Strategy tags

Fake Out is priority +3, so every user flinches the target before it moves — Speed has nothing to do with that. What 100+ Speed buys is the mirror: when both sides lead Fake Out, the faster one lands it and the slower one is flinched. It also means the same Pokémon outspeeds most neutral-priority answers on the following turn.

Aliases: fakeout-lead, fake-out-lead

Pairs Intimidate with a pivot move (U-turn, Volt Switch, Parting Shot…), dropping the opponent's Attack before pivoting out to bring in a teammate.

Aliases: intimidate-cycle

A pivot move (U-turn, Flip Turn, Teleport…) on a bulky body (280+ defensive total) or backed by Regenerator / Intimidate, so it can cycle in and out while absorbing damage.

A bulky body (255+ defensive total) with Follow Me or Rage Powder, pulling attacks away from a fragile partner and absorbing them.

Aliases: bulky-follow-me

Puts both screens up and can reliably survive to do it (Prankster, 100+ Speed, or 280+ defensive total), halving incoming damage for five turns. Either Reflect and Light Screen in two slots, or Aurora Veil, which sets both in one move — at the cost of needing snow on the field first.

Aliases: dual-screens

Wide Guard blocks multi-target moves; Quick Guard blocks priority. Different threats, but the same thing makes both worth a slot: unlike Protect, they cover the ally as well as the user — so one turn can blank an Earthquake aimed at both of you, or a Fake Out aimed at your setup partner.

Aliases: teamguard

Friend Guard multiplies by 0.75 every hit the ALLY takes — from either foe, any move, all game, with no turn spent and nothing to set up. It does nothing whatsoever for the holder, which is why it only makes sense next to something you intend to keep alive. Two roster entries carry it, and the effect is flat: it does not scale with the holder's bulk, so a frail Friend Guard user protects a partner exactly as well as a sturdy one.

Restores a teammate's HP directly with moves like Life Dew, Heal Pulse, or Pollen Puff — or a sacrifice heal (Healing Wish / Lunar Dance).

Spends its turn making the PARTNER stronger rather than itself. Howl raises the user's and the ally's Attack by one stage; Coaching gives the ally +1 Attack and +1 Defense; Aromatic Mist gives it +1 Sp. Def. Worth knowing what is deliberately not here: Helping Hand is a one-turn damage multiplier rather than a stat change, Dragon Cheer raises the ally's crit ratio (which is not a stat), and Acupressure picks its stat at random.

Prankster gives every one of this Pokémon's STATUS moves +1 priority, so Taunt, Will-O-Wisp, Thunder Wave or a screen lands before the opponent moves. It is the only ability that does this: Quick Draw is a 30% chance on attacking moves and Gale Wings is Flying moves at full HP, so neither ever made this claim true.

Prankster plus a status pivot move (Parting Shot, Teleport…), so it can escape and bring in a teammate with +1 priority.

Aliases: prankster-pivot

Shed Tail costs the user half its maximum HP to leave behind a Substitute worth a quarter of it, then switches out — the incoming teammate inherits the Substitute and gets a completely free turn to set up behind it. Only four roster entries learn it (Sceptile, Mega Sceptile, Heliolisk, Orthworm), and it fails outright if the user would faint paying the cost. Stat boosts do not transfer; for those see boost-courier.

Carries two or more foes-only spread moves (Rock Slide, Heat Wave, Muddy Water, Dazzling Gleam…) at 75+ BP and 85%+ accuracy, backed by 100+ in that move's own attacking stat. Foes-only is the point: Earthquake, Surf and Discharge hit your ally too, so they need an immune partner rather than a free click — see the friendly-fire Interaction Techs for those. Two moves rather than one is what separates a game plan from a coverage slot.

45 or less Speed and 100+ Attack or Sp. Atk, so it moves first while Trick Room reverses the Speed order. The cut is 45 rather than 60 because under Trick Room the slowest Pokémon acts soonest — 60 Speed is not slow, it just loses the mirror to everything below it.

Aliases: tr-attacker, trroom-attacker, tr-abuser

A boost move that raises an attacking stat it actually has (95+), in either of the two shapes that win games. Compounding — the move raises offense and Speed (Dragon Dance, Quiver Dance, Shell Smash, Shift Gear, Tidy Up, No Retreat, Clangorous Soul…), so every turn you hit harder and move sooner. Or offense-only on a slow body (45 or less Speed): Swords Dance, Nasty Plot, Calm Mind, Belly Drum, Curse — outside Trick Room that is the worse move, but inside it the Speed boost would have been wasted anyway and being slow is the advantage. Curse is the purest case: it deliberately lowers your Speed. (For a Ghost type Curse is a completely different move — half your HP to curse the foe, no Attack boost — so Ghosts do not qualify on it.)

Speed that costs no turn. Either a rider on a STAB attacking move it was clicking anyway — Flame Charge, Trailblaze, Rapid Spin — or an ability that accrues Speed on its own: Speed Boost every turn, Weak Armor and Steadfast and Motor Drive off what the opponent does. Agility, Rock Polish and Dragon Dance are deliberately excluded: they cost the turn, which is the opposite of this claim (Dragon Dance lives in setup-sweeper). STAB matters because Trailblaze on a non-Grass type is a 50 BP move nobody actually runs.

