Happy Z–A Season, everyone!

At the end of last season, I foolishly said this quote:

For what it's worth, I did try it. I gave Mega Zygarde exactly four matches. I don't think I've ever had as little fun using a Pokémon in this game, even going back to that Mega Baxcalibur season. What I did not know when I naively said this was that you cannot immediately Mega Evolve your Mega Zygarde. Even if your Mega Charge is at 100%, you have to wait until Zygarde has taken enough damage (I think 50%) before you can Mega Evolve. And that massive bulk was not helping "Mega" Zygarde in the slightest.

So instead I went back to Mega Garchomp Z. Did it work? It was still a well-rounded team in theory, so it should work, right? Let's find out.

Not really sure what else to say about these three. This is now my third season in a row using them. I may as well have copy-pasted last season's.

Metagross has the Steel and Psychic typing. It's very heavy and has the lock-on move Heavy Slam. It's great for getting a first hit move, especially on Quasartico, Inc., where you spawn within attacking range. My Metagross is specifically an anti-Meta Tech Metagross with the following build:

Metagross @Shuca Berry
- Ice Punch [To take out Ice-types and Gyarados]
- Earthquake [To hit a wide area on the field]
- Thunder Punch [To take out Flying- and Water-Types]
- Heavy Slam [STAB that also destroys anything tiny]

Like I said above, Garchomp in general is significantly faster than Zygarde. It can swing across the field at enemies and wide wide range areas at will. Zygarde, in turn, suffers from the same weaknesses as (almost every) other Dragon: they're Super Effective against each other and often come down to who hits first, they're easily countered by Fairy- and Ice-types, and everyone and their mther has seen them all so they're prepared.

Gyarados is a Water/Flying-type. It's blue. In one game it was guaranteed to be red for a single encounter. This is my seventh time running Gyarados over eleven seasons, if you need a description of what Gyarados does then please read through the Competitive Pokémon section and scroll through this game's tab.

	Game	Me	P2	P3	P4
Rank Z	#1	5	2	4	3
Rank V	#2	10	1	0	6
Rank Q	#3	5	3	4	8
Rank P	#4	6	1	7	DQ
Rank N	#5	9	4	3	4
Rank L	#6	3	1	4	12
Rank K	#7	12	0	3	1
Rank I	#8	11	5	3	0
Rank H	#9	6	2	9	1
Rank G	#10	9	5	3	2
Rank F	#11	9	2	6	2
Rank E	#12	14	3	0	4
	#13	7	4	4	4
Rank D	#14	7	1	6	2
	#15	8	1	1	7
Rank C	#16	6	9	3	6
	#17	8	4	4	2
Rank B	#18	4	7	3	2
	#19	5	2	4	5
	#20	5	0	3	6
	#21	4	6	6	6

For the second time in this game's history, I completely underestimated Mewtwo in particular. Weirdly enough Mewotwo and Alakazam were both popular, Alakazam likely a budget version of Mewtwo if you couldn't afford it, but I had absolutely no trouble outplaying Mega Alakazam whereas normal Mewtwo gave me headaches.

For context, this is my specific Metagross build. You may have noticed that, despite being a Steel/Psychic-type, I don't have any STAB Psychic moves on it. That was very intentional. Heavy Slam is by far Metagross's strongest move in general, and the other three moves have typings that counter extremely common typings in the meta:

• Ice Punch [Ice] counters Flying-, Ground-, Grass-, and Dragon-types
• Earthquake [Ground] counters Poison-, Rock-, Fire-, Electric-, and Steel-types.
• Thunder Punch [Electric] counters Flying- and Water-types

My point is that Metagross's purpose is for STAB Steel (or Super STAB Steel against frail opponents of any type) and niche anti-meta moves. If I were to redo this season, I think I would probably replace Thunder Punch with one of those moves Metagross has that counters Psychic. Off the top of my head, probably Ghost-type Shadow Punch since I remember seeing a Mega Golurk, a Mimikyu, and a Mega Froslass (not that any of those Pokémon gave me trouble).

Besides that, the team performed relatively well. Not as well as the last two seasons, but still pretty good (60% average in a game with four players is fine by me). I know I don't want to play this team a fourth time in a row (and I don't want to run Gyarados for an eighth run), so we'll see which Pokémon are available next time.

Before formally closing off, I want to end on the most frustrating part of this run. Do you see that last game? Here's that last game's score screen:

Click me to see the summary screen.

What do you mean I got most of the "Effective Attacker" bonus points and still got fourth place??? That match was brutal. I've never seen a fourth-place match that made so many points. I don't think I've even seen third-place matches like that.