Pokemon Conquest- Conquest Three: Watering the Garden (5/7)

Motochika’s position is strong and he knows it- if you don’t head after him, he’s perfectly happy to have his forces sit in place and wait for time to run out on you.  Fortunately, he doesn’t play chasing games once you near him or the battle would be virtually hopeless.  Instead, there are two main options for crossing the channels with a minimum of trouble.

First of all, you can rush all your forces downhill so that you’re only worrying about one floodgate.  While this makes switch management a lot easier, it means that you’re staying close to the damaging fountain, which can be a bit difficult to manage while facing enemy forces.  On the other hand, your forces will be less spread out and can support each other much more effectively- it’s likely to give Pansage’s Melee ability a lot of use as well, and give it chances to hit multiple targets at once with Vine Whip.

Alternatively, you can charge straight across the battlefield.  As you’re likely to have more Pokemon on the field than Motochika does, this can be a good way to overwhelm him, especially if you drop Sewaddle on the switches- their offense won’t be missed much, and they won’t be easily knocked out by enemy Pokemon that stop on the corresponding switches to try and keep the floodgates open.  This will then open him up to some degree of dogpiling if you’re cautious about your Pokemon placement when you fight.  It’s a little tougher to manage both floodgates so that all your forces can cross, especially with Motochika’s working directly to open the gates back up, which he can do even when you’ve already got Pokemon on the switches to close the gates, but it’s an overall faster strategy, assuming you either don’t mind constantly hitting floodgate switches or can stand managing your forces the right way to take advantage.

Whichever way you handle it, you’re going to want to be careful around the channels- crossing them is Motochika’s cue to attack and giving him a whole turn of free strikes really isn’t in your best interest even with the massive advantage of multiple Grass Pokemon.  A good option is to park at the end of one turn with all your Pokemon exactly two spaces away from the channel- this means that you’re not in range of a quick Water Gun or Bubble attack, but leaves your forces close enough to cross over the moment you have someone step on a trigger panel and close a floodgate.