wants to see the phallological museum. I'm fine with that as long as it's on the record that it wasn't me that suggested it.

We're not doing the blue lagoon because it's prohibitively expensive AND it's not even natural. It's power plant runoff. I'm personally not doing any geothermic pools besides that because Icelandic culture dictates that bathers strip off and shower before entering and I'm way too body conscious to do that around either friends OR strangers. Oh yeah and we also have two board game stores we want to see. I'm not certain why. I think we feel that were the type of people that do that sort of thing, so we do it out of a kind of ethereal obligation to our imagined selves?

Edit: lookit I get to draft these with people I don't know yay

Spoiler:

Yep, no Sharpedo over here either. Didn't even notice it, either--I've got some serious change blindness or something happening.

I forgot about the Pikachu distro, and should probably do that, but mostly I'm worried about the Marshadow thing at GameStop in a week; the one near my university closed over the summer (how does a GameStop within walking distance of three universities go out of business??) and I'll need to find an alternative soonish.

Re: house and Iceland: neat and neat! Good luck with the house; I'm glad you finally got it sorted out or nearly sorted out. As for Iceland... all I know about it is what I've read from Stand Still Stay Silent, and that joke that Iceland is green and Greenland is icy. I'm not very good with the world geography thing, but from the pictures I just found on Google, man is it gorgeous, so obligatory take lots of pictures.

Okay wait part of that itinerary just made it into my brain, how do you have an indoor amusement park?! That's freaking neat.

the people championing USUM seem to be the ones who went with SuMo last time around, so their judgment is already suspect.

excuse me no

SuMo people are going with Ultra SuMo. because they're dumb. SM people are going with USUM or USM (personally i do USUM because it's real easy to write AND being smth u can vocalize is a bonus, but I do BW2 because the two requires you to let go of shift and that's a dealbreaker)

don't you spread this fucking slander i don't want to associate with SuMo people

I was just going off of the Pokémon subreddit, since they were pushing SuMo hard and have apparently settled on USUM; I probably should have known better than to assume that it would be representative of the rest of the internet. But I'm still going with Ultra S&M to the end of time.

no it's just that the SuMo people got drowned out this time around. last time it was like 50% SuMo 50% SM, too.

SuMo was one thing, it was dumb but much more acceptable than Ultra SuMo - now nobody even pays ATTENTION to that suggestion because it's much too far. SM's growing back in usage on the subreddit, too, because people are seeing The Light.

Next splatfest: SuMo Vs. S&M (SM being the obvious superior choice it would be unfair to have it compete).


Topic; are you guys "photo people"? Do you take photos of things often, or do you find yourself thinking "whoops, I forgot that happened, I didn't take any photos of it" all too regularly?

Also topic, I miss OJ!

I'm definitely not a photo person. I hardly ever take photos of anything.

I used to go way overboard in the "too many photos" direction and possibly overcompensated, so now I barely take any. But I'm a big fan of browsing through photo albums!

Also yeah, is OJ okay?

I'm a photo person. Not always; it's been a gradual thing, but now I'm the dedicated "photo guy" of my group. But it's worth noting that I don't do it out of any sense of aesthetic or an interest in photography. I keep photos as reminders for good times and things I don't want to forget - even if it's just small things, like, "oh, that day was really sunny, it was great, or hey, remember this interesting rock? Or that time you found a courtroom, or the shredded snowman torso you built, or the lego museum, or that chocolate cake, or the inflatable unicorn, or the pudgy rescue pigeon, or the frost ferns from that cold snap, progress shots from the gift box you made..." in addition to anything else I want to share with the people I'm close to. It's become a repository for good memories, most of which I'd have forgotten by now. I think it's a nice habit to get into!

Well, we've got a new Japanese trailer. It appears to be showing off some of the changes to the plot, but since I don't know Japanese, I can only hazard a guess as to what's going on. Serebii's got a link to the video if you want to watch it yourself.

Spoiler:

EDIT because I don't want to double-post (not that it matters too much): We've got a new English trailer that's surprisingly not the translated version of yesterday's Japanese one, and man is it a doozy. Y'all know the drill.

Spoiler:

Funny to think the games will be released soon. I keep thinking they'll be out next year.

Still thoroughly underwhelmed generally - you just know 95% of the game is going to play exactly the same despite the awesome cutscenes. But it did get me thinking: During region reruns, I always try to shake up my playthrough. E.G BW2, solo'd the game with just a Carvanha and a Growlithe; ORAS, did a random-egg-run. Even SM was kind of "different" since I capped myself at 4 Pokémon. This time I'm going back to BW2's playstyle, gonna breed some strong Pokémon I haven't used and trade them in whenever I get it.  

