While the Pokemon games have been known for careful and competitive strategies, the anime has a very different way of portra☂ying Pokemon battles. Animated fights are far faster and more intense, using quick thinking and the power of friendship more than deliberate planning and created combos.
That said, there's a surprising amount of times where strategies from the games show up in the anime, with just a few༺ twists and changes to make them more dynamic and visually spectacular. It's amazing to see how slow and strategic combos look in this form, and they're often great gateways to learning the deeper mechanics of the games.
10 ⛄ Edmund's Swift෴ Swim Seismitoad
One of the most common strategies in Pokemon since the days of Pokemon Diamond & Pearl have to do with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the weather as there are tons of Pokemon with moves 🥀or abilities that get modified by certain conditions. One of the🌳 easiest to enable is Swift Swim, which doubles a Pokemon's speed if it's raining.
This can lead to some absurdly powerful Pokemon, with ✃Seismitoad being one of the strongest users of this. A trainer in Unova named Edmund used this in a tournament with Ash, and it led to his titanic ༺frog blasting through the battlefield at game-like alarming speed.
9 ౠ Sawyer's Stat-Building Aegislash 🔥
The Pokemon anime has seen its fair sha🦂re of slower strategies as well, as many Pokemon rely on increasing or decreasing stats to enable certain strategies. Aegislash is a great user of these moves, learning certain offense-increasing moves like Swords Dance 🐈while protecting itself and lowering attack stats with its King's Shield move to switch forms.
One of Ash's minor rivals, Sawyer, used this exact strategy in𝓡 the Lumiose Conference near the end of his Kalos adventures. By maxing out its attack with Swords Dance and blocking moves with King's Shield, it could eventually swing through all of his opponents with zero trouble, making a menace as powerful as the now-nerfed Aegislash was in the games.
8 Guzma's U-Turn Scizor ꧋
Switching Pokemon in and out of battle is far less common in the anime, as there isn't🙈 as much of a risk of Pokemon fainting in a single hit in most matchups. As a result, many moves like Whirlwind and Roar don't work as intended, and others like Volt Switch and U-Turn don't appe♏ar often.
This is what makes Alola's Guzma such a surprise, as his Scizor uses U-Turn quite early in the battle to swap into another of Guzma's 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bug-type Pokemon to cause Ash trouble in a match during the Alolಞa Championship. It doesn't give Guzma a victory but is certainly more creative a strategy than Ash's during this tournament.
7 ꧅ Nurse Joy's Chansey Stall 🌳
It's extremely rare for Nurse Joy to take part in a battle, but one against Brock made for one of the more memorable fights of the series for fans of the games. This is much because her signature Chansey used many atypical moves that resemble the usual Chansey strategy in the games, by raising defensive stats before slowly slapp꧙ing its foe to sleep.
This is usually done by combining defensive walls like Reflect and Light Screen with Softboiled to regenerate health. Nurse Joy's takes a slightly different approach by using Minimize and Attract to prevent it from being hit at all, then assaulting its foe with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Egg Bombs, accom💖plishing the same str✨ategy with some different moves.
6 Katie's Destiny Bond Misd🍷reavus♛
Destiny Bo🤡nd is often seen as quite unfair in a few situations, particularly Nuzlocke Runs where it can take you down immediately with no cost. Few Pokemon learn this move, but many of the Pokemon that do are able to keep things alarmingly even, and it's a great utility move for any fast Ghost-type.
This is likely why Katie, an opponent of Ash in the Ever Graꦍnde 🥀Conference of Hoenn, had her Misdreavus ready to use the move right before fainting to keep the battle perfectly matched. This type of instant-KO move is extremely rare in the anime overall, but it comes across just as deadly here as it typically does in the games.
5 ✃ 🃏 Lance & Leon's Dynamax Clash
To be blunt, the match between Lance & Leon in the recent Pokemon Journeys anime is one of the most entertaining battles in all of Pokemon history. Lance's Red Gyarados puts up a great fight against 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Leon's Charizard, but perhaps the best part of this match is how odd𒁃ly accurate it is to the games.
Leon uses prediction to know when to use Max Guard against certain moves, and both players end up weakening the other's stats and changing the battlefield terrain to improve their later moves. It's an astonishingly even fight that mimics the games on a neat level and makes Charizard's win through a type disꦓadvantage even more impressive.
4 Barry's Support Skarmory 🍃
If you haven't watched the final tournament of Ash's 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sinnoh adventures, you're absolutely missing out on some of the best battles of the entire anime. There are actually several competitive 💙strategies fꦍrom the games that appear in this climactic arc, and many of them lead to battles that are as visually spectacular as they are accurate to the games.
One of these is in Ash's fr𓃲iend Barry's Skarmory, who uses support moves that don't typically appear due to them seeming less exciting than more aggressive moves. The main one of these is Spikes, which creates an entry hazard and is perhaps the most common use for Skarmory in online play, making it neat to see appear instead of a typical combative moveꦓset.
3 Tobias's Dream Eater Darkrai 💙
Next in Sinnoh's Lily of the Valley Conference's competitive strategies is Tobias, who is technically breaking some rules by using at leas📖t one banned legendary in his team. This would be Darkrai, a P♔okemon he inexplicably has alongside a rare legendary Latios, but at least for the viewers, it's nice to see Darkrai being used like he is in the games.
Darkrai's strategy since his release has revolved around putting foes to sleep and then using its moves and unique Bad Dreams ability to lower its health. Tobias's Darkrai does just that, draining the sleeping foe's health with Dream Eater to remain ✃a constantly refreshed and dominant opponentꦿ against entire teams.
2 Conway's Power Trick Shuckle ဣ
The last pair of competitive strategie𓂃s come from the same battle, and it makes for the type of conflict that needs to be seen more in the Pokemon anime. Ash has to take on Conway in this Sinnoh match, who acts mainly as a rival to Dawn but also has incredible competitive prowess that conflicts greatly with Ash's more innovative battle styles.
One of these is Shuckle, a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:highly defensive Pokemon that can't be used in the games without having an entire strategy built around it where it slowly maximizes its offensive stats. Few appearances of Shuckle showcase this plan, but Conway manages it by using Power Trick to debilitate Ash's Pokemon and hit alarmingly hard, while not 🅷sacrificing its defense even when Gible tries to take a bite out of it.
1 Conway's Trick Room Dusknoir 🥀
Once again in the battle against Conway, Ash ends up in an alarmingly difficult fight against Conway's Dusknoir, who quickly uses Trick Room to swap the speed of all Pokemon in play. This is easily one of the most common strategies in competitive Pokemon even today, but moves that alter st🔥ats or the battlefield are rare enough that this move's inclusion here feels incredibly novel and educational for fans that don't know how this competitive move works.
What's neat is that Conway's team is revealed to be built entirely around this mechanic, as his Shuckle even gains some great speed with this as well to capitalize perfectly. Dusknoir, and its 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:pre-evolved form Dusclops, are also some of the strongest Trick Room users thanks to ♔its defensive stats and diverse movesets, so this battle feels straight out of a real-world Pokemon Championship tournament from Conway's side.