Welcome back, fellow duders and Pokefans, to another installment of my quest to become the very best. In all honesty, I don’t even know if I should be writing this post as part of this series, because the main focus is supposed to be on catching all 718 available types. This will not be about that, because honestly I haven’t done very much of that since my last post. With the launch of the Bank, my Pokemon time shifted back towards researching and training Pokemon for competitive battles, so that will be the focus of this installment. I also kind of hope that writing this will inspire me to get back to my original quest, and finally catch ‘em all.

The Bank, and My Mass Exodus

At the end of my last post I had finally captured all the legendary Pokemon of the world, and thus had completed pretty much all the reason I would have to make use of all the previous generations of Pokemon games. I had been storing everything in White while working towards the full Pokedex, and was basically waiting for the Bank to come out to move on to the next stage. My boxes were disorganized, filling up quickly, and frankly just a mess, so I took the release of the Bank as my opportunity for a final round of organization before moving forward.

The Bank, for any who don’t know, is a means to transfer Pokemon from your generation 5 DS game (Black/White/Black 2/White 2) to your generation 6 3DS game (X/Y). Its a better method than any previous cross-generation transfer, because you transfer whole boxes at a time, but the fine folks at Game Freak still somehow managed to make it nearly insufferable. You can actually only transfer whatever is in Box 1 in your DS game, and then manually moving that Box into your generation 6 game. This means that you are constantly switching between the 2 carts, because each time you move a box you have to load up gen 5 again to move things into Box 1. Ugh.

Regardless, after way too much time and effort, I got everything moved into Y. Not just moved in either, I renamed and organized all of my boxes in Y. I now have 24 boxes labeled and set aside for my “Pokemon Archive”, for lack of a better term. Each box holds 30 Pokemon, so I have them numbered for 1-30, 31-60, and so on and so forth, set up to hold up to 720 Pokemon. When all of those boxes are full, up to 718 (or more when more event legendaries come out), my quest will be done. I also have a box for Dittos, 2 for random fodder I don’t need, and 2 for trained guys and things I want to keep separate. Setting this all up pretty much ate a whole weekend, but when I’m finally done it will be pretty sweet I think.

To Battle!

Competitive Pokemon battles are awesome. Building a team and trying to come up with interesting and effective ways to train each Pokemon is kind of like building a small deck in a CCG like Magic: The Gathering. The battles themselves are full of mind games and crazy comebacks, unlikely heroes who bring you a victory you didn’t really expect, and also those heart breaking misses at just the wrong time. Sure it only reaches a modest level of balance by the sheer number of options and community made tier lists and extra rules. And yes, it takes way too much time to actually put together a viable team, but the sort of ramshackle nature of competitive Pokemon with a whole community trying to hold it together is kind of amazing in its own right.

I’m not going to get into the specifics of training competitive Pokemon here, but its pretty interesting/messed up, and I’d say look into it if it sounds at all interesting to you. There is a lot of information out there about this, and I would recommend Serebii, Smogon, and Veekun as sites that have vast amounts of Pokemon knowledge (although they probably won’t readily tell you how to get started). Suffice to say for now, a “competitively trained” Pokemon has the following attributes:

- Ability: Each Pokemon has 1 or more options for a special ability. These are randomized when they are encountered or bred, so there’s no changing it. Gen 5 and 6 also have “Hidden Abilities” for many Pokemon that are much harder to obtain. Abilities can range from totally worthless to immensely powerful modifiers.

- Nature: There are 25 possible Natures, each of which affect 2 of the main stats (minus HP) of a Pokemon. One will be increased by 10%, and one will be decreased by 10%. 5 of the Natures raise and lower the same stat, so they are actually non-modifying natures. Like Abilities, these can’t be changed once you have the Pokemon.

- EVs: Effort Values are bonus points your Pokemon can get added to its stats by training. Generally this will happen without you knowing, as they fight other Pokemon, but in X/Y these numbers are much more surfaced. Super Training is a new mode that allows you to target specific stats to gain EVs in, and makes training competitive Pokemon a little less obtuse.

- IVs: Individual Values are similar to EVs, but your Pokemon gets much fewer of these and they are randomly assigned when encountered/hatched. They give a bonus value to each stat up to 31.

- Moves: This is where a lot of your choices will come into play in building a competitive Pokemon. Each ‘mon can have 4 moves, which can be learned by levelling, TMs/HMs, and even breeding. Selecting the best 4 moves to fit your team is crucial.

- Item: This is the most readily changeable part of a Pokemon team, but still important. Each Pokemon can hold an item during battle, and their effects can make a big difference. A common competitive rule to keep in mind is that you can’t have multiple Pokemon holding the same type of item - so no doubling up on Leftovers!

These of course don’t take into account all the intrinsic qualities of a Pokemon, such as its type and base stats, but the above attributes are the decisions you’ll likely have to make once you’ve selected a particular species for training. All of the above are reasons why no 2 Pokemon are likely to be exactly identical.

My New Team

I had done a fair amount of competitive training back in the 4th generation Pokemon games Diamond and Platinum, but I knew I wanted to make a new team using new species from Gen 5 and 6. I’ll go over what I ended up deciding on, and some of my thoughts on them each.

Accelgor (Nickname: Shadow)

Accelgor is a bug type introduced in Black/White, who sports a completely ridiculous base speed, along with a decent special attack stat and a good list of support and attack moves. He was an early pick for my team who I wanted to serve as a strong lead in and harasser. His role is basically to always go first, and either hit pretty hard with Bug Buzz/Energy Ball attacks, set up Spikes as a hazard, or catch someone trying something sneaky with Encore.

Ability - Sticky Hold

Nature - Timid (+Speed, -Attack)

EVs: Speed and Special Attack

Moves: Bug Buzz

Encore

Spikes

Energy Ball

Item: Focus Sash

Greninja (Nickname: Frolick)

Greninja is the Water starter in X/Y, who gains the secondary type of Dark. The reason he’s so popular, and the reason I picked him, is because of his Hidden Ability - Protean. It changes his type to the type of whatever move he last used, and this causes some pretty extreme mind games. His special attack and speed stats, as well as his move pool are all around good, so this combination makes him a deadly all out assault weapon.

Ability - Protean

Nature - Timid (+Speed, -Attack)

EVs: Speed and Special Attack

Moves: Ice Beam

Scald

Dark Pulse

Extrasensory

Item: Expert Belt

Hawlucha (Nickname: Mucho Halcon)

Hawlucha is the hilarious Fighting/Flying type hawk Pokemon wearing a luchador mask introduced in X/Y. As if that weren’t a good enough reason to pick him, the build I went with has some pretty interesting combo work to it. Sky Attack is a massively powerful flying move that normally takes a turn to charge up, but the Power Herb is a consumable item that lets it charge instantly once. His ability Unburden also activates when he uses a consumable item, and its effect doubles his speed. As an added bonus, Acrobatics becomes more powerful when he isn’t holding an item. He’s a pretty well oiled, extremely fast, flying damage output machine.

Ability - Unburden

Nature - Adamant (+Attack, -Special Attack)

EVs: Speed and Attack

Moves: Acrobatics

Hi Jump Kick

Swords Dance

Sky Attack

Item: Power Herb

Durant (Nickname: Exosteel)

Durant is a baller, sporting a great Bug/Steel typing that is only really afraid of Fire. He is a solid physical attacker who has enough physical defense to stand toe to toe with some pretty fierce opponents, and he is also surprisingly fast. This build is made to hit hard, with both his ability and item increasing his damage significantly, albeit with the drawbacks of lower accuracy and dealing some damage to himself at the same time.

Ability - Hustle

Nature - Jolly (+Speed, -Special Attack)

EVs - Speed and Attack

Moves: X-Scissor

Iron Head

Superpower

Hone Claws

Item: Life Orb

Avalugg (Nickname: The Lugg)

I just couldn’t pass up using Avalugg as a physical tank, despite his Ice typing being a really terrible defensive type. He’s fat, he’s slow, and he falls over the in face of any special attacks, but his physical defense is so massive that in the right situation he can be a major force. His ability to learn Recover is what makes him rock solid (ice solid?), and his attack is more than enough to make Avalanche a very punishing move if the enemy isn’t able to finish him off.

Ability - Own Tempo

Nature - Impish (+Defense, -Special Attack)

EVs - HP and Defense

Moves: Avalanche

Earthquake

Recover

Rapid Spin

Item: Leftovers

Goodra (Nickname: Egootistic)

Goodra is an ooey-gooey dragon type Pokemon from X/Y, and has so many potential builds that it's kind of crazy. I opted to use him as a special defense tank of sorts for my team, and I’m pretty happy with the result. His very high special defense stat coupled with the Assault Vest item mean he can switch in against some really formidable special attackers, and he can occasionally trap an opponent with Infestation, and use his great offensive move pool to bring them down.

Ability - Sap Sipper

Nature - Calm (+Special Defense, -Attack)

EVs - HP and Special Defense

Moves: Dragon Pulse

Thunderbolt

Focus Blast

Infestation

I’ve had a lot of fun training these guys and doing some battling. However, I think it’s high time I get back to my catch ‘em all quest. The end is in sight, the stage is set, but the only thing that’s going to get me there is the willpower to keep moving through the process. Here’s hoping I have a lot to update you all on soon.