A little while ago, I tried out my first online Pokémon tournament. I saw an article about it on the Pokémon Global Link website and thought it sounded like fun. The rules of the tournament were that you could only use Pokémon that were less than 1 meter (3 feet 3 inches for us in the US) tall. For me, that meant that I could use all of the cute ones that are my favorites, including my immediate thought: Chikorita! A tournament where my favorite Pokémon might actually stand a legitimate chance was just too good to pass up.

Tournament rules banned almost all legendaries, as well as any kind of mega-evolution. They also specified a format of double battles. This meant that I tried to craft a team that included support Pokémon who could use moves in combination with a partner on the field. It also meant that I focused on selecting a Pokémon to be a Z-move user rather than selecting one to mega evolve. Since Azelf, Uxie, and Mesprit were the only legendaries allowed (and I had all three), I decided to give a spot to one of them as well.

My final team (as it appeared in the tournament) looked like this:

The Team

The first team member I was certain of was obviously Chikorita. Since I've previously put effort into breeding Chikoritas so that I could have a powerful Meganium (which I used in online battles but not tournaments in Pokémon X), I had a head start. I already had a selection of Chikoritas who had the egg move Grass Whistle, which was excellent.

For those who don't know what an egg move is, basically this is a special move that a Pokémon doesn't learn naturally but that it can inherit from its parents. In this case, I had to teach Grass Whistle to a male Roselia and breed him with a female Chikorita/Bayleef/Meganium until the baby Chikorita was born with Grass Whistle as a move.

As you might see from the move pool I have for that Chikorita, I tried to build him as a support Pokémon, with two moves that protect him and his teammates from offensive attacks (Reflect reducing the damage from physical moves and Light Screen reducing the damage from special attacks), as well as one move that puts the opposing Pokémon to sleep (Grass Whistle). Since Grass Whistle has such low accuracy, I usually consider an item that increases accuracy. In this case, though, Eviolite was too good of an item to pass up.

The reason for that is that I also built up this Chikorita to be as good as possible defensively, since Chikoritas have naturally good defense stats and aren't as powerful in attacking. Eviolite is an item that increases defense and special defense by 50% and can only be used by a Pokémon that isn't fully evolved yet, which also made Chikorita the only one on my team that could use it.

For effort values (EVs) I maxed out HP and Defense. Essentially, this means that I trained him so those stats were as high as they possibly could be for that Pokémon.

I also bred him with a Calm nature, which meant that its Special Defense was increased while its Attack was decreased. I think this is smart because my Chikorita doesn't use any physical attacks, so he doesn't care about the Attack stat at all.

The final Pokémon looks like this! (Forgive the poor picture quality. I'm not a photographer, and video game screens are difficult for lighting.)

The next member I decided on was Mismagius. This one's my special little trickster. I had been wanting to start using one for a while, partially because I like Mismagius as a Pokémon, partially because its ghost typing provides some good variety, and partially because I wanted to try being a little different. Lots of people use Z-moves to make offensive attacks super powered, but, if you look into all the different things that they can do, there are so many more interesting possibilities. In this case, I was intrigued by Z-Destiny Bond.

Z-Destiny Bond combines all the fun of Destiny Bond with Follow Me (minus the priority), meaning that if Mismagius faints, so does the Pokémon that attacked him and all opposing Pokémon are forced to attack Mismagius rather than his partner for one turn. This is one way to get rid of a powerful opponent that you might have otherwise been stuck with, since you can use Z-Destiny Bond when your Mismagius is at strategically low health and one attack is virtually guaranteed to knock him out. It's also helpful for a partner Pokémon that is using a move where it would be really helpful for it to not get attacked until afterwards.

The unfortunate side is that this move doesn't get priority, which means that it's only as fast as the Pokémon that uses it. This is why I bred and trained my Mismagius for Speed.

I filled up her other moves with Will-O-Wisp, which causes burns (which causes damage each turn and lowers a Pokémon's attack power), Hex (a ghost attack which is doubly powerful if the opponent is burned), and Pain Split (which averages the HP of Mismagius and its opponent and then gives them both the same amount, allowing Mismagius to regain health while lowering the health of an opponent who has more health).

And of course I gave him a fun nickname as well.

I decided on Mesprit just because I thought it would obviously be good to use a legendary and Mesprit is my personal favorite of the trio. I decided to use Mesprit as my Trick Room user. Trick Room reverses the order of moves so that the slower Pokémon move first, and I thought this would be helpful since Chikorita is slow and other Pokémon I was considering were also slow.

The prime example of these slow Pokémon is Torkoal. Slow to start with, I bred him to have a nature that decreased his Speed still further, and I even bred him to have a low Speed IV (individual value). While Trick Room is active, he would be almost guaranteed to move first. I gave him a powerful attack with Flamethrower. I also gave him Gyro Ball, which is a move that becomes more powerful if it's used by a slow Pokémon to attack a fast Pokémon. Since he's not a ghost type, Curse works as a move to boost his stats. It raises Attack and Defense at the "cost" of lowering his Speed still further!

And I made his name into a second Shakespeare reference for good measure.