Problem is, my breeding collection is already pretty expansive. And this generation was *miserable* for adding competitive Pokémon that aren't effectively legendaries (which I hate, for the record. Like what we needed was more Landoruses and a game where the average Pokémon you can catch in the wild can't compete unless it's got a gimmick, fucking powercreep).

At the moment, I'm thinking Mimikyu, Larvesta, and Shellos, but Mimikyu  will struggle late game, Shellos is pretty passive, and Larvesta is frankly dead weight until probably postgame (and until I find the move relearner). I feel I need an offensive or tanky threat. But I can't think of something interesting that I can use in a proper team later that I haven't already trained?


Edit: oooh maybe Hawlucha?
Edit edit: noooo it's only good on rain teams and needs access to consumables
E3: perhaps Nidoking


Edit: LOL I was busy wonder-trading my Mimikyu spitbacks, and got a Gastrodon back... No biggie, I thought, since you can catch them in the wild. But nope! This is a fully trained level 50 Gastrodon with perfect IVs/nature/ability, HAH what are the odds!


Edit edit edit edit: imma gonna call Mimikyu "Parian", Shellos "Gregor", Larvesta "Khepri" and idk what to call Nidoran yet because my foray through this particular set of themed names has only just begun

Wonder Trade can sometimes produce some great results. Too bad it's so clogged with early-route species.

Time for another batch of Coro Coro leaks! It's not much for now, but there might be more on its way.

Spoiler:

And now we've got an English trailer with more details on the Coro Coro info.

Spoiler:

i'm a real adult boy today

Congrats and welcome to the club! The jacuzzi's to the right, and the complimentary gift baskets are on your left. We're still trying to sort out some kinks with the argumentative gift baskets.

invisibleTerrarium wrote:i'm a real adult boy today

'Grats! With great power comes great responsibility. Both are represented by a ceremonial shaving razor which you are now obliged to purchase, now that you are officially A Man. It's okay though, you can claim the cost as a tax expense if it's under 7 dollars.

That's another thing, now that you're an adult, you have to spend at least 57.3% of your time talking about taxes. It's a law, you can read about it in the Adult Handbook. Not the R-rated one, that one's unrelated. But you can read that too for tips.

Random topic.

Since I've found the current OU metagame (VGC doubles goes without saying) full of legendary-style BSTs and movepools, and therefore boring, (*see below), I've wondered how well I could do defaulting to classic I-battle-with-my-favourites style. Especially against people doing the same. Which I guess... is everyone that doesn't play competitively?

So, instead, "people who play competitively or can do so using their favourites, at max strength, regardless of team synergy or general viability", is the market I'm shooting for.

Mine would probably end up being MSwampert/Scizor/Talonflame/Reuniclus/Dragalge, and probably Minior if I have to choose a sixth. What would everyone else use, if we were to do a tourney? [Disclaimer: we don't have the numbers, the interest, or the organisational skills to do a tourney. But I'm interested all the same.]




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Spoiler:

I totally get where you're coming from. The metagame hasn't felt healthy for a while now. Smogon tries their best, but when GameFreak doesn't put any thought into balance, there's only so much that can be done; VGC, on the other hand, was a lost cause from the start.

Anyways, for my team, I think I'd have to go with Alolan Muk, Metagross, Swampert, Mimikyu, Magmortar, and Serperior. And before you ask, I'd just be picking which Mega to use on a whim.

Happy belated birthday, iT! Being an adult, uh, groceries and cooking. Yes.

I haven't touched Smogon in ages, besides briefly spectating on showdown a few times last year--most of my video gaming experience has been sidetracked by Rimworld and Mario Kart. So I guess I have a good start in ignoring the current scene entirely when constructing this hypothetical team: Alakazam/Metagross/Reuniclus/Aggron/Manectric/Araquanid

I'm also slapping this together at 1am so judgment here can be taken with a grain of salt. I might suddenly feel differently tomorrow.

Not nearly enough cephalopods, guys. You should be ashamed /s

I might swap Scizor and Swampert around mega-wise. Scizor's decent by itself whereas Swampert needs help, but on the other hand, MScizor is baller and I can use regular Swampert to set rocks. Idk. (also psssst heads up Metagrossite was suspected and banned a few months ago... it was only a matter of time though, it was suspect worthy last gen and it only got better this time around)

EDIT: I guess we can always do what Cynthia and co. do in the battle tree - have several sets for different Pokemon and swap them around freely. Out of curiosity - of the "max power" Pokemon you guys have said, how many do you actually own and have trained/bred to a high standard? I'm short a Relaxed Swampert and any Minior.