"[Story] Reaching my first 10 gym reward -or- How I finally prevailed against the local spoofers"

#PokemonGO: I'm a late-comer. I didn't start playing until mid-February when Gen 2 hit. The rush of catching (and hatching) so many new Pokemon every day was exhilarating — I still remember my Day 1 Dratini and Pikachu. What team to join? Mystic, of course — no question.I contributed a fair amount of cash and a lot of time into walking and hatching eggs and catching everything in sight. Notwithstanding a few small, foolish stardust investments, I was pleased to see some decent CP pokemon rising to the top as the weeks went by and decided to give the local gyms a shot. It was then I realized just how vital gyms are as a source of stardust and coins. I also realized that I had no friends to gym with. I also also realized that my town was dominated by Team Valor (love ya', Red); I hadn't even checked before choosing a team. And then the worst realization hit: my town was owned by GPS spoofers. A few accounts were consistently at the top of each gym, and I couldn't hold anything I took for more than a couple of hours. Obviously, Team Rocket had a hand in this.After some exploration, I discovered my town had 9 gyms. 4 were clustered downtown, another 2 a short drive away, and the rest, scattered. All regularly controlled by spoofers and those benefiting from their deeds. A strategy slowly formed over time: 1) Get out in the morning during other people's work hours. 2) Reduce any close proximity non-Mystic gyms down to <2000 prestige. 3) Drive to and take as many distant gyms as was possible and reasonable on my own. 4) Return to and quickly take the drained gyms. 5) Cash in. 6) Hope my team members would build up the gyms later.Of course, this strategy required a lot of time and a lot of revives and potions, wasn't guaranteed to work, and was completely undone by 6pm each night. For the most part, I was netting 4-6 gyms, but I occasionally got hit back by spoofers in the middle of my run and had to settle for a 1-4 return. Super fun. "All this for 20-40 coins and a 1-2k stardust?", I wondered. Well, at least there's the XP, too, I consoled myself. And, perhaps, the sense that justice, even justice in a game, was being done. (Of course, I reported the spoofers whenever appropriate, but what else could be done but to keep fighting the good fight?)I nearly stopped gyming altogether. But was it worth continuing to play at all if I was going to stop playing half of game? Maybe I should quit and start over on another team. No...neither of those options felt right. I decided to try some gyms in other nearby towns and, to my delight, found that I could get in and stay in a few. It was a relief. Rewards from yesterday's battles for once! But it didn't take away the spoofers in my town.And then a game update came... and it did seem take away some of the spoofers! Not all, but some! A small victory. I had also finally learned how to properly prestige a gym and adjusted my strategy to build up gyms more, so at least any attackers had to hit them twice. If nothing else, it served as an early warning system, so to speak, to tell me if an emergency cash-in was necessary mid-run.Finally, today happened. After 78 days of grinding and leveling and crying and sweating and fighting and reporting, I cashed in on 10 gyms. 100 coins and 5K stardust never felt so good. And the cherry on top was that 7 of the gyms in my hometown held my very own Pokemon. Of course, I was back to holding 3 after just 2 hours, but...10 gyms. It happened.tl;dr: After 2 months and 3 weeks of play, I finally held 10 gyms — 7 of which were in my hometown, which has been plagued with spoofers — and received the full reward. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2qeIs93