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Beat my first hardcore nuzlocke without using setup moves in White 2 challenge mode today. Tried twice before but failed. Had some close calls on the way and it left me with only 5 solid team-members. Crustle was the hanger-on, and in hindsight the wrong move. Dude did fuck-all the entire E4. At the end I had Excadrill, Cofagrigus and Scrafty left alive.
- Leveled my team to 59.9 before starting, since the E4's extra levels don't properly give stats I didn't want to go too high.
- Blind besides what I could remember, so I remembered some mons like Iris Haxorus, Shauntals Chandelure or Marshal having Sawk/Throh. But knew basically 0 moves.
- I really struggled to find good dragon/ice-moves for Iris, ended up basically just with Arcanine and Starmie for carries.
- Marshal and Iris were the really scary fights but I had close calls multiple times.
- Excadrill and Arcanine were MVPs overall with Earthquake and Flare Blitz/Outrage. I was annoyed at getting Flash Fire Growlithe at the start of the run but it saved my ass against Chandelure by letting me switch in without taking damage.
- Starmie critting and oneshotting Hydreigon with Gem-boosted Ice Beam was the MVP play (I don't think this team could have won without that gem, the only one I ended up using - threw a couple others on during E4 but they were never relevant). Runner up was 8-HP Excadrill outspeeding and killing Archeops for the final kill, which was probably only possible because of challenge mode erroneously not giving stats for the extra levels. Without that I would have had only full-HP Cofagrigus and half-HP Scrafty to kill it - potentially still doable since Cofagrigus had Will-o-Wisp and took very little damage from it, and Iris was out of Full Restores. Never needed to find out though!
Biggest bullshit death was losing a tanky mon (I genuinely forgot what mon it was) to soak + Giga Drain in a triple battle because I wasn't prepared for one and ended up with two slow fucks in my frontlines.
