August 15, 2015

Five Wins Or Bust
Phew. I’m back. I try not to bore pet battlers with the minutiae of my life, so I will only say that I have been working extremely long hours to get my new class room into shape, and the time had paid off; it’s bad ass. That wasn’t so bad.

The break from hard core battling has made realize that my approach is quite a bit different than what it once was. There’s a broad spectrum of pet battlers ranging from those who pick the best possible team in order to win (competitive teams) to those who pick teams based on what pets they like, regardless of how good the pets are (fun teams). I used to feel I was very close to the middle, but lately I feel that I have moved a lot closer to the competitive end of the spectrum. The fact that my five most played teams all have a 1st-tier pet on them is a testament to that. I have stated a few times that I think it’s a lot harder to be successful with fun teams in the current meta due to power creep, but I really want to bring myself back to the middle path despite that.

Does that mean that I will not be using Graves or the FoA? No. I will still use them when the queue is competitive, just hopefully not as much. My first order of business is to get a team without a 1st-tier pet into the elite company of the Hundred Win Club tab, so today I’ll do a sort of tryouts for that team. Let’s do it!

Battle 1: Black Bones I (25-4)
Fiendish Imp, Macabre Marionette, Mechanical Scorpid
vs. Weebomination, Spawn Of Onyxia, Puddle Terror
Ok, why does this feel like cheating? The Fiendish Imp is about as close to the 1st tier without actually being 1st-tier as you can get. In other words, it’s one of the best 2nd-tier pets. It would be pretty cool to get the Macabre Marionette and Mechanical Scorpid into my elite tab, plus this team is a quarter of the way there. Make that thirteen fiftieths (lol) after this win. I knew I was facing a new or reckless battler because they started off with the dragon using the ramp-up move Breath against the imp. That’s a no-no since the imp can just force out the dragon before the second turn of Breath, which I did, essentially making my opponent waste two rounds. After back lining the dragon I brought in the scorpid since the puppet would be weak against the Puddle Terror that got forced in by Nether Gate. Black Claw helped take out the enemy aquatic quickly. The Weebomination had too much ground to make up when it finally came in, so the result ended in my favor.
Record: 1-0

Battle 2: Beakbone Grinder (15-2-1)
Macabre Marionette, Mechanical Axebeak, Stonegrinder
vs. Puddle Terror, Kun-Lai Runt, Frosty
I think I’ve decided that the Macabre Marionette needs to get some adoration. I must find a good puppet team. This team has a pretty good record, and Sotegrinder has already shown it can be a component of an elite team, my best team to date, in fact (Owngrinders). Having said that, something feels a little lacking with Beakbone Grinder. This battle was a long, twenty-five round swap fest as my opponent refused to leave the KLR in against my undead or the Puddle Terror in against my flyer. Damn them and their good swaps! I was able to prevail thanks to the extra attack I got from Decoy and the Deep Freeze not proccing a stun. I used to want Frosty really bad, but my desire has since diminished somewhat.
Record: 2-0

Battle 3: Party Party Party (1-1)
Tiny Twister, Macabre Marionette, Lil’ Bling
vs. Anubisath Idol, Molten Corgi, Core Hound Pup
This team may already have over a hundred wins from 5.4, but alas, I’ve only been keeping team records since April 2015. I won this battle, but it was very close and took thirty-two rounds of intense thinking. The problem I had was that the two elementals were double counters to Lil’ Bling so I wanted to use my mech against the idol, but I also needed to use the Tiny Twister against the idol in order to change the weather from sandstorm to lightning. It was a delicate situation for me. I managed to make good predictions as to when deflection would be used so I got some free swaps out of that, which was probably the difference in the battle.
Record: 3-0

Battle 4: The Warriors (4-0)
Macabre Marionette, Puddle Terror, Vengeful Porcupette
vs. Lil’ Bling, Molten Corgi, Mojo
Wow, this team has three pets that I’d like to use a lot more, so I may take it to one hundred based on just that. Plus, the Vengeful Porcupette is damn good. On paper it never seems to be, but almost every time that I use it I’m impressed with how well it does. This battle was no different. After the Macabre Marionette and Lil’ Bling cancelled each other out, the Vengeful Porcupette came in to use Powerball in order to out speed the frog, then used Spirit Spikes to mitigate the damage of Frog Kiss. My beast got poly’d and was still able to do damage thanks to Spirit Spikes. The porcupette killed the frog then used Powerball again to out speed the Molten Corgi, then I swapped in the Puddle Terror to finish off the elemental. My opponent fled rather than get taken out by the Puddle Terror.
Record: 4-0

Battle 5: Black Bones W (13-3)
Macabre Marionette, Mechanical Scorpid, Swamp Croaker
vs. Graves, Kovok, Stormwing
Hmm, frogs. A lot of people have so much success with frogs, but I never have. Sure, they are double counters to undead, but they aren’t that great against everything else in my opinion. This battle was a short one so I’ll give you the round by round:

Round 1: Swarm Of Flies / Grave Destruction
Round 2: Bubble / BONESTORM
Round 3: swap to Macabre Marionette / swap to Kovok
Round 4: Pheromones / Bone Barrage
Round 5: Poison Fang / Death and Decay
Round 6: swap to Graves / Bone Barrage
Round 7: Macabre Maraca / BONESTORM
Round 8: Bone Barrage / Grave Destruction (Graves to 0)
Round 9: Death and Decay / Skull Toss (Macabre Marionette to 0, Kovok in)
Round 10: Pheromones / Bone Barrage (Mechanical Scorpid in)
Round 11: Barbed Stinger (Kovok died, Stormwing in)
Round 12: Call Lightning / Black Claw (Mechanical Scorpid to 0)
Round 13: Thunderbolt (Mechanical Scorpid died)
Round 14: Quills / Bubble (Stormwing died from Bone Barrage)

The battle came down to whether or not Quills would hit a third time on that last round; it didn’t. I cast Bubble for the hell of it since I knew the Bone Barrage ticks would kill Stormwing. It’s good to be back, it’s especially good to go 5-0 without any 1st-tier pets. Out of all these teams I’m leaning towards taking The Warriors to one hundred wins. Five down, ninety-five to go.