Aliases: speed-setup, self-speed-boost, free-speed, boost-on-hit

Sheer Force drops the secondary effects of eligible moves for 1.3× power. Sheer Force-boosted moves also avoid Life Orb recoil.

Aliases: sheer-force

Ignores Substitute, either through Infiltrator or a strong (80+ BP) STAB sound move like Boomburst or Bug Buzz — backed by 90+ in that move's own attacking stat.

Aliases: sub-pierce, sound-attacker

Technician boosts moves of 60 BP or less by 1.5×, turning a weak STAB (Bullet Punch, Mach Punch, Rock Blast…) into a primary damage source.

Aliases: technician

Iron Fist adds 1.2× power to punching moves (Drain Punch, Ice Punch, Mach Punch…).

Aliases: iron-fist

Strong Jaw adds 1.5× power to biting moves (Crunch, Psychic Fangs, Fire Fang…).

Aliases: strong-jaw

Sharpness adds 1.5× power to slicing moves (Sacred Sword, Night Slash, Leaf Blade…).

Aliases: sharpness

Mega Launcher adds 1.5× power to pulse and aura moves (Aura Sphere, Dark Pulse, Water Pulse…).

Aliases: mega-launcher

Adaptability raises the STAB bonus from 1.5× to 2×, so an 80+ BP STAB move receives the full 2× STAB bonus.

Contrary inverts stat changes, so a move that lowers the user raises it instead — attack and set up in the same turn. The boost lands wherever that move drops: Leaf Storm and Overheat raise Sp. Atk, Superpower raises Attack and Defense, while Close Combat drops Defense and Sp. Def, so it makes the user tankier rather than stronger.

Belly Drum raises Attack to +6 at the cost of half its HP. It qualifies with 95+ effective Attack (counting Huge Power or Pure Power) plus 70+ Speed or a priority move.

Baton Pass transfers the user's stat boosts to whichever teammate switches in, so the boost outlives the Pokémon that set it up. It qualifies by learning Baton Pass plus a boost worth receiving — a move raising Attack, Sp. Atk or Speed by two or more stages (Swords Dance, Nasty Plot, Shell Smash, Belly Drum, Tail Glow, Shift Gear, Agility, Rock Polish…), or an Ability that stacks one by itself (Speed Boost, Weak Armor). Defensive setup is left out because a receiver rarely cashes in a passed Cotton Guard. Shed Tail is a separate tag — it passes a Substitute, not stat boosts.

Aliases: baton-pass-setup, baton-pass

Body Press is a 80 BP Fighting move that calculates with the user's Defense stat instead of its Attack — so the more it is built to survive, the harder it hits, and Iron Defense doubles as a Swords Dance. Gated on 100+ Defense that also exceeds its own Attack, because on a Pokémon that already punches harder than it walls, Body Press is just a worse Fighting move.

Gyro Ball's power is inversely proportional to the user's Speed — the slower it is relative to the target, the harder it hits, up to 150 BP. Its low Speed stops being a weakness and becomes the damage roll. Gated on 50 or less Speed with 90+ Attack, so the claim is about a Pokémon that can actually convert it. Reads naturally with trick-room-attacker: the same stat line wins both plans.

Foul Play is a 95 BP Dark move that calculates with the TARGET's Attack stat, not the user's — so a Pokémon with no physical offense of its own can punish a physical attacker with its own strength, and the foe's Swords Dance makes the punishment worse. Gated on 80 or less Attack, because that is exactly when borrowing beats attacking normally.

Huge Power and Pure Power double the Attack stat outright, which is why a Pokémon with an unremarkable Attack number can hit like a legendary. Azumarill's 50 Attack becomes an effective 100 before any boost, and Mega Mawile's 105 becomes 210. This is one of the four things the query language cannot say — atk>= reads the base stat, and the doubling happens after — so the tag is the only way to browse it.

Aliases: doubled-attack, huge-power, pure-power

Pixilate, Aerilate and Refrigerate turn this Pokémon's Normal-type moves into Fairy, Flying or Ice, and add 20% power on top. The consequence players miss is that it applies to every Normal move: Hyper Voice becomes a spread Fairy attack, and Return, Body Slam and Explosion all change type too — so the coverage on paper is nothing like the coverage in practice. The conversion is invisible to type: queries, which read the move's printed type.

Moxie raises Attack by one stage every time this Pokémon knocks something out, so a sweep compounds: each KO makes the next easier. Gated on 90+ Attack that is also its better offensive stat, because the boost is worthless to a special attacker — the role-fit rule in AGENTS.md, and the reason Pyroar (68 Atk / 109 SpA) is not here despite having Moxie.

Taunt or Encore to stop the Trick Room setter, or its own Imprison + Trick Room to lock the mode out entirely.

