Guess this’ll be the last blog post from me for 2025. At the time of writing this I am sick with a cold on what should’ve been a very peaceful four day weekend. As such, my mind’s not all there and I can’t enjoy DK Bananza (fantastic game by the way, genuinely recommend it) because I can’t think straight. So in order to gather some semblance of clarity, I figure I’ll make a blog post about one of Mr. Cosmia and I’s gaming endeavors.

As Mr. Cosmia put it in his Pokemon Violet review, we met and became friends due to our shared interest in Pokemon. This was back during the 6th generation in 2014 and we enjoyed our time battling. Mr. Cosmia was very adept at the competitive aspect of the game, making many a mon that I (someone who didn’t know the first thing about competitive battling) would struggle to take down in our matches. A lot of them were gimmicky sets, built to whittle down my health slowly and ensure that I would lose due to using most of my stronger team members first. And for the longest time, I wasn’t able to beat him, it felt like I was going up against a brick wall half the time that just kept growing taller and taller each attempt.

And then, Gen 8 happened.

Gen 8 of Pokemon is a very divisive generation among fans as it was when Dexxit occurred, where the series moved away from being able to use every monster that the series had come up with. This along with a lot of game balancing that cut down on certain mon’s competitive viability meant that I might actually have a shot at winning this time. But what I didn’t know is that both me and Mr. Cosmia would bear witness to one of the most hilarious stall wars that to this day, can’t be replicated.

When choosing team members, I tend to go with mons that have “soldier” like qualities to them, which means a lot of fighting, steel and rock types. Mr. Cosmia chooses ghost types mostly, along with other types that fit his personality. In this specific battle, we had two mons that would prove to be near unkillable, A mirror armor Corviknight on my side, and a galarian corsola on his.

Pictures of the above combatants. One key thing that must be understood about these two mons is that they are primarily tanks. They have excellent recovery options, good defensive stats and solid move pools, which is vital to stay on the field. My corviknight had mirror armor as it’s ability, which allowed any stat reduction inflicted on it to be reflected back to its sender (I.E, something comes in with intimidate, which lowers attack of the opposing pokemon on entry. Mirror armor prevents Corviknight’s attack from lowering and inflicts the opponent with the debuff instead). As for the corsola, it had cursed body (disables a move used against it 30% of the time). As for moves, I used a simple set of body press, iron defense, drill peck and roost while Mr. Cosmia’s corsola had will o wisp, hex, strength sap (this will be important later) and another move that I forgot it had. My corviknight held leftovers for passive recovery and the corsola had an eviolite, boosting its already good defensive stats to monstrous levels. With the combatants set, we entered the battle and bore witness to the stall.

Right off the bat, corsola inflicted my corviknight with a will o wisp, burning it. Thanks to leftovers though, the chip damage would be negated, but that did leave it more vulnerable to hex doing double damage. I use drill peck (I can’t use body press as it’s a fighting move, and corsola being a ghost type makes it immune to fighting moves) and it does okay damage. Then corsola uses strength sap, recovering the damage and lowering my attack (which doesn’t happen, as mirror armor reflects the debuff). I use drill peck again, doing the same amount of damage. The corsola uses strength sap (again), with the same result.

This would go on for the next 20 minutes (unfortunately, GameFreak hates singles format and reduced the battle time to 20 minutes) with neither side making much headway. Any sizable damage done was ultimately rendered moot by recovery options and immense bulk on each side. And yet, the mental image alone of a crow fruitlessly attempting to kill literal dead coral was not lost on either of us. Neither side won that stalemate and it will be forever known as the battle of the crow and coral.

Cosmia: Alright hold up there. Sorry I usually don’t butt into the stuff you write. But I was checking my overly large list of drafts and I couldn’t help but notice this story was among them. Considering how I’m directly involved I’m going to add my two cents. First off, I’ll clarify Corsola’s moveset. That guy was packing Will-O-Wisp, Strength Sap, Night Shade, and Stealth Rock. I can understand why you’d forget Stealth Rock, I wasn’t exactly using it much for that fight. I mean, why would I? You only need to use it once unless the hazards get cleared, and it does absolutely nothing when there’s only one opposing Pokemon left. Besides PP stalling, which might’ve come in clutch if we didn’t get fucking timed out. 

Alas we were foiled by Gamefreak’s heavily reduced battle time limits. Honestly since Gen 8 I’ve kind of gotten over the Pokedex thing. I’m not especially happy about it but I understand the reasoning. That time limit change still annoys me to this day. It’s part of their push to speed up the game or whatever. Lower the time limits, introduce new crazy strong offensive Pokemon, make some changes that nerf defensive Pokemon. Because nerfing recover’s PP was clearly the most important balance change they had to make. Those damn defensive Pokemon, always living and shit. They made Toxapex a little too good and they overcorrected hard. I’m basically just going on a tangent rant at this point, but it annoys me greatly. It’s a big part of what killed my investment in the series. Before then I could tolerate the uninspired aspects if the battles were good. But with the game treating slower defensive plays with increasing hostility I lose my investment. You guys didn’t have to cut the game time down that hard. Even half an hour would’ve been fine, we probably could’ve resolved that fight with an extra 10 minutes. But NOPE. The battle was too powerful for Gen 8 Single Battles to contain. 

