So.

 

You want to get into the world of competitive Pokemon?

 

Then you’ve come to the right place. If you’re already vaguely familiar with how COMPETITIVE Pokemon battles work, then you might want to skip ahead to my next couple of articles. However if you’re coming straight from the games, or even a friend’s recommendation, welcome! Let’s make like a Froakie and jump right into it!

 

Pokemon Showdown

Pokemon Showdown is about to become your best friend. Step one is go to:

 

play.pokemonshowdown.com

 

You’ll get a website that looks exactly like this.

Now I know there are a lot of buttons here, but don’t worry! You won’t be using most of them yet. The first button you want is “Choose name” in the upper right hand corner.

 

When you choose your name, you want something easy to remember, but not necessarily your name. You’ll be seeing a ton of people online, and having them know your name is probably not the best course of action.

 

After you’ve chosen a name click the big orange button on the left that says “Battle!”. Do not mess with the settings at all. You’re starting off with a Random Battle!

 

Random Battles

What makes a random battle easy is that you don’t have to make a team.

 

Once you’ve clicked “Battle!” you should get a team of six Pokemon and see one Pokemon that your opponent has. Your Pokemon are the ones on the bottom, and your opponents Pokemon is the one that’s looking at you.

 

The goal of each player is to make all six of the other player’s Pokemon faint. A Pokemon faints when its Hit Points or “HP” drop to zero. You reduce an opponent’s HP by clicking moves on your turn.

 

Every Pokemon has four possible moves you can click on your turn.

In this example, I have my Honchkrow out VS an opponent’s Salazzle. The four moves I can use are “Roost, Pursuit, Brave Bird, or Superpower.” But how to know which move to use?

 

Well showdown has a fantastic feature where you can move your cursor over a Pokemon or move to know what they do!

Here I put my cursor over Rotom-Wash showing that it has 102 Attack, 204 Defense, 201 Special Attack, 204 Special Defense, and it would normally have 173 speed, but because of a modifier, in this case its choice scarf, it has a speed of 259. These numbers are called a Pokemon’s “stats”.

 

Also if you look up slightly you’ll see it has an HP of 199/199. It has not taken any damage yet.

 

Damage is how many hit points a move takes away from a Pokemon.

 

Pokemon take damage from moves. Specifically “Physical” or “Special” moves. An attacking Pokemon’s attack stat vs a defending Pokemon’s defense stat determines how much damage a physical move will do. However an attacking Pokemon’s special attack stat vs a defending Pokemon’s special defense stat will determine how much damage a special move does.

 

But how to tell how much damage a particular move will do? Put your cursor over a move.

This move “Draco Meteor” is a special move, as you can tell from the three circles symbol. It has a base power of 130, which is very high, but it then temporarily lowers your special attack. It’s a dragon type move, which means dragon Pokemon who use it will do more damage. Click here for a handy guide on what type of move to use on different types of Pokemon. 

“Knock off” is a physical move, as can be seen from the orange star-like symbol surrounded by the red. This description is much longer, making sure you get all the details you need. It has a base power of 65 which is much lower, but it says it gets a 1.5 power boost if it “knocks off” an opponent’s item.

Not every move does damage though! Defog has an almost yin-yang symbol here, and despite having no base power, it’s still important to remove all those different “hazards” listed there, like Stealth Rock, Sticky Web, etc. This is an example of a “status” move.

 

It should be noted that every turn, instead of attacking, you could move your cursor over one of the Pokemon underneath the moves, see what moves/stats that Pokemon has. If you click on a Pokemon, you can switch your “active” Pokemon into this other Pokemon. Keep in mind though, your opponent will still attack, but the new Pokemon will take the attack instead of your active one.

 

That’s the very basics of a random battle. While I’ll be covering more here, the best ways to get better are to listen to live commentary on Youtube, and of course, to practice, practice, and practice.

 

You’re going to lose a lot, and maybe meet some mean people, but I guarantee random battles are the best way to learn what a Pokemon can do. And more importantly, what you can do.

 

Good luck!! And most importantly: have fun.