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Published on April 20th, 2015 | by R Inanimate

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They’re Eying Each Other Warily: Team Preview Guide ver.2015

Hello again, this is R Inanimate. One of the first articles I wrote for Nugget Bridge was an article regarding Team Preview. While a lot of points in that article still hold true today, it’s hard to deny that it is out of date with regards to the where we are now with 6th Gen battles. As such, I felt that I should spend the time to rewrite it and bring it up to speed.

Team Preview and selection are a very important part of playing Pokémon battles. This is where the battle begins. This is before the point where we worry about luck factors swaying the results. This is where information and assumptions can dictate the future direction of the battle. Team Preview is a game of information. It tests the player on what they know about the opponent’s team based on the six species that they see and what they know about their own team in order to match up against the opposition. A player needs to take what they know and apply that to a four Pokemon selection that will lead them to victory.

As with my previous article, I state the following disclaimer: “Due to the nature of Team Preview, don’t expect me to be able to tell you a perfect answer to every Team Preview situation you will find yourself involved in with the current team that you are using.” Team Previews are subjective and dynamic. What one needs to pay attention to will differ depending on the team they are using and their own personal play style and skill level.

For example, someone may choose to bring a team and lead based on a prediction of what their opponent might lead, while another player may try to look for a more conservative team set up where they have a safe lead that can keep them from falling behind regardless of what their opponent may bring. In this article, I hope to share some things to look for in Team Preview, as well as some ideas and strategies to keep in mind while making a team selection.

What is Team Preview?

Team Preview is the screen you see just before a battle begins. You will see the six Pokemon team of your opponent on the top screen and your own team of six on the touch screen. Here you will choose the four Pokemon that you want to have participate in the battle. The first two chosen will be who you lead with and the third and fourth member chosen will be in reserve to be switched in or to replace a fainted Pokemon.

A timer is active on Team Preview, providing you with 90 seconds to decide on which four Pokemon to bring into battle. Should a player not CONFIRM their decision within the 90 seconds provided, the game will automatically fill in the remainder of the team, starting from the top of their list.

Just to be clear, this will mean that the two Pokemon in the top row of the screen will be sent out as leads and the two in the middle row will be brought in the back. So, if you don’t want the game making the most lazy team decision for you, it’s critical that you get your selection submitted within the 90 seconds. Likewise, it’s a good idea to take note of what you see as the first 4 Pokemon on the opponent’s team just in case that they run out of time.

What to look for?

It is important to see what your opponent has on their team and quickly assess some of the key features on their team. One way is to simply know and familiarize yourself with what each individual Pokemon can do. Having this level of information is ideal, and it tends to be something that people develop over time through practice, but it can be an overwhelming amount of information for newer players.

If you do want to try to improve your knowledge, start with some of the more common individual Pokemon in the current metagame. There is an overview article that can be found on NuggetBridge that can give you an idea of the Pokemon one may see in VGC 2015. Alternatively, you can check some usage statistics for Battle Spot Doubles for the ORAS League on the GBU website and see what sort of movesets are popular for various Pokemon.

Instead of giving an overview of individual Pokemon capabilities again, I will instead cover a number of supportive Moves and Abilities common in Double Battles. What they do, why you should be aware of them, and what Pokemon have these capabilities. When looking at this list, you should ask yourself:

1. Does your team care about x?
2. If so, how does your team deal with x?

Not every team needs to be concerned with every single little thing. But every team should have at least some sort of game plan for every single little thing they come across. After all, even if something isn’t considered to be a threat, careless actions can make one eat their words. This list of supportive options are not written in any particular order.

Potential Megas

New to XY and ORAS is the introduction of Mega Evolution. Many of the popular Mega Pokemon have a decent balance in how their 100 Base Stat gain is distributed, along with a change in ability that boosts their damage potential (Parental Bond, Huge Power, Tough Claws, etc.) or provides a strong supportive ability (Shadow Tag, Intimidate, etc.).