Another Pokémon I picked to be an attacker was Azumarill. His Huge Power ability means that his attack stat is actually twice what it appears to be, which is awesome. I tried to be smart by also giving him Belly Drum, which maximizes the attack stat at the cost of  half his HP. I gave him a Sitrus Berry to restore that HP and thought that I might also be able to use the move while Mismagius was providing cover with Z-Destiny Bond. I gave him Aqua Jet, which doesn't have the most power but does get priority, meaning that it moves first regardless of speed stats or whether Trick Room is in effect. When used with a boosted Attack stat, low power doesn't matter. Play Rough is a physical move with greater power and provides extra type coverage.

I picked a name that I thought was a bit of fun word play.

The last Pokémon I picked was Excadrill, partially because I remembered it as being one that I had a tough time defeating even in some of the in-game battles against NPCs. It's not quite the slow mover that Torkoal is, so I gave her an Iron Ball, which is an item that reduces a Pokémon's speed. I used some of the previous tricks, giving her a nature that decreased Speed while increasing Attack, breeding her for a low Speed IV, etc. I gave her three attack moves of three types, one of which is an attack that never misses.

Earthquake attacks all Pokémon on the field, including both opposing Pokémon and your own partner. This wasn't a big problem, though, since Mismagius and Mesprit have the Levitate ability that makes them immune. I gave Torkoal an air balloon item so that he has the same advantage until the balloon pops. For Azumarill, Protect works perfectly well. The only team member who would be in trouble would be Chikorita, and he wouldn't suffer as much, being strong against ground type attacks and having good defense stats. If he also threw up a Reflect first, I think that would reduce damage as well.

Since I had the good fortune of having my best Excadrill also be a female, I decided to name this tough cookie after a tough cookie. She strikes with intelligence, and she can and will destroy you (or at least your fanfic)!

So how did I do?

Depending on who you are and how familiar you are with the competitive side of Pokémon, you probably either think my choices and reasoning sound impressive or see all the thousands of holes that can be poked into my plans.

The people who see the holes would be more correct. I got 19 wins and 26 losses. I'm still inclined to celebrate, though. I was nearly half and half for a large portion of the tournament, and I'm pretty sure I fell lower because something came up in my personal life on the last day of the tournament that caused such a serious distraction that I couldn't focus on strategy. It's also a lot better than I had expected to do.

There were definitely some highlights and some lows. In an online tournament, you can just play the game whenever as long as you've got an internet connection and the tournament is still going on. The game pairs you up with an opponent, which seemed to work at least a little bit according to who had similar rankings. That meant that I faced some opponents who were really tough at the beginning of the tournament and started to face some easy ones when my ranks had started falling.

The highlight for me was the battle where my opponent clearly underestimated my Chikorita, and Chikorita proved to be a huge key to my victory. It was Chikorita and Mesprit against Emolga and Excadrill. Mesprit started off with Trick Room, and Chikorita put up Reflect. Mesprit started doing some damage with Psychic. Then the opponent started attacking Mesprit, which suited me fine (the slower Pokémon that would replace it would do better in the Trick Room). Mesprit took care of the Emolga before fainting, and Chikorita put Excadrill to sleep. Azumarill came out to use Aqua Jet into Excadrill, which wasn't powerful enough for a knockout without a boost, but it didn't matter since it was asleep anyway. Chikorita kept up with both screens to protect Azumarill, and the opponent kept focusing attacks on him even though Chikorita was at low health by then. Chikorita finished the Excadrill with a grass attack, put another Pokémon to sleep, and generally just helped me win the entire battle after only losing Mesprit.

The biggest low was when I got paired against an opponent who had an Eevee and five spots full of Eeveelutions. I looked at that and thought that this was obviously a person who was playing for fun and only picked Eevees because he/she liked them. I wasn't expecting any strategy, and, when he/she started off with the Eevee on the field, I thought that he/she clearly didn't know or didn't care that Eevee is the weaker Pokémon.

Boy, was I wrong! That Eevee knew Baton Pass, which meant that, while I was attacking the Eeveelution beside it, it was boosting up its stats to an insane degree and then switching out and passing those boosts to the Eeveelution that replaced it. Wouldn't you know, the opponent was then able to take his/her pick of the exact Eeveelution that I would have the biggest type disadvantage against. And then I got stomped.

I also came to a painful realization of some of the points of my strategy that weren't working as well as I had hoped. My Mismagius got out-speeded much more than I would have liked. My Azumarill didn't lose enough health after using Belly Drum to force the Sitrus Berry to take effect directly afterwards. And there were moves I'd selected that I never used at all. Among other issues.

Probably the largest challenge to me was simply my lack of knowledge and experience, which meant that I couldn't use my Pokémon to the best of their abilities. It also meant there were lots of strategies I didn't see coming, like the Eevee one above.

I did have fun, though. I would consider doing it again. The biggest issue is that it's so much work. It took a long time to get the team ready, and there was even more I could have done in terms of boosting them and getting better items for them to use that I just ran out of time for. There's also a lot of work for an inexperienced person like me to actually learn the strategies that would be good to use, to test them out, and to try to study up on what Pokémon and strategies might be used by my opponents. All I can say is that I think I did fairly well, considering my inexperience and relative lack of time. I was proud enough to write this whole long chapter, anyway.

So I can't tell you how to actually win a Pokémon tournament. But I hope here are some excellent tips on how to lose one with style!