#01 - The Beginning

Well, here it is. The thing I made this whole blog for. My New Game Plus run of Radical Red.

For context, Radical Red was the second mod I ended up playing, and the one I really fell in love with. I love the changes to mons, the difficulty, most of the decisions made (i do dislike how so many gym leaders are no longer monotype, but that's just me), and I had a blast playing through it the first time with a mono ground team. Unfortunately I wasn't blogging that run, so I can't share details. But the gist is this: Gastrodon my beloved, and Sand Rush Excadrill is king.

So at the encouragement of a friend of mine, I decided to do a NG+ run with mono ground, and post updates of how I approach the problems of a monotype run.

To clarify what rules and restrictions I'll be working under:

- This is NOT a nuzlocke, I will be free to catch as many ground types as I like (i'll likely grab all of them that I can). Fainted pokemon are not dead. I understand this might immediately lose some interest, but I've never really enjoyed the idea of playing a Nuzlocke. I hope the other restrictions will be enough to keep yall interested.
- Once I acquire a Ground type (which must be as soon as I can), I can only ever bring Ground type pokemon to battle. Mons that aren't Ground type yet have to wait in the box until I can evolve them into Ground types.
- It won't come up for this run because I'm using Ground types, but for those curious how I'd run for other types: A Mega evolution that gains the focal type of the run can't happen. For example: if I'm doing a Mono Dark run, I can't add Mega Gyarados to my team. For a Mono Flying run, I could add base form Gyarados, but couldn't Mega Evolve it. For Ground types this won't come up, but I feel like it helps explain my philosophy.
- I will not be using the in-game Monotype feature, where in NG+ you can recieve random 6 mons of the monotype you choose by inputting a code in the Pokemon Center. I will have to find all my Ground types from the environment, and I won't get any before the game would usually allow.

These restrictions are in addition to the ones set in the Radical Red Hardcore modifiers, which include:

Now, for my pre-game thoughts, strategies, and tidbits.

The biggest difficulty increase between my first run and this one is going to be the removal of weather control from my arsenal. My original team had Sand Stream Hippowdon and Sand Rush Excadrill as part of its core, for obvious reasons. Some of the difficulty puzzles in Radical Red are designed around enemy weather teams enabling strategies, and by playing my cards right I could shut down most of the enemy's sauce by ensuring Sandstorm was the weather of the game. And Sand Rush Excadrill is an absolute MONSTER, so ludicrously fast that even with a base speed of 88, it can outrun most things in the game even without a speed boosting nature. That leaves you open to fully invest in its impressive base 135 physical attack to fuel a fantastic move pool with Earthquake, Iron Head, and Rock Slide.
The lack of player weather control, combined with the removal of EVs in RR Hardcore mode is going to drastically nerf Excadrill. I suspect I'll still use it for its fantastic attack stat, good typing, and access to Rapid spin. But it's undeniable the MVP of my previous run is going to be hit hard from these changes.

Zooming out for a moment, I want to discuss some of the actual philosophy of a monotype run from the perspective of me: someone who's done a few before and loves the concept. Monotype teams obvious have one major hinderance that make them pretty uncommon in actual human gameplay: shared weaknesses. A team of all Electric types will all have an innate vulnerability to Ground type attacks unless you go out of your way to choose mons (like Elektross, Rotom, or Zapdos) who can somehow circumvent that weakness. In addition, you also run into type stereotypes, like Electric types having poor access to STAB physical attacks, or Steel types being on the slower side on average. I think a lot of people tend to let these stereotypes define how they think of a monotype team, which I can't fault them for, as these stereotypes are based on reality. But it's important to take into account how a clever player can work around those drawbacks and typical weaknesses.

I'll use my winning team from last run to describe what I mean.

My champion team from my first Radical Red Ground run. Hippowdon, Excadrill, Gastrodon, Quagsire, Garchomp, and Gliscor.

Here's my team after I cleared the champion (also after I set them to level cap because now they're all big number).
Ground is known as a physically bulky type, rather on the slow side. Ground is immune to Electric, resists Poison and Rock, and is weak to Water, Grass, and Ice. So what did I do here?