Since only one Pokemon on a team may Mega Evolve per battle, usually teams will have only one Pokemon that is able to Mega Evolve. While not as common as in 2014, dual Mega teams are still seen on occasion. Unless there’s a lot of threats on an opposing team discouraging its usage, people will bring their Mega Pokemon to the battle, so quickly identifying which Mega you’ll be dealing with is a good place to start when deciding which four Pokemon you want to bring into battle.

Some of the more popular Mega Pokemon include: Kangaskhan, Mawile, Charizard-Y, Metagross, Salamence, Venusaur, Swampert, Gengar, and Camerupt

Fake Out

Fake Out is a 40 Power Normal-Type Move that can only be used on the first turn that a Pokemon is active on the field. The selling point of this move is that it acts at +3 Priority and has has a 100% flinch rate. As such, this move cannot be redirected and its target will be prevented from moving for one turn, provided that they don’t have Inner Focus or Shield Dust.

Fake Out has great utility in covering your partner from a threat for one turn, making potential set ups like Trick Room or Tailwind harder to disrupt. Alternatively, it can be punishing against Pokemon without Protect, forcing them to lose a turn and be at the mercy of your partner, who can get free damage on them.

Recognizing that your opponent does not have any means of Fake Out support can make it safer for Pokemon holding choice items to lead in battles. If the opponent does have a potential Fake Out user, it is a good idea to think about what you can do in order to play around it and avoid falling behind early in the battle.

Fake Out has a fairly wide distribution. Kangaskhan is by far the most common user of Fake Out simply because it is one of the most used Pokemon in VGC 2015, but other Pokemon with Fake Out you may see include: Ludicolo, Infernape, Raichu, Weavile, Scrafty, Hitmontop, Hariyama, Lopunny, and Mienshao

Intimidate

The introduction of Mega Pokemon to the scene has brought in a handful of Pokemon that are able to brute force their way through their opposition with heavy hitting STAB attacks. This motivated players to have a number of ways to handle these Pokemon. Intimidate is one of the tools that people use to weaken these heavy hitters and make them more managable for their team.

Intimidate is an ability that activates upon entering play, either by a Pokemon entering the field with the ability or from a Pokemon gaining the ability in mid-battle with something like Skill Swap or Trace. When it activates, it lowers that Attack of BOTH opposing Pokemon by one stage. Since it doesn’t require any moves to be used at all, it is easy to execute and is a flexible way to debuff the active opponents’ Attack stat.

A person can lead with an Intimidate Pokemon and start the battle off with their opponent’s Pokemon at -1 Attack. They can also switch out to a Pokemon with Intimidate, simultaneously dropping the opposing Pokemon’s Attack while bringing in a new Pokemon that may have a more favourable match up. Looking back at some past articles of teams that made top cut in larger tourneys, you’ll see that a good 66% of teams have at least one Pokemon with Intimidate on them, even for past formats like VGC’13 and VGC’14.

Landorus-T and Salamanece are the two most likely Pokemon that you’ll run into that have Intimidate. However, other Pokemon include: Gyarados, Staraptor, Arcanine, Mawile, and Mega Manectric.

Defiant and Competitive

As a consequence of Intimidate being such a valuable tool, Pokemon with Defiant and the newly introduced Competitive abilities are more popular. These two abilities increase a Pokemon’s offense stats whenever they are afflicted with a stat drop from the opponent. Defiant will increase Attack by 2 stages every time an opponent drops one of the Pokemon’s stats while Competitive will increase Special Attack by 2 stages for every dropped stat.

These Abilities are used to deter Intimidate users, as the Attack drop from Intimidate will trigger a boost to Defiant or Competitive users, leaving them at +1 Atk or +2 SpAtk respectively. If you aren’t careful, feeding a boost into these Pokemon can lead to a dire situation.

Bisharp and Milotic are the two most commonly seen with these abilities, but you may want to keep an eye out for Pokemon such as Primeape, Braviary, or Wigglytuff. Tornadus and Thundurus have Defiant as Hidden Abilities but, currently in VGC 2015, they are not legal for VGC play.

