I beat Red!!!!

Thanks to some coaching by a fellow EGGer, I have humiliated Red!!!

Lugia

To take a break from my training regime (for the purposes of levelling my team to battle Red), I decided to go and catch Lugia. I found a walkthrough on Youtube for finding Lugia's cave which proved to be really helpful.
As for catching  Lugia itself, it was a reasonable challenge. I used my level 74 Ampharos to weaken it. I let fly with a Discharge, thinking that Lugia, being a legendary, would have a relatively high Sp. Def. The attack caused enough damage to bring Lugia's HP to just below halfway. Then I followed up with 2 Strength attacks. When Lugia used Punishment, it got Paralysed. In theory, a non-volatile status condition would make the affected Pokemon easier to capture. In any case, I managed to get Lugia's HP down to a tiny sliver.
At this point, I stopped attacking and started throwing the Dusk Balls. I chose Dusk Balls for catching Lugia because I was going to be in a cave environment and Dusk Balls are supposed to be quite good for such environment as well as for nighttime battles. I had about 60 Dusk Balls in my bag, in anticipation of a long battle. After half a dozen Dusk Balls, I managed to get Lugia.
If only catching Entei was this easy...

HG Progress Update

I decided to make a point of obtaining all of the Gym Leaders' phone numbers so I could rebattle them. The original problem was that I didn't know when and where to find the gym leaders to obtain their numbers.
Thankfully Serebii had a list of when and where to find the gym leaders, as well as a summary of their rematch teams. What cheeses me off is that some of the Gym Leaders will only give you their number if you've fulfilled certain "special requirements". Its not like Platinum where you can just go to the Top Trainer Cafe and battle a random selection of Gym Leaders.

Battle Team focus: Vaporeon

I'm the sort of Pokemon player that likes to optimise their team.
As such, I decided to bring out Vaporeon and retire Starmie. If truth be told, I originally brought over Vaporeon to get an Eevee, which I later evolved into an Espeon (once Eevee learnt Bite). I was after a Water Special Attacker, hence the relocation of Vaporeon. Vaporeon was at level 26 when it came over, so now I am devoting a significant portion of my gametime to leveling it up.

The Unown Report

On a whim, I decided I'd have a go at finishing the Unown Report. I originally thought that all of the entrances to the Ruins of Alph started from the grounds themselves. That was until I discovered that 2 of them were accessible only through Union Cave. I finished the 4 puzzles with some help from Pyspokes. After finishing said puzzles, it was a matter of wandering around the lower area of the Ruins until I got all 26 alphabet Unown. I then went back and visited the hidden back rooms for each puzzle, before talking to the scientist near the back of the Research Centre. This made the ? and ! Unown available. After catching these two little buggers, I went back to the same scientist to fill out my report.

Team HeartGold

During my many play-throughss of Pokemon, my main battle team has seen a lot of variations. So I thought I'd share some of the more recent line-ups:

Team HeartGold:

• Feraligatr (Water) / Bruiser - In almost every play-through, I've started with the water type.
• Togekiss (Normal/Flying) - I got a Togepi from the Mystery Egg. It took a while to evolve it into a Togetic, then I transferred one of my Shiny Stones over from Platinum to get Togekiss.
• Ampharos (Electric) - Each and every one of my Gen IV teams always had a local Electric type. In Sinnoh it was Shinx/Luxio/Luxray. In Johto it was Ampharos.
• Steelix (Steel/Ground) / "Rocky" - I got this guy from one of the NPCs in the game. I thought it would be interesting to try and raise an Onix into a Steelix so I traded it over to my copy of Platinum and back.
• Starmie (Water/Psychic) - I got Staryu in Cherrygrove City. I had to fish for it. Staryu is apparently pretty rare in the game, so I guess I got lucky.
• Glaceon (Ice) - I got an Eevee somewhere in the game. I wanted to have an Ice type to battle Claire and Lance with, so I transferred it over to Platinum and levelled it on Route 217.
• Weavile (Dark/Ice) - As mentioned in Battle Team Focus: Weavile, I got Weavile via chain breeding. I wanted to retire Glaceon and bring out another Ice type, preferably one with some speed.

Changes to Team HeartGold

At the moment, I have some Pokemon in storage that could be worthy team members. I am not entirely sure if I should put them on the roster or not.

• Ralts - This one is male, so I was contemplating evolving it into Gallade at some point.
• Dratini - Evolve into Dragonite.
• Chinchou??? - Lanturn seems like a reasonable choice.
• Nincada - Evolves into Ninjask and if I have a spot in my party and a Pokeball to spare, Sheninja as well.

Mt Mortar sidequest

I'm a visual kind of person, meaning that I work better if I have pictures and the like to go on. This is particularly true when I play games.

A few days ago, I tried to go through the Mt Mortar sidequest using Youtube video tutorial. I wanted to get TM40 Aerial Ace for Weavile, which (as Bulbapedia says) is only found in Mt Mortar in HeartGold. The video wasn't particularly helpful because it skipped through a lot of sections.
I thus went to my next option: game maps. I found a map for Mt Mortar at Psypokes. Psypoke's maps had individual images/maps for each level of Mt Mortar. The entrances and such were labelled so it was very easy for me to figure out how to navigate my way around the place. I also bumped into Kiyo, who fans of the anime series may remember as having befriended an abandoned Tyrogue. I found TM40 somewhere in the middle of the Upper Level.
As with any sidequest, I packed plenty of Max Repels. Then it was just a matter of following the map until I found TM40.

Battle Team focus: Weavile

After my success with a Weavile in Pokemon Pearl, I decided to try and teach Ice Punch to my Sneasel in Pokemon HeartGold.
The plan was:

• I needed to transfer it to Pokemon Platinum to tutor the move
• Upon arrival, I discovered I was lacking in shards to trade to the move tutor.
• I then had to send over one of my male Medicham (which had Ice Punch) and a female Buneary.
• I then had to go through the tedious task of breeding them to get a male Buneary.
• Upon acquiring said Buneary, I was able to breed it with my female Sneasel to get another Sneasel which knew Ice Punch.

To be frank, the above process was rather trying, in the sense that I was getting about half a dozen or so female Buneary before I got a male one. In the end, it was worth it because the resultant Weavile is going to be a permanent fixture on the team from now on.
Pokemon summary:
Level: 37
Type(s): Dark/Ice
HP: 107
Attack: 98
Defense: 58
Sp. Atk: 44
Sp. Def: 83
Speed: 111
Moveset: Quick Attack, Aerial Ace, Night Slash, Ice Punch