"Notes from an EX-Raid (with only three invitees)"

#PokemonGO: Firstly, a caveat. I am massively appreciative of having received an EX-Pass. The opportunity to raid Mewtwo was fantastic, and until l received the pass I was of the opinion that it would never happen to me. Cos, well, you know, Niantic. I realise that I was incredibly lucky to get one and that millions of more deserving people haven't had a sniff yet. I get it. But...So I received an EX-pass in the last wave. Totally out of the blue, especially as I realised it about twelve hours after my WhatsApp group chat (of a constant 254 active raiders in a fairly small town on the edge of London) found out that they had been announced. Not one of the group had received a pass that night, but somebody from a London-wide Discord group had gotten one for an EX-raid in Kingston, so the WhatsApp group knew that there was a raid going on in Kingston that wave of EX-passes. Not a single person from the incredibly active raid group based in Kingston had gotten a raid pass. Until I woke up."Hooray!!" thought I. "Hang on" thought I, "why am I the only one to have gotten a pass?".So I thought about the gym, thought about when i'd raided there. It is a very central location in Kingston (I'd say one of the most central gyms) with a lot of popular raids and a high level of turnover. I often solo raids on the way into work, and this is one gym that is on the route, or at least a slight deviation that i'm happy to make. Its also a gold gym for me, as well as a lot of the raid group (again, of 254 active members). So, it could have been one of many solo raids, or one of a couple of legendary raids that I've taken part in there. But if only I got a pass, surely it couldn't have been the legendary raids? Others from the group must have been invited surely?Anyway. Skip forward to today. 1500hrs. I arrive at the gym which my team-mates have been holding on to all day long in order to give me the best possible chance of capturing the elusive Mewtwo (thanks guys). We fend off a very half-hearted last minute effort to sway the gym to a rival team, and the moment arrives.There is nobody there.I excitedly use my EX-raid pass and start a lobby. One person joins me; the person from the other side of the monument that was half-heartedly attacking the gym for the last 45 minutes. We nervously talk about trying to find other people that had the same EX-pass without joy, and even start to hope that "air support" would bail us out as we could clearly not take down Mewtwo by ourselves.This continues for a couple of lobbies-worth of time until A THIRD person arrives! "Thank goodness, maybe they're all stuck in a queue or something!". Again, we patiently wait for more people, all the while waiting in lobbies hoping and praying for the one thing that we all detest more than anything to come to our aid.But nothing.So we get talking about which raids might have triggered the pass being proffered to our happy hands. Turns out that the third guy has only ever done one raid in Kingston, a Sandslash around a week ago.A Sandslash.How many people regularly go out and raid a Sandslash? Not many I'd wager.Surely they cant genuinely believe that a tier 2 raid will attract enough individual trainers to warrant dishing out EX-passes on the back of one raid?Surely my experience clearly proves that this is absolute madness?Three trainers turned up to a Mewtwo raid. One lives out of town and was passing through and randomly did a level 2 solo to use his free raid pass. One was here for the day shopping and used his free pass on a level 2 solo. And I used my free pass on a level 2 solo on the way home from work.No spoofers helped us in the EX-raid because no sane spoofer would ever use a pass on a Sandslash! Clearly barely anybody uses their passes on Sandslash!In the end we got to a whisker of defeating the Mewtwo between me, a level 40 with above awesome counters, another level 40 with awesome counters, and a level 31 with (and I mean no disrespect; he himself said that he had recently graduated and had only started playing again recently) very bad counters. We probably would have defeated Mewtwo had EVERY SINGLE battle not times out with 3 seconds left to go. Each time I thought that we had won, only to see the time out screen with two seconds still on the timer at the top of the screen.TL:DR: Three people were invited to an EX-raid in an extremely active, well organised and communicative area. Turns out it was because they'd all solo'd a Sandslash about a week before the invites were sent out. It didn't end well. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2FhaKDX