Auto-Weather

Auto-Weather, as the term suggests, refers to Pokemon with abilities that summon a weather condition upon entry. If two Pokemon enter the field at the same time, the slower Pokemon’s weather condition will overwrite the faster Pokemon’s, thus “winning” the weather war. Some Pokemon have an Auto-Weather ability upon Mega Evolution. In those situations, since Mega Evolution occurs after switch ins, they will always win weather wars against other Auto-Weather Pokemon, save for a slower Pokemon Mega Evolving at the same time.

Unlike previous generations, weather from these Pokemon are no longer permanent, lasting for the usual five turns (eight if they are holding their respective weather stone) as if they used a weather move like Rain Dance. Long gone are the days of mandatory weather wars, where it was almost necessary to have some sort of weather changer of your team. Still, every now and then you will see people who run teams with some reliance on weather, particularly rain or sun.

Each weather has a ton of different effects associated with them, so it’s easier to just look up each weather condition on your own. While manual weather users have a use here and there, it’s mostly important to just look at the Pokemon with Auto-weather themselves. Those Pokemon are:

Drizzle: Politoed
Drought: Ninetales, Charizard-Y
Sand Stream: Tyranitar(+Mega Tyranitar), Hippowdon
Snow Warning: Abomasnow(+Mega Abomasnow), Aurorus

Prankster

Everyone’s favourite ability. Prankster grants +1 Priority to all status moves performed by the user. This can make it fairly easy for these Pokemon to spew out status effects and disruption through moves like Taunt, Will-o-Wisp, Thunder Wave, Encore, and Swagger. Most Prankster Pokemon are purely supportive, except Thundurus who’s Base 125 SpAtk allows it to deal respectable damage even without any investment.

These Pokemon can be a huge pain if left unchecked for too long, so being able to find a way to minimize the disruption they can cause to your team can go a long way in winning battles against teams that rely on Prankster support. After all, the last thing you want to see is your entire team bogged down with Paralysis and relying on RNG every time you make a move.

There’s a small selection of Pokemon with Prankster. Thundurus is the most common one, but there is also Whimsicott, Sableye, Meowstic, Liepard, and Klefki that are used as Prankster Supporters.

Trick Room Users

Trick Room is a field effect that reverses turn order within a priority bracket for the next four turns. This means that a Pokemon with a higher Speed stat will move after a Pokemon with a lower Speed stat, but moves with increased Priority, such as Protect, Mach Punch, or Sucker Punch will still move ahead of everyone else. This can be a total nightmare for faster, aggressive teams as they find themselves unable to mount a counterattack, even if they manage to survive the four turns of Trick Room.

Teams that have Trick Room will often include a good amount of slower, bulkier Pokemon. Since Trick Room is a lowered priority move and requires a Pokemon to move last, they often need support to get Trick Room up. Being able to stop Trick Room from ever going up is huge against a Trick Room team, but don’t expect it to be easy. If you think that trying to stop the set up is a good enough to beat Trick Room, you’ll be in for a rough time.

Common Trick Room users include: Cresselia, Gothitelle, Slowbro/Slowking, Aromatisse, Dusclops, Jellicent, Chandelure, Porygon2
Common Trick Room Attackers may include: Mega Mawile, Mega Camerupt, Conkeldurr, Abomasnow, Hariyama, Tyranitar, Gastrodon, Sylveon, Rhyperior, Heatran
Common Trick Room Supporters may include: Scrafty, Amoonguss, Clefable, Choice Scarf Landorus-T

Follow Me / Rage Powder

Often referred to as Redirection moves because of their effect, Follow Me and Rage Powder are +2 Priority moves that will cause all single target moves used by opponents to be redirected towards the user of Follow Me or Rage Powder, with the exception of Sky Drop. Do note that these two moves are not identical. Since Rage Powder is a powder move, it will not redirect moves away from Pokemon that are unaffected by powder moves, such as Grass-type Pokemon, Pokemon with the Overcoat ability, and Pokemon carrying Safety Goggles.

Redirection is a powerful supportive tool in Double Battles, as it allows a Pokemon to cover their ally from a wide variety of moves, guarding them from damage and harmful statuses. It can also be used as a way to disrupt strategies where one may try to target their own teammate.

