After seeing that Showdown had a ladder for Gen 4 Anything Goes, I started wondering how an Anything Goes metagame would look like in all generations before Gen 6.
Some initial thoughts:
Assumptions:
Gen 5 Anything Goes:
What do you think?
Some initial thoughts:
Assumptions:
- Just like how Gen 6+ Anything Goes still has the Endless Battle Clause, I'm assuming that past gens won't be completely clauseless. The minimum clauses that I'm assuming for past gens are:
- No Glitch Pokemon/moves/items/etc. Not sure if this should include movepool extensions to regular Pokemon caused by Glitch Pokemon or not.
- No unlimited movepool glitches
- No unlimited glitched stats. This includes glitches that can give all Pokemon the stats of all other Pokemon.
- No levels over 100. Actually not 100% sure on this; what major differences are there when everyone is level 255 compared to level 100?
- No desync glitches
Gen 5 Anything Goes:
- Interestingly, if I'm recalling correctly, this is the only gen pre-Gen 6 where we've tested a 'pseudo-Anything Goes' environment, by suspect testing various clauses in Ubers and seeing how the metagame developed. This gives a substantial amount of insight into how Gen 5 Anything Goes would look:
- No OHKO Clause: This clause got re-banned after its suspect test not due to how much luck was involved, but rather how dominant the moves were - if I recall correctly, even the most skillful players were relying on them for their sheer power in the long run. I'm not too familiar with how relevant OHKO moves are in Gen 6+ Anything Goes, but it's possible one would see them more often in a Gen 5 Anything Goes metagame.
- No Evasion Clause: This clause actually got unbanned after its suspect test due to the general offensive strength of the Uber-tier Pokemon outstripping the advantages gained by evasion in the long run. I wouldn't expect evasion moves to have any large impact on a Gen 5 Anything Goes metagame.
- No Moody Clause: Re-banned again thanks to dominance and making games really, really stally. I don't think this shows up too often in Gen 6+ Anything Goes (seems like SwagKey, Mega Ray, and Arceus multiples dominate the meta), but without the first two of those three, again, it sounds possible that this would show up more often in Gen 5.
- No Sleep Clause: Ah, this was my favorite suspect test. Thanks to Gen 5's unique sleep mechanics, I believe the No-Sleep-Clause metagame all-star was Butterfree (with Darkrai only being second place), thanks to Whirlwind spam basically giving the player an unlimited number of free turns (and up to 15 extra free turns even after Butterfree went down, if the opponent's whole team was asleep). This kind of situation doesn't exist in Gen 6+ Anything Goes, but I could definitely see it running wild in Gen 5.
- No Species Clause: The only clause to not be suspect tested in Gen 5 due to running out of time. Multiple Arceus, anyone? Without the previously-mentioned SwagKey and Mega Ray, this is the most dominant theme in Gen 6+ AG that still exists in Gen 5. Being Gen 5's highest BST, this is almost definitely going to stick.
- Overall, this is looking like an Ubers meta punctuated mostly by the lack of Species and Sleep Clauses. The hilarious image I'm having in my head is a team with multiple Arceus facing off against a team with multiple Butterfree (and vice versa), dueling for sleep versus strength.
- Acid Rain has the potential to make this whole metagame a clusterf*** and throw the rest of this paragraph out the window. Aside from that though, sounds like No OHKO and Evasion Clauses will look largely the same as Gen 5, Moody doesn't exist yet, and No Sleep and Species Clauses will be the primary things differentiating this from Ubers. No broken sleep mechanics so no broken Butterfree sweeps, but multiple Darkrai + multiple Arceus will probably dominate.
- Unrestricted EV Arceus (through the Pal Park Retire glitch) is assumed allowed here.
- Here's where things start to become more unpredictable, with everything currently dominating Gen 6+ AG (Mega Ray, SwagKey, Arceus, Darkrai, Primals, etc.) being nonexistent. As I'm writing this I realize that I know almost nothing about Gen 3 Ubers, so the following is wild speculation:
- The only clause I know of that's specific to Gen 3 is Ingrain Clause. This said, is it possible that Baton Pass Evasion-based luck teams will end up coming out on top here?
- Finally, it becomes possible to run a full Ubers team in Gen 2. Never mind that though; unlimited SleepPerishTrap and SleepTrap are legal here. I could see this metagame getting really boring....
- And now we enter the realm of multiple completely unique clauses and 'alternate victory conditions'. Starting with:
- No Cleric Clause: Your team is now allowed to lower their HP and PP by any amount, and self-inflict any status conditions, prior to the battle, since Gen 1 doesn't fully heal the team before link battles. This has the potential to be huge: Self-PSN the whole team, and everyone becomes immune to FRZ, SLP, and PAR permanently. I can see this becoming so dominant that even the lack of Sleep and Freeze Clauses becomes negligible.
- No Sleep/Freeze Clauses: Largely overshadowed by the lack of Cleric Clause. Even the super-broken 30% freeze chance of Blizzard in Japanese Gen 1 pre-Yellow becomes irrelevant.
- No OHKO/Evasion Clauses: I have a couple of flashbacks to RBY days before these clauses existed, including when Smogon had an RBY Mew set featuring OHKO spam, but I don't recall either of these becoming any sort of dominating force.
- No Species Clause: I am not looking forward to facing six poisoned Mewtwos.
- No Invulnerability Clause: And here's the 'alternate victory condition'. Use No Cleric Clause to start the battle with one or more team members paralyzed running Fly or Dig, spam it until a user becomes fully paralyzed during an invulnerable turn, and then watch as every last move except Swift misses and misses. (Moves like Thunder and Earthquake don't work in Gen 1.) Is Swift going to be run on everything in response? Are teams full of six Gengars going to be used to punish opponents running too much Swift? Only one way to find out.
What do you think?
Last edited: