How To Play Pokemon Showdown: Best Formats & How To Build a Team

Pokemon Showdown is the premier battling scene for competitive Pokemon players. While the most recent titles maintain an active battling community until the next game releases, you won’t find hardcore trainers like the ones in Pokemon Showdown.

That said, Pokemon Showdown’s UI can be intimidating at first. Building a team and getting into a battle aren’t as intuitive as in the mainline games. Don’t worry! We are here to teach you the basics of getting started in Pokemon Showdown.

Getting Started in Pokemon Showdown – How To Play

Pokemon Showdown allows anyone with a PC/laptop and an internet connection to jump into a Pokemon battle in seconds. If you don’t care about carefully curating your team or just want to test out the battle simulator before committing your time, here is how you can play Pokemon Showdown:

• Go to pokemonshowdown.com
• Pree the green Play Online button
• [Gen 9] Random Battle should be the default selection in the Format box
  • If not, click on the Format drop-down box and select Random Battle under S/V Singles
• Click the brown Battle! button
• Once Pokemon Showdown finds you an opponent, your battle will begin

The battle selection screen is referred to as the Main Menu. Here, you can see how many players are online and how many battles are currently underway, as well as participate in a number of other activities. Let’s check out the Pokemon Showdown team builder next!

How To Build a Team in Pokemon Showdown

Building a team of Pokemon is one of the harder tasks in Pokemon Showdown. But once you understand the basics, you’ll be producing new teams in no time!

From the Main Menu, press the blue Teambuilder button, then press the + New Team button to get started building your first team.

Select A Format

Before you build a team, you need to select a Format. For this tutorial, we will choose S/V Singles OU (Over Used), which is the most popular format according to Smogon.

Each format has different rules and restricted Pokemon. In OU, players can use any Pokemon at any level as long as they aren’t banned in AG or Ubers. So, no teams of overpowered Legendaries are allowed.

Selecting a Format will automatically limit the Pokemon you can choose from to build your team, so it’s important to select a Format before getting into the actual team building.

Selecting You Pokemon

In most battle formats, you need to choose six Pokemon to be on your team. To select your team members, follow the steps below:

• Click + Add Pokemon
• Select A Pokemon from the drop-down menu or search its name in the search bar
• From here, you can kit out your Pokemon. Make sure not to miss any of the essentials:
  • Item – Choose a Held Item
  • Ability – Which Ability you’d like the Pokemon to have
  • Moves – The Pokemon’s moveset
  • Stats – EVs, IVs, and Nature to optimize strengths
  • Tera Type – If in Gen 9 formats, select which Tera Type you want to use
• When down, click the + icon next to the current Pokemon to add another to your roster
• Repeat until you have a team of six Pokemon

Naming and Organizing Teams

You’ll start stacking up teams once you get into the weeds of team building. It can be hard to keep track of them all, especially with the different formats, team combos, etc. One of the easiest ways to keep track of teams is by naming them. You can name a team by selecting it and then entering whatever you want in the text field in between the < List and ^ Import/Export buttons.

When in the Team Builder menu, you can organize further by creating folders. A new folder is created automatically when you build a team for a new format, but you can make your own folders by pressing the + (add format folder) or + (add folder) buttons. Drag and drop your teams into these folders to sort them to your heart’s content.

Pokemon Showdown Formats Explained

If you thought team building was tough, wait until you get a load of the Format tab. When you’re ready to hop out of random battles and use one of your teams, nothing is quite as convoluted as the Format tab. We suggest you stick with Random Battles, OU, Ubers, or VGC. But here is a quick rundown of the most popular formats:

And that’s everything there is to know about getting started in Pokemon Showdown. Want to learn more about Pokemon battles? Check out our Pokemon Type Chart to familiarize yourself with the strengths and weaknesses of all 18 types.