Redirection lets the user’s ally move freely. If you are not prepared for Redirection, it can put you in a situation where your opponent has a number of free turns where his other Pokemon can attack or set up. If you see a Pokemon with Follow Me or Rage Powder on a team, you’ll need to bring something to deal with it, because you’ll likely have to take it out first whether you want to or not.

Follow Me is seen from Togekiss, Clefable, Clefairy, and Pachirisu
Rage Powder is mostly seen from Amoonguss and Volcarona

Minimize

Minimize is a move that increases evasion by two stages. Every now and then, on Battle Spot, you will run into people who try to set up an Eviolite Chansey with Minimize (or a Clefable with Minimize and Cosmic Power). This can lead to a situation where they try to win by making a last stand with a +6 Evade Chansey, eventually coming back from something like a 3v1 situation simply because you are unable to land consecutive hits while they just restore their HP with Softboiled from the few hits that do land.

It’s a slow and frustrating strategy to play against, but fortunately time is not on their side during live events with the 15min/45s timer. If you ever see a Chansey during a live event, you may want to consider playing towards a timer win as early as possible.

Tailwind

Tailwind is a move that doubles Speed of the user’s team for the next three Turns. Tailwind’s boost is not tied to changes in Speed stages, so being at -1 Speed under Tailwind will be 1.33x Speed while being at +1 Speed under Tailwind is 3x Speed. Teams with Tailwind users typically uses the three turns to mount an offense instead of setting up further.

Since the move Tailwind doesn’t have lowered priority like Trick Room, it is a lot easier to set up, especially with Pokemon like Whimsicott or Talonflame who get increased priority for it. However, the duration of Tailwind is shorter and it can be counteracted by moves like Thunder Wave or Icy Wind, making it not that difficult to endure. Still, it definitely requires some planning and foresight. If you aren’t careful, you may find yourself taking more damage than you would like, or end up in a situation where the opponent can easily set up another Tailwind.

Now that Tailwind has returned as a tutor in ORAS, Suicune, Whimsicott, and anything that has wings can learn Tailwind. The prime suspects will be Zapdos, Suicune, Whimsicott, Togekiss, and Talonflame.

Wide Guard

Wide Guard is a +3 Priority move that protects the user and its ally from damaging spread moves, such as Earthquake, Heat Wave and Rock Slide. The key word here is “damaging”. It does not block multi-targeting status moves such as Dark Void, Teeter Dance or Leer from affecting the party.

Since its update in 6th gen, Wide Guard can be used consecutively as many times as you like without ever failing. However, consecutive uses of Wide Guard will still effect the chances of using Protect successfully. Feint will remove the effects of Wide Guard for the entire party if it deals damage to any Pokemon protected by it.

Wide Guard is not so significant that people will think “Oh boy, I need to have something that can deal with Wide Guard!”, but it is definitely something that one should be aware of.

Most commonly, Aegislash is seen as a potential user of Wide Guard. Aside from Aegislash, Pokemon like Hitmontop, Mantine, Swampert, and Mienshao also often run Wide Guard.

Quick Guard

Quick Guard, like Wide Guard, is a +3 Priority move. However, instead of blocking damaging spread moves, Quick Guard blocks priority moves. In this gen, this includes blocking moves that are acting at increased Priority due to Prankster or Gale Wings. As Quick Guard is the same Priority as Fake Out, one must be faster than the Fake Out user in order to block it with Quick Guard. Lastly, Feint will still break Quick Guard, even though it is a Priority move.

The main selling point of Quick Guard would be its ability to block Fake Out and keep Prankster Pokemon at bay. There is a relatively diverse distribution of competitively viable Pokemon that can learn Quick Guard, but it isn’t a staple move on anything at this given point. For example, looking at Battle Spot statistics, Quick Guard tends to be used, at most, 30% of the time on a Pokemon. As such, it’s something to keep in mind, but not something to really worry about until you actually see it. Hopefully, it won’t be too late by that point.