Man just typing all of this out makes me realize I’ve still got a lot of pent up resentment surrounding this series. It used to be my shit, the best thing ever when I was like, 8. It had a very major role in forging some of the most important friendships in my life. And then gradually from Ultra Moon and beyond that enthusiasm faded. But still, while it lasted that was a good ass fight. I don’t know if we’ve had a better one since then. I’m still just really annoyed that Gamefreak decided to cut it short with their arbitrary ass time limits. Fuck. 

It was indeed a stalemate, so we’ll never for sure who would’ve won that battle if it played out. I recall being convinced I was on pace to win at the time, but it’s difficult to objectively determine. Not mentioned by Spartan is the fact we later did a replay of our coral and crow dance one on one. That time his crow ultimately won out. This isn’t too surprising, Corviknight is the stronger pokemon in general. However, the situation was a bit different in the original duel. 

It’s not as if we literally just had a metal bird and dead coral fight for 20 minutes. We had a whole ass 6 v 6 single battle that went down to wire and ended in a stall war stalemate. I don’t remember exactly what Spartan had that round, but whatever it was had to get past my Dragapult and Cramorant to get to this point. Before this battle even started we did a number on each other. I also recall the crow and coral met earlier in the duel before the rematch at the end. Point is by the time we reached the Battle of Crow and Coral the rest of our teams already put some work in. And as I recall that Corviknight was a big factor in how he dealt with the rest of my team. So when we started the fight we weren’t necessarily all at full health and PP. And there’s certain luck based factors that could’ve changed the tides regardless. So truthfully we will never know how that battle would have ended for sure. Stalemate indeed.

Another thing I’d like to point out is how I used night shade rather than hex. I imagine if Spartan ever used Galarian Corsola he would have employed hex, and it would have the advantages he explained. It might have actually given me a bigger advantage in this scenario. The hex would do double damage and his crow’s got more physical bulk than special. However, Corsola has weak attacking stats so it still wouldn’t do that much. Night shade does consistent damage and hits harder than a corsola hex on average. I suppose that’s a bit of a difference in our move choices. I’m not some Mr. Optimal Everything player. The fact I was using Galarian Corsola at all should tell you that much. But I try to give those unoptimal Pokemon as strong of a moveset as I can. I often refer to Smogon for my sets, perhaps a bit too heavily. In the competitive Pokemon world the consistent move is better than the situationally useful move, and I tend to follow that. I do fuck around some times, I sometimes ran belch Seviper in Gen 6. It sucked, I loved it. But I’m hard pressed to think of anything I’d run the move hex on. You just can’t count on your opponent having status effects applied all the time, and it’s a weak move without it. 

Spartan tends to forge his own path for his pokemon teams. Sometimes he’ll come up with these clever plans that catch me off guard and hand me Ls. Sometimes he runs with something kinda goofy and not especially hard to deal with. To his credit his clever to goofy ratio has improved over time, and I give him points for creativity either way. His Corviknight’s actually pretty conventional by his standards, though drill peck over brave bird is not the standard choice. I thought iron defense was weird at the time, though if you check Smogon it turns out that’s actually a thing people use on it. Go figure. Not something I’d recommend for most Pokemon but it works here apparently. Not particularly useful against Galarian Corsola outside of PP stalling though. 

That’s a big part of how this fight was able to drag out so much. We had two moves each that were damn near useless for the fight. Will-o-wisp is good to get a burn going, but you don’t get anything out of using it twice on a burned pokemon. Stealth rock might have nicked his Corviknight a bit when he got in, but there’s not much point in using it again when it’s already on the field. Even if it wasn’t already applied you can’t switch out when there’s only one pokemon left. Meanwhile Corviknight can’t use fighting move body press against my ghost coral, and iron defense ain’t doing shit either. So the fight boiled down to burned drill peck vs. fixed damage night shade. Neither of those do anything impressive. We both had little trouble recovering HP before things got dicey. And then sometimes cursed body temporarily blocked drill peck, basically forcing it to waste a move occasionally. A war of attrition cut short before we could see who’d slip first. They’re still fighting on in our hearts. 

In other news I’ve made a visual representation for the occasion.

Thank you Mr. Cosmia for filling in the blanks of my memory and for the inspired image of that fateful fight. I think this is a good post to end the year on. Nothing depressing or politically charged, But rather self reflection on a pivotal gaming moment. Here’s to hoping more happen in the future in 2026!

(Also, the reason I chose drill peck over Brave bird is because I hate recoil moves unless I’m able to negate them).