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Sawyer vs Paul(Battle of the tacticians)

Sawyer vs Paul

  • Sawyer

    Votes: 12 35.3%
  • Paul

    Votes: 21 61.8%
  • Tie

    Votes: 1 2.9%

  • Total voters
    34
Who wins?
 

keepitsimple

site of lies
I don't think Paul has anything that can compete with Sceptile :/ Paul's strongest is Electivire which Sceptile's ability easily takes care of. I think this should be a clear win for Sawyer but a difficult one
 
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blizzardblaze

Comp. Battler Who loves The Anime
Mega Sceptile is also a Pokemon that Paul likely has no experience with if he hasn't encountered Mega Evolution
 

keepitsimple

site of lies
The problem with this is that we need to know how Paul's team has developed offscreen during BW and XY to judge accurately, and we don't.

Pitting a rival from a recent series that competed with Ash at his best against an old character who competed with an earlier, less competent Ash will most likely end with the more recent rival looking better unless we've also seen the older character recently lol
 

Dragalge

"Orange" Magical Girl
I don't think Paul has anything that can compete with Sceptile :/ Paul's strongest is Electivire which Sceptile's ability easily takes care of. I think this should be a clear but difficult win for Sawyer
I agree! With that said, if Toxic Spikes from Drapion gets on the field and if Sceptile is out, it would give it a bit of trouble. Of course there’s Aegislash to take care of the move if it’s not been beaten before Drapion is out (while Salamence can fly and Clawitzer floats...although the latter still could still get affected by them if Drapion grabs him and slams Clawitzer on the ground). Sawyer would still win for sure imo albeit suffering from a bit of poison lol
 

PokemonBattleFanatic-

Well-Known Member
Paul wins in a 6 on 6 full battle,the vast majority of his pokemon are just better trained compared to Sawyer's and Paul is the better battler/planner as well.The only real threat to Paul would be Sawyer's Sceptile in it's mega evolved form.The rest of his team would be a cakewalk,pokemon like Torterra,Magmortar,Ursaring,and Drapion can just breeze through most of his team.Sawyer's biggest chance at winning is in a 1 on 1 battle using his Sceptile in mega evolved form.

Example's Of Paul's Battling Methods
1)Using a pokemon's attack to super charge his pokemon
2)Switching to gain type advantages
3)Sacrificing other pokemon regardless of field status effect
4)Use a status defensive move then switch out to cover up for the next pokemon
5)Countering/Blocking/Tanking Attacks
6)Very Rarely commanding pokemon to dodge opponent's attacks in battle
7)Using 1-2 pokemon as decoys to see the opponent's full team

Pokemon With Status Moves (Paul)
-Honchkrow
-Ninjask
-Froslass
-Magmortar
-Drapion
-Electivire
-Aggron
-Ursaring
-Weavile
-Gliscor

Pokemon With Abilities (Paul)
-Ninjask
-Aggron
-Torterra
-Electivire
-Ursaring
-Honchkrow
-Magmortar
-Froslass
 
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345ash-greninja

Auto-Memories Doll
Sawyer's Sceptile in Mega Evolved form is definitely superior to any of Paul's Pokemon in strength, but Paul has many top calibre powerhouses in his team, so this will be a close match with maybe Paul having a greater chance of winning.

Paul's best Pokemon Electivire is at a huge disadvantage against Mega Sceptile due to Mega Sceptile's typing/immunity, his Torterra is also at a disadvantage because Mega Sceptile quad resists Grass type moves while Torterra is neutral to Grass type attacks, which is why the match I believe would be really close.
Paul wins in a 6 on 6 full battle,the vast majority of his pokemon are just better trained compared to Sawyer's and Paul is the better battler/planner as well.The only real threat to Paul would be Sawyer's Sceptile in it's mega evolved form.The rest of his team would be a cakewalk,pokemon like Torterra,Magmortar,Ursaring,and Drapion can just breeze through most of his team.Sawyer's biggest chance at winning is in a 1 on 1 battle using his Sceptile in mega evolved form.
Magmortar would lose against Clawtizer because of the type disadvantage, Clawitzer defeated Hawlucha + Noivern easily and had no trouble in easily beating Talonflame.

Drapion, despite being a lot more stronger, will have a very tough time against Aegislash, because:

*Aegislash is immune to all Poison type moves.

*Aegislash is quad-resistant against Bug type moves like Pin Missile which is Drapion's only move that can work against Aegislash.

So not quite a cakewalk over Sawyer's remaining team.
 