Lightning Rod

Lightning Rod is an ability that redirects all Electric attacks towards the Pokemon with the ability. The Pokemon is also granted immunity to Electric-type moves and their Special Attack goes up by one stage whenever it is hit by one. This applies to non-damaging Electric-type moves, such as Thunder Wave. Lightning Rod cannot redirect moves that are self-targeting or multi-targeting, though it will still be immune and boosted in the latter case. An interesting quirk about Lightning Rod is that it will also redirect Electric-type moves from its ally.

Lightning Rod is a powerful ability due to its utility in protecting the team from Electric-type attacks and paralysis from Thunder Wave. In this regard, it can severely restrict Electric-type Pokemon from functioning properly in a battle. As such, if you are relying on Electric-types to do some work for you, removal of Lightning Rod Pokemon is a priority.

While Lightning Rod is a powerful ability, a lot of the common Pokemon using it are extremely frail. Either that or they are Rhydon. The usual Lightning Rod users seen in VGC are Raichu, Manectric, and Mega Sceptile. Do note that such terrifying Pokemon as Seaking, Plusle, and Zebstrika also have access to this ability.

Storm Drain

Essentially Lightning Rod for Water-type moves, Storm Drain redirects Water attacks towards the Pokemon with the ability. In addition, it grants Water-type immunity and boosts Special Attack by one stage whenever a Water-type move hits the Pokemon. Unlike Lightning Rod, Storm Drain is strictly for blocking damaging moves, as Soak is the only non-damaging Water-type it can redirect away and block.

Realistically, the only Pokemon with Storm Drain that you’ll ever see in VGC is Gastrodon. However, there is also Cradily, Lumineon, and Maractus who have the ability.

Burn

Burn is a status condition that halves the afflicted Pokemon’s physical attack power and causes them to lose HP at the end of every turn. There are three moves typically associated with this status: Will-o-Wisp, Sacred Fire, and Scald. Will-o-Wisp is a status move with 85% accuracy and it directly burns a target. As the move’s name suggests, it is commonly seen on Ghost-type Pokemon and the occasional Fire-type.

Sacred Fire is a strong Fire-type move with a 50% chance to burn and it is only seen on Entei. Scald is a Water-type move with a 30% chance to burn and you’ll often see it on bulkier Water-type Pokemon, such as Suicune, Gastrodon, Politoed, or Milotic. While most standard damaging Fire-type moves have a chance to burn, a 10% chance is small enough to not worry about until it happens.

A burnt physical attacker can quickly become dead weight, especially against teams with high physical defense. As such, it is pretty important to avoid burns before getting some decent damage in. While Scald’s chances of causing a burn is only 30%, if you give an opponent the opportunity to fire off a number of Scalds, there’s a pretty good chance someone will get burned.

Paralysis

Paralysis is a status condition that reduces the afflicted Pokemon’s speed to 25%. In addition, the Pokemon has a 25% chance of being unable to move for a turn. The decrease in speed can be devastating to Pokemon that heavily rely on speed or depend on speed boost from abilities like Swift Swim or Chlorophyll. The chance of being fully paralyzed tends to manifest at the most ill-opportune times.

While Paralysis has solid utility, do note that it is does not directly reduce the opponent’s offensive strength. People sometimes get a bit too carried away with trying to frustrate the opponent with paralysis and end up fishing for full paralysis when there was another path to victory with better odds.

Thunder Wave is the primary source of inflicting paralysis in VGC and Thundurus is the primary user of Thunder Wave. Less commonly, there is Glare from Serperior and Nuzzle from Pachirisu.

Sleep

Sleep prevents a Pokemon from moving for 1-3 turns. Putting a Pokemon to sleep before they are able to move for the turn will cause them to spend one of these sleep turns. As such, Sleep is a reliable way to stop a Pokemon for at least one turn. Most of the time, sleep is inflicted by Spore or Sleep Powder from various Grass-type Pokemon. In these cases, fellow Grass-types and Pokemon holding Safety Goggles become immune to sleep.

There is also Smeargle, with the infamous Dark Void, who can put both opposing Pokemon to sleep at the same time. Also, there’s a fairly large number of Pokemon that can learn Hypnosis, but the ones that use it are few and far between.