First: the type matchups.
For Grass types, you'll notice that Calamity the Excadrill, Tyrant the Garchomp, and Assassin the Gliscor are all neutral to Grass due to their respective secondary typings, Steel, Dragon, and Flying. Excadrill and Gliscor both have rather high physical defense as well, and Assassin was one of my two premier physical walls through most of the run, so you may ask what I did to fend off special Grass moves. Before I attempted the E4C run, I looked at the move coverage I'd be running into, and the only special Grass moves I had to worry about could be avoided through proper setup, ensuring the mons carrying them went down before I ever had to worry. Again, Sand Rush Excadrill is diabolical. However, if I was worried about Special Grass coverage, I had other options as well. Toedscruel has a base special defense of 120 and Grass/Ground typing, leaving it neutral to Water and Grass. Clodsire has a base special defense of 100 and a base hp of 130, making it another of my premier special walls. In fact, I actually had four dedicated walls throughout the run: two physical, two special. And each was meant to ensure I'd never be caught with a 4x weakness on one side or another. Gliscor is neutral to Grass, and Quagsire resists the Water and Ice type moves that would hurt Gliscor. On the special side, my beloved Gastrodon was immune to Water thanks to the ability Storm Drain, and resists Ice type moves. And for those special Grass type moves to threaten it, my go-to pick was Clodsire. Admittedly, this may sound like a lot of hoops to jump through just to have basic defensive switches, but it's a variability I don't think many people give monotype teams credit for having. If a gym leader was smart, they could easily make it so Little Timmy's Blastoise didn't carve up their entire Ground type gym.

The other main restriction that you generally have to worry about with monotypes is when a type tends to specialize in one thing in favor of another. For this run, it was the unfortunate general slowness of Ground types, and their preference towards physical attackers over special attackers. The highest base speed Ground types available in Radical Red only cap out at base 120, which is respectably fast, but for a dex that includes gen 9 mons it's kinda lacking sometimes. Again, in my last playthrough, Sand Rush Excadrill was the great equalizer that outsped basically everything, but in this current run it won't be so easy. Especially now that my access to boosting moves will be basically gutted. I'm definitely going to need to be creative with how I play my cards here. But, there is still some hope. You'll notice in my champion team I also had Garchomp with its respectable 102 base speed. I had a Choice Scarf on it to make a rather speedy revenge killer. Another frequent member of my team was Mamoswine, thanks to its incredible offensive STAB combo of Ice/Ground, and priority Ice Shard which hit like a truck. Dugtrio is still an early option with a 120 base speed, and Alolan Dugtrio as well with base 110 speed. But more than anything, it's simply going to take a lot of planning and thinking things through. Which, if you can't tell, is why I love Monotype runs.

So, some pre-game predictions:

My team will probably look a bit different, to say the least. With Sandstorm no longer at my command, Hippowdon and Excadrill immediately lose a lot of their power. While Hippowdon is actually a very bulky mon, I don't think it can provide enough other advantages to see use. Excadrill might also be on the chopping block depending on how things go, its primary draw without reliable Sand Rush would be Mold Breaker and a high attack stat. And while those are certainly very valuable traits, Ground actually has a few Rapid Spinners, like Toesdcruel and Claydol. And unlike Excadrill, Toedscruel and Claydol have the unique trait of being primarily special attack/defense focused, which isn't common among Ground types. Ultimately we'll see what happens, but I suspect things might not be in their favor.
Another victim of the removal of EVs in Radical Red Hardcore is Marowak, who was actually a superstar in my previous early game due to bonkers high attack stat from Thick Club doubling attack EVs. Radical Red also buffs Marowak (and Alolan Marowak) with a signature ability Bone Zone, which allows Bone moves to ignore immunities and resistances. So while it eventually fell off due to a tricky 45 base speed, Marowak hits not like a truck, but like a truck carrying a bunch of other trucks (you know like those trucks that carry a bunch of cars, those ones).
In general I expect my team is going to be a lot more varied this time. In my previous run, I had a core of basically 5 I almost never swapped out: Hippowdon, Excadrill, Gastrodon, Clodsire, and Gliscor (yes I had to remove Clodsire for my champion run, it was a necessary strategy). This time, I expect I'll need to move things around a lot more to keep moving.

So, what can you expect from this upcoming run? Why should you follow my journey?
Because I'm going to really break down my thought process and decision making behind each choice going into each major fight. Radical Red has exquisite documentation, including a list of noteworthy trainers. I'll put a link to the full documentation folder somewhere, if you look at the Hardcore Mode Info & Hardcore Bosses spreadsheet under the Trainer Order tab, that's what I'll be using for my own guide on the pacing of updates and posting. I'm not sure when exactly I'll start the run proper, in mid June I'll be busy with something for a little under two weeks, which may slow progress on this project. But! Stay tuned.