Fun PvP Themed Battles
In the weeks since PvP has launched, I've noticed that themed battles have become an increasingly popular thing in my local community. Here's some examples of what people have come up with:
• Shiny match - each team consists of only shinies.
• Trade match - each team consists of Mons acquired in trades.
• Lucky match - same as the trade match, but limited further to only luckies.
• Color-coordinated match - all Mons on a team must share a predominant color. Opponent can select a different color than yours.
• Type theme match - all Mons on a team must share at least one typing. Opponent can select a different typing than yours.
• Characteristics match - all Mons on a team must share at least one similar attribute (they all have wings, fins, horns, etc). Opponent can pick something different than you.
• Level 1 match - level one Mons only.
• Hatch match - only lvl 20 Mons hatched from eggs can be used.
• Throwback match - teams must consist of Mons caught during either 2016 or 2017.
• Maximum regret match - each player uses Mons they wish they hadn't maxed out.
• Trash match - teams must consist of Mons caught the day of the match. Raid boss/research catches can't be used.
• Name game match - each Mon's name has to start with a specific letter.
• Littlest league match: hatched lvl 20 baby Mons only.
I'm curious to hear other ideas for PvP themes, whether you've tried them out or not! Any suggestions are welcome, especially fun/interesting ones!
Answers
I think this is exactly why a good number of people I know don't care for master league matches. The legendary barrier to entry is quite steep when you consider the costs of maxing them out and unlocking extra attacks. To counter this, I've been more frequently seeing players request master tier battles where legendaries aren't allowed.
Maybe I'm in the minority (although, I kinda doubt it), but I would prefer a "non-Legendary" Master League. I've done two Tier5 raids (Heatran), and only caught one of those. All my other legendaries are level 15 research rewards, and I'm not too interested in powering-up those to be competitive in Master League.
I've already got pokemon I caught pre-PVP -- a 100% IV Rhyperior, Gyarados, Electrivire, Machamp, Swampert (and others). Most 100% IV pokemon I've leveled to 35+; but I doubt these will be competitive against the top-tier legendary pokemon. If there was a non-legendary Master League, I'd be content to continue powering-up my perfect non-legendaries to compete against other players and their pokemon collections.
Why should other players have to abide by your requests? They put in the effort and resources to get their pokemon up there, they shouldn't be bothered by people saying "no legendaries".
Sure, it may be "steep", but if people actually thought about the future they would've saved up resources instead of powering up 6 machamps/groudons, etc...
You only need to power up/unlock 2nd move for one or two and any decent player should be able to afford that.
Not my request, for clarification's sake. I'm just sharing something I've been seeing more frequently when people do master tier battles. And while unlocking for one or two legendaries may not seem that difficult to us, at 100k dust and 100 candies a pop, it's no joke for a lot of players (the candy requirement, especially).
I've unlocked moves for quite a few legendaries (some were terrible choices), so I welcome all challengers. But I can empathize with players who aren't swimming in candies/dust and don't have a powerhouse legendary team to throw down with in that league.
Only some legendaries have I been able to pursue with anything like a reasonable rate (10+ raid attempts). That's still not enough (especially before silver pinaps) to unlock a second move. I would rather invest in boosting a second (or third or fourth) copy for Tier 4 solos or lowman Tier 5s than unlock a second move for my one Groudon of eight attempts.
Even passing the barrier to entry, I think Master league is just terribly boring. The top 10 or 15 pokemon in that league are so strong that you literally can't bring anything else. In great league, by comparison, there are many viable counters to the top neutral TDO threats and a well built counter team with a much lower neutral TDO can beat the top meta team.
Many thanks for starting this topic, there are some great options here. My wife and I have also been doing battles where all the mons have to start with the same letter. It was fine till we got to I - she put up 3 Igglybuff's and I didn't have the heart to stomp them, so I lost.
That said, I'd like to do all baby fights.
Any chance you could edit your initial post to collect all extra ideas suggested by repliers ?
My brother came up with an idea that sort of levels the big power gap that lies between us since he stopped playing for almost a year and a half (he hadn't caught a single legendary before Cresselia). Using a random generator number, we have to choose our team depending on the characteristics of the Pokemon that lies in that number at the selection screen and we can only choose downwards from that entry. For example: number 18 comes up, so we each scroll down to whatever Pokemon is in the 18th spot when choosing a team and the whole team has to be chosen to match something about that Pokemon from the 18th spot in order of CP. We have done colors, typing, shapes (dog, cat, reptile, demon, etc), and some other things I can't remember right now. If we are going by types, if the 18th spot is Poliwrath for me then I can only choose either 2 fighting or 2 water types for the rest of my team. If his 18th Pokemon is Venusaur he can only select 2 more Mons that are both either grass or poison. This ensures I don't overpower him all of the time because it forces a luck factor that wouldn't otherwise been there and makes fights very unpredictable when the most unlikely fighters come in into the arena. Most of the time we dont even know which attacks we are using and some very fun and interesting matchups have taken place by using this method or variants of it.