While sleep is a temporary status, being caught unprepared can leave you rolling the dice and hoping that your Pokemon can wake up before getting knocked out. While sleep can be considered an unreliable strategy for the user as well, the odds are still mostly in their favour when they are faster than your team.

Common Pokemon that can induce Sleep are Smeargle, Breloom, Amoonguss, and Venusaur (non-Mega)

Recovery Moves

In particular, the recovery moves that that heal 50% the user’s HP when used. While these moves are a lot more self-serving that what has been previously listed, they are moves that do see usage in VGC. A battle can quickly turn for the worse when something is able to recover their HP and get themselves back into the game.

It can either force people to extend themselves in order to knock it out or leave it alone and let it attack freely. As such, it is important to bring something that can deal with these sorts of Pokemon. Recovery moves create a large advantage for the opponent in late game as they can slowly wittle down your Pokemon while staying healthy. In a 1v1 situation, a Pokemon with a recovery move will have a very good shot at winning the tie breaker when time runs out.

While there are some Pokemon, such as Chansey or Mega Slowbro, who may go all in on trying to make a last stand but are thus prone to timer stalling, Pokemon such as Zapdos, Jellicent, and Milotic tend to play a more active role in battles while still having the ability to heal themselves.

Perish Trap

A strategy that was made possible in VGC 2013 with the introduction of Hidden Ability Gothitelle, a Pokemon that could Protect and has the Shadow Tag ability. Perish Trap is the strategy using Perish Song to knock out your opponent’s Pokemon, with Shadow Tag preventing them from switching out. Teams that attempt this tend to be quite distinct and often are completely devoted to pulling off the strategy. However, every now and then, you may run into a few tricks and surprises.

Battles involving Perish Trap require a lot of forward thinking, as you usually only have a few opportunities to break through the strategy. It is important to identify the strategy early and plan what you bring accordingly in order to try to disrupt the Perish Trap.

Common Pokemon on a Perish Trap team include:
Shadow Tag user: Mega Gengar, Gothitelle
Perish Song User: Mega Gengar, Politoed, Azumarill, Marowak
Support Pokemon: Scrafty, Liepard, Kangaskhan, Amoonguss

Piecing It All Together

Okay, so you have built a team. You know your Pokemon types and basic match ups. You’ve done your research about the various supportive options that can form the backbone of VGC teams. Now it is time to put everything together for the Team Preview.

In order to help you make an informed decision, here are a few general tips:

What do you see?

The first thing to do in a Team Preview is to look at the preview. Quickly survey what Pokemon species are on the opponent’s team and make note of what sort of support tools you believe they have on their team. “What potential Megas do they have?”, “What kind of weather is present?”, “Is there a threat of Trick Room?”, etc. Gather up all the information that you can possibly perceive from seeing your opponent’s six Pokemon and make a judgement call on what you believe they will be trying to do in the upcoming battle.

What do you bring?

After seeing what the opponent has, you should compare it to what you yourself have. Basically, if you feel that you have a strong matchup against the opponent’s team, you should stick to your main strategy and try to maintain your advantage over the opponent while playing conservatively in order to prevent them from mounting a counter offensive. If you feel like your match up is poor, look for a way to gain momentum and catch up to your opponent while avoiding a one sided slaughter.

This is where being familiar with your team and coming up with plans for various difficult match ups are important. By knowing your own team’s personal strengths and weaknesses, you can easily make the proper call and act accordingly in your battles. Often times, a team preview might look like a bad match up, but you can still win by simply making the correct calls in Team Preview in order to avoid a terrible Turn 1 lead match up. Keep a few solid switching options in order to keep your choices open and keep yourself in the game.

If you are having some trouble deciding what to bring against an opponent, sometimes it helps to look at the reverse. What do you think the opponent will bring against you? While you won’t know the moveset and items that they have, sometimes you will be able to rule out certain Pokemon because they just seem bad against everything that you have.

Other times, you get situations where you can anticipate your opponent to bring a certain Pokemon, simply because their entire team is dedicated towards a particular strategy. This situation is most commonly seen with trainers that use a dedicated Trick Room team.

