Gym Leader #6 - Winona of Fortree City -was another tough battle. It took five attempts before I could beat her, and I have to totally blame myself. You see, I tend to become fiercely loyal to my party members... meaning that I rarely switch them out. For the majority of the game now, I've been keeping four pokemon always in the party, with two rotator positions depending on if I'm purposely training up a type or if I need a particular HM. So I knowingly entered the Winona battle with Grovyle at a type disadvantage, and Tentacool and Gringo not much better. After a couple defeats it becomes a matter of honor, and I feel like I have to find a way to beat the enemy and have the "weak" ones walk off with a couple experience points.
Darkling (my Sableye's new nickname!) did most of the early work with her Secret Power attack, although I did have to feed her five Super Potions to get her through it. She took out Winona's Swellow and Pelipper and was lucky not to get too wrecked by unlucky misses and confusion hits. My new Voltorb had no trouble with Winona's third battler, a Skarmory. There I had a type advantage, and I enjoyed watching Winona waste her own Potions on the Skarmory.
The last pokemon was the big mother, an Altaria. With two very tough attacks, Earthquake and Dragonbreath, this match had been the only reason I had lost every prior attempt. Tentacool was waffled, Gringo stepped in to stall, and both were quickly forgotten. But I think I uncovered something about Winona's Altaria: it doesn't like to go second. When facing a faster pokemon - like my Razorbeak - it would use a non-damaging move to increase its speed several times in a row. So after being softened up a bit by the others, Razorbeak was able to finish off the Altaria in a couple Quick Attacks.
My Egg finally hatched into a Wynaut. I highly doubt I will work much with it, because I've never been a big fan of its evolution, the Wobbuffett.
After the battle, I did something I've read about but never tried: I stopped an evolution. My Voltorb hit level 31 and was evolving into an Electrode. I halted it because I think Voltorbs look much, much cooler than Electrodes. They look meaner. I guess we'll see if I crippled his natural growth by forcing him to remain in his basic form.
Beating Winona lets you use the Fly move to travel between towns, which is great because I'm tired of walking.
I taught the Fly HM to Razorbeak, as you might expect. Razorbeak knew Quick Attack, Peck, Double Team, and Wing Attack... I replaced the Wing Attack with Fly. Normally, I would have replaced the weaker move Peck, but Peck happens to be a very strong and straight-forward pageant appeal... and I'm hoping to get Razorbeak a couple more Cool Contest Award Ribbons. It's interesting trying to balance the attack moves with the appeal moves. The pageants are a great addition to Sapphire/Ruby; I wish they would have been made more prominent and not just an ignorable side-game.
Time: 26:04
Badges: 6
Pokedex: 48 (seen: 91)
Party: Darkling (Sableye) lv37, Gringo (Mightyena) lv31, Grovyle lv33, Razorbeak (Swellow) lv34, Voltorb lv31, Tentacool lv34
