Pokemon, it’s serious business guys. Pokemon is much deeper than it appears on the surface; people break out spread sheets and calculators to achieve their perfect team for tournaments. The Autumn tournament recently ended, and I’m sure it was just as intense as I imagined it. The tournament was held at malls across the midwest part of the country.
In these tournaments there are restrictions of course. Trainers were allowed to use nearly any pokemon that they chose, with the exception of most legendaries. Prior to each battle the trainers were able to view their opponents team and try to guess their strategy and adjust their team accordingly.
When it comes to strategizing your pokemon team there are plenty of things that trainers have to take into consideration. Obviously every pokemon has it’s own set of stats, numbers that represent how well off they are on their attack, defense, speed, special attack and ect. Then you have to take into account what their ability is, the ability is a special action of effect that that pokemon can use to affect the battle.
Pokemon can also be given an item to hold that can help turn the tides of battle in their favor. These items can be things like berries that can heal their HP or cure a status ailment or perhaps given an item of clothing or something similar to boost a stat.
The last item of strategy that needs to be discussed is the nature of a pokemon. Each pokemon that you catch or are traded has a nature; the nature of a pokemon is random. A pokemon’s nature will raise one stat and lower another. An example of how nature works would be that a Pikachu with a modest nature would have an increased special attack stat and a decreased attack stat. This would be good since you would more than likely have your Pikachu mainly using special attacks.
When you look over the winning teams for this latest tournament you can begin to see some patterns. Zapdos and Tornadus/Landorus begin to show up a lot, another strategy that shows up quite a bit are the weather altering abilities and moves. These weather altering moves/abilities can boost stats or make it harder for your opponent to hit you.
The tournaments can get pretty heated from what I understand, like I said, pokemon is serious business. I’d really like to go to one, or even participate in one at some point; I highly recommend you check one out if you ever get the chance to. I’ll attach some links below to checkout if you’re interested.
Here is a spreadsheet of the top teams from all the tournaments at different locations.
An excellent article over strategies in the most recent tournaments