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Genaller

Silver Soul
What team is Paul using? If he uses his best (T.U.F.E.N.D) then he wins though Sawyer could defeat Paul with either his Lake Acuity or Sinnoh League teams. Paul will have to be careful when dealing with Mega Sceptile since it hard-counters Electivire (his strongest) though in terms of pure tactics/strategy Paul is definitively superior to Sawyer, so he should be able to effectively wear Mega Sceptile down via Toxic Stall. Looking at both trainers’ peak performances we have:

— Paul (Sinnoh League vs Ash)

- Effectively used Metal Sound in conjunction with Flash Cannon to deal Pikachu significant damage with the stat lowering aspect of Metal Sound also making it more viable for Ash to substitute fitting perfectly into Paul’s intial plan of having Ash reveal his team early on.

- Effectively took advantage of Aggron’s Rock Head ability to nullify recoil damage from Double Edge.

- Counter-Sheild both for its intended use as well as to mess with Ash psychologically (more on this later aspect later).

- Utilizing gravity to enhance the power of Water Pulse while at the same time trapping Staraptor with Body Slam in order to ensure a clean hit.

- Paul’s battle psychology in particular how Paul deliberately had counter measures for Ash’s “eureka” plays early on in the battle namely having Gastrodon use a surprise super-effective Ice Beam on Staraptor right after the latter broke free with Close Combat and immediately launching Toxic Spikes after Buizel escapes Drapion’s clutches via floatation sack. Not only did this half Ash’s momentum but it also lead to Ash making an error with regards to using Torterra’s Synthesis (during the Lake Acuity battle Regi explicitly states bad timing on Synthesis is a mistake and that you need to be mindful of an opponent’s battle position before using Synthesis) and on that note Paul deliberately waits till just after Synthesis finishes (at which point Torterra is still vulnerable) before striking in order to further crush Ash’s spirit by conveying that even in a ‘best’ case scenario you’d still loose.

- Baiting Staraptor by pretending like Drapion would take its attack head-on till the last moment prior to dodging and subsequently counter-attacking before Staraptor had a chance to rebound (fyi this is a callback to Ash and Paul’s first battle where Ash employed a similar ‘dodging at the last second’ trick with Aipom against Chimchar).

- Ninjask’s speed augmentation via Speed Boost + Agility allowing it to dodge most opponent attacks making it an effective stall Pokémon against Poisoned foes.

- Froslass’s phasing due to her Snow Cloak ability allowing her to dodge almost any attack while invulnerable making her an effective stall as well (would’ve been far more effective if she had also faced Poisoned foes).

- Electivire’s Battlefield Thunder (which fyi was a callback to Ash’s first gym battle with Roark where Pikachu used it).

- Effectively using Pokémon body parts like Drapion’s tail/claws and Electivire’s tails to ensnare foe Pokémon.

In addition Paul’s overarching intial strategy can be summarized as follows:

Scout: Aggron + Gastrodon
Setter + Sweeper: Drapion
Stall: Ninjask + Froslass
Clean-up: Electivire


— Sawyer (Kalos League vs Ash)

- Factoring in Hawlucha’s battle style concerning getting stronger (due to getting more pumped) by being able to tank foe attacks when selecting Slaking as a Lucha’s counter.

- Reliable recovery in Slack Off

- Turning Hawlucha’s strength agaisnt him with Counter (now here’s the interesting part; based on Serena’s statement and I paraphrase “is he going to drag out the match again, so that he can end it with a OHK Counter” when referring to Talonflame vs Slaking, it seems as though Slaking’s Counter works like a meter where it absorbs all the damage Slaking took until then (including the damage it recovered) and dishes out twice the force of it in one go after which the meter resets, so in that sense it doesn’t work like a standard Counter (which is fine since the same move on different Pokémon has shown to work differently (e.g. Gogoat’s Leech Seed being temporary and immobilizing the opponent in vs Ramos, Stealth Rock in the Olivia GT, Noivern’s Supersonic not causing confusion and instead is portrayed as a mid lvl sound wave attack etc..)) but rather more like Bide with the only difference being that Bide is fired in a beam whilst Slaking’s Counter is fired in a punch.

- Clawitzer’s Aqua Jet tracking for faster chasing.

- Halting Talonflame’s momentum with Ice Beam.

- Cutting down the forest because A) the forest was allowing Pikachu to move and evade more efficiently, and B) the scattered logs made the ground uneven making it more difficult for Pikachu to regain his footing when he falls from the sky.

- Having Salamence tactically fire Incinerates at Noivern in order to lure him close enough to it for an easy clean hit with Dragon Tail.

- Using Salamance’s Protect as a countermeasure for Echolocation.

- Using Slurpuff’s nose to determine Goodra’s location in the smoke and hence launch a surprise attack.

- His (Mega) Sceptile can freely control the trajectory of its Frenzy Plant to a very high degree with the added benefit of this Frenzy Plant not having any recharge time.