What do you fear?

While Team Preview does provide information before the battle starts, it is still very possible to have surprises on a team. Players can see what Pokemon the opponent has, but will not immediately have information about items and movesets. While it is possible to guess what each Pokemon’s function is on the team based on some background knowledge of what each Pokemon is capable of and what each Pokemon commonly runs, uncommon move or item choices can easily be used to catch people off guard.

If you are planning to take advantage of surprise factors in Team Preview, however, be sure to not go overboard with it. Ideally, you want to have something that can both act as a surprise while still functioning well when people know about it. One-shot surprises can be good, but if it becomes useless if the opponent knows about it, it can be dangerous to rely on in best-of-three play or during larger live tourneys where information about unique things may spread as more people play against your team.

Team Selection in Best of Three

As a best-of-three series involves two to three battles, you go through multiple team preview screens. The first team preview will usually be played out similar to a best-of-one team preview, but after that battle there are a few more things to consider.

What Did You Learn?

A team preview involves a bit of personal judgment and background information in order to speculate what your opponent’s items and movesets are and what their overall team strategy is. But after playing a battle, a lot of uncertainties about the opponent’s team will be revealed.

If you are caught off guard by some surprise moves, you now know about them going into your next battle(s). Information about who is holding what items, which Pokemon have Protect, and any unusual movesets are extremely valuable in making an informed decision on what to bring into your next battle. As such, one of the worst things that can happen is to get completely demolished in the first game and not see all the Pokemon they brought or barely seeing any of the movesets.

Adapting

With the information you have acquired from playing your opponent, you enter your second or third battle with the opportunity to change what you bring in. Too many times I see people who feel that, because they lost game 1, they must change what they bring in game 2. Similarly, some people feel that, since they won, they are completely okay to just stay with the same Pokemon for their next battle.

Cutting corners like that is unacceptable. It is important to look beyond the results of the previous battle and see how that result occured. Here’s a bit of an extreme example:

Your team in Game 1 was having a dominant matchup. However, you lost because you missed a bunch of 90% accurate moves that would have won you the game if any had hit. Also, you know that the opponent can’t really bring their other two Pokemon without making things easier for you. Why would you change what you brought in game 1?

It’s important to look beyond the result of the previous battle and determine how that result came to be. If you relied on a surprise factor in order to win against the opponent, you can’t really expect them to fall for it again. If you got bailed out of a losing battle by a gratuitious amount of luck, it might be a good idea to adjust what you bring in game 2 since it isn’t feasible to bank on luck again.

You also need to consider the fact that your opponent is given the same opportunity to change as well. Depending on how the battle went, it can be possible to predict what they may bring in the next game.

Regardless of the result, it is important to keep your cool between battles. Don’t despair because of luck factors causing an “undeserved” loss and don’t fret if you got crushed in the first game. Likewise, don’t let it get to your head when you crush an opponent 4-0 in the first game. Think through each team preview as you see them and use what you learn from previous games to guide you towards victory. Remember, team preview is the part of the battle where luck is non-existant, so it is important to make it count.

Team Preview in Multi-Battles

In Multi-Battles, you see 12 opposing Pokemon, your ally’s six Pokemon, and you can only bring in three Pokemon. Don’t overthink it. Just have some fun and hope that you and your partner are in sync on what to bring to the battle.

Conclusion

Did this seem like a lot of information to take in? Now try thinking about all of this stuff within 90 seconds. People tend to take the ability to assess team preview information for granted. It’s good to think about exactly what you are doing during those 90 seconds.

For cases where you feel that things don’t feel quite right and you are losing more battles than you should be with your team, perhaps it is a good idea to look at how you built your team and also how you get into undesirable situations. I hope you were able to learn something from this article and hope that it will allow you to improve in VGC.

About the Author

R Inanimate R Inanimate is a long time participant in official Pokemon Tournaments, first attending the 2005 Battle in Seattle Tournament. Known for using teams that are a bit off from the standard, and not using RNG'd Pokemon. Avid Battle Frontier fan. Worlds 2013 competitor, known for running Togekiss and Mold Breaker Excadrill.

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