In case it isn’t clear the key difference between Paul and Sawyer is that while Paul uses tactics to gain an advantage at the individual battle lvl just like Sawyer, Paul also has a long-term battle strategy in mind that yields far greater team synergy a.k.a Paul is capable to make his teams as a whole significantly more viable than the sum of their parts while Sawyer seems exclusively focused on optimizing the viability of his Pokémon at the individual lvl without giving attention to team synergy which is why he is inferior to Paul in terms of overall trainer skill. Sawyer is still a really good trainer though Paul is literally the only trainer till date that made Pokémon feel like a legit pro-sport.
 

PokemonBattleFanatic-

Well-Known Member
Paul is winning 100% using

-Torterra
-Ursaring
-Honchkrow
-Drapion
-Electivire
-Magmortar

These are Paul's strongest and most reliable pokemon,all are tanks/powerhouses that are capable of consistently sweeping 2-3 Pokemon in full battles.This would be one of the most balanced teams ever assembled in the anime.
 

Mr. Reloaded

Cause a pirate is free
Sure Paul struggles with mega Sceptile, but the rest of Sawyer's team is getting getting stomped.

If anything Drapion would be the wall that Sawyer would have to endure.
 

345ash-greninja

Auto-Memories Doll
Sure Paul struggles with mega Sceptile, but the rest of Sawyer's team is getting getting stomped.

If anything Drapion would be the wall that Sawyer would have to endure.
Literally what made you think that the rest of Sawyer's team are pushovers when there are powerhouses of Clawitzer and Slaking's calibre there?

Aegislash beats Drapion very likely with its enormous advantages. It is immune to Drapion's all of Poison type moves and quad resists Bug type moves like Pin Missile (the only move of Drapion that can technically damage Aegislash. Hardly any plausible way that Drapion can beat Aegislash.
 
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Ignition

We are so back Zygardebros
If they're tacticians, wouldn't Paul research his opponent before the battle? I recall him doing the same in the SL. So I don't understand the "Paul has no knowledge of Mega Sceptile" argument.

I think Paul would win tbh. Sawyer would give a tough fight, but I Think Paul edges him out
 

345ash-greninja

Auto-Memories Doll
If they're tacticians, wouldn't Paul research his opponent before the battle? I recall him doing the same in the SL. So I don't understand the "Paul has no knowledge of Mega Sceptile" argument.
I think they rather mean that Paul isn't actually familiar with what Mega Evolution is, so that might cause problems.

Personally, I voted for a draw, though I might change it afterwards after giving a deeper thought.
 

Genaller

Silver Soul
If they're tacticians, wouldn't Paul research his opponent before the battle? I recall him doing the same in the SL. So I don't understand the "Paul has no knowledge of Mega Sceptile" argument.

I think Paul would win tbh. Sawyer would give a tough fight, but I Think Paul edges him out
I mean in that case Sawyer should also have knowledge of Paul’s Pokémon since he also researched his league opponents. Basically we could separately assess how a battle would go when both trainers are and aren’t given prep time (which would result in very different battles given the trainers we’re discussing). I do agree with your end result though (provided that Paul uses T.U.F.E.N.D).
 

keepitsimple

site of lies
N is Ninjask right? How is Ninjask in Paul's top 6 over Honchkrow and Magmortar? He only appeared in one battle, which he lost .-.
 
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Genaller

Silver Soul
N is Ninjask right? How is Ninjask in Paul's top 6 over Honchkrow and Magmortar? .-.
Was kicking the daylights out of the same Gliscor that later went on to deal the bulk of the damage on Drapion despite being at a massive type disadvantage (Gliscor had both a super-effective Fire Fang and a quad-effective Stone Edge whereas Ninjask was owning it with an nve Fury Cutter). It took a game changing move in underground Flare Blitz to finally hit Ninjask and cripple its speed and even after that Ninjask was still able to deal non-trivial damage on Infernape with an nve Giga Drain and Infernape still needed to concentrate in order to land another hit. Honestly I don’t think Magmortar and (especially) Honchkrow have done anything to suggest they could perform any better against the caliber of opponents Ninjask faced. Also Ninjask has great team synergy with Drapion since it can stall out Poisoned opponents with its incredible speed.
 

blizzardblaze

Comp. Battler Who loves The Anime
With the right Pokemon and team synergy not specifically caught and trained to counter certain Pokemon's battling styles, Sawyer could potentially beat. However, Sawyer is more about utilizing planned out strategies made before the battle, while Paul does that and can come up with multiple strategies as the battle drags on, I'd say both are on either an equal level or Paul would slightly edge out a win in strategy.
 
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