Aliases: anti-tr, anti-trickroom

Haze erases every stat change on the field in one move — the opponent's Dragon Dance and your own Calm Mind alike, because it targets all active Pokémon. That symmetry is the whole point: it is the answer you bring when nothing on your side was going to set up anyway, and the one you must not pair with your own sweeper.

Aliases: clear-stats, stat-reset-support

Clear Smog erases one opponent's stat changes and leaves the rest of the field alone — including yours. Same job as Haze, without the cost: this is the reset you can run behind your own setup sweeper. It is also a 50 BP Poison attack, so it does chip damage on the way.

Can't be flinched by Fake Out — a Ghost-type, Inner Focus / Shield Dust, or a priority-blocking ability — so it can still act that turn.

Aliases: anti-fake-out-support

Protects the team from status with a move (Safeguard, Misty Terrain, Heal Bell) or a status-proof ability (Purifying Salt, Good as Gold…).

Breaks Reflect and Light Screen with Brick Break, Psychic Fangs, or Defog.

Aliases: anti-screens-support

Dazzling, Queenly Majesty, or Armor Tail makes the whole team immune to priority moves like Fake Out and Sucker Punch.

Aliases: anti-prio

Magic Bounce reflects Taunt, entry hazards, Spore, and other status right back at the opponent.

Aliases: magic-bounce-support

Roar, Whirlwind, Dragon Tail and Circle Throw force the target out, and everything it had set up leaves with it — boosts, Substitute, Focus Energy. That is a different answer from symmetric-stat-reset: phazing costs the opponent their turns rather than resetting the field, and it cannot touch your own side. Gated on bulky (280+ HP+Def+SpDef) because these moves are negative priority — you take the boosted hit first, then send it away.

Unaware ignores the opponent's stat changes in both directions: their Swords Dance does not increase the damage this Pokémon takes, and their Iron Defense does not reduce the damage it deals. A setup sweeper's entire plan is stat boosts, so a bulky Unaware body answers one by making the boosts irrelevant rather than by removing them — no turn spent, nothing to play around. Gated on above-average bulk (255+ HP+Def+SpDef) because ignoring boosts only helps a Pokémon that survives the unboosted hit.

Carries a dependable burning move like Will-O-Wisp to halve a physical attacker's damage for the rest of the game.

Aliases: reliable-burn-support

Carries a dependable paralysis move like Thunder Wave to quarter a fast threat's Speed and add full-paralysis chances.

Aliases: reliable-paralysis-support

Carries a sleep move that actually lands — 75%+ accuracy, which on this roster means Sleep Powder (75%). Hypnosis (60%) and Sing (55%) are excluded: guaranteeing the status if you connect is worth nothing when you connect three times in five. Those two are what gravity-abuser is for — under Gravity they become clickable.

Aliases: reliable-sleep-support

Carries a dependable poisoning move (Toxic, Poison Powder…) for steady chip that wears down walls.

Aliases: reliable-poison-support

Under Trick Room the SLOWEST Pokémon moves first for five turns, which is what turns a 30-Speed nuke into the fastest thing on the field. The catalogue named who attacks under it (trick-room-attacker) and who stops it (anti-trick-room) from the beginning, and never named who puts it up. This is capability, not a set: the move is a common enough TM that running it is a choice, and the tag says only that the choice is available.

Tailwind doubles the Speed of your whole side for four turns — the other way to win the Speed war, and the one that leaves your Pokémon acting in the normal order. Pairs with trick-room-attacker's opposite: a 75–95 Speed attacker that is fast enough to outrun things once doubled but loses the race unhelped.

Has an ability that decides the weather — Cloud Nine switches its effects off entirely, while Drought, Drizzle, Sand Stream and Snow Warning overwrite whatever was up on switch-in.

Aliases: weather-reset, weather-denial, weather-setter

Electric, Grassy, Misty or Psychic Surge sets its terrain automatically the instant this Pokémon switches in — no turn spent, no move slot used, and nothing the opponent can Taunt. That guarantee is what separates it from learning the terrain move: a Surge ability wins the terrain war by arriving.

Learns a terrain move (Electric Terrain, Grassy Terrain, Misty Terrain, Psychic Terrain) to power up moves, block status, or shut off priority for five turns. It costs a turn and a move slot, and it can be Taunted or simply outsped by the other terrain — which is exactly why terrain-surge is the stronger version of the same plan.

Aliases: terrain-support

Uses a sun benefit that matches a 90+ offensive stat: Chlorophyll doubles Speed and cashes in on either offense, Solar Power adds 50% to Sp. Atk (at 1/8 max HP per turn).

Swift Swim with 90+ Attack or Sp. Atk doubles its Speed under rain, letting it outspeed more opponents while rain is active.

Two different payoffs from the same weather, on 90+ Attack or Sp. Atk. Sand Rush doubles Speed. Sand Force leaves Speed alone and instead adds 30% to Rock, Ground and Steel moves. Both also ignore sandstorm chip damage.

Slush Rush with 90+ Attack or Sp. Atk doubles its Speed while it's snowing.

Leaf Guard or Harvest on a bulky body (255+ defensive total) — status immunity and berry recycling while the sun is up.

On a bulky body (255+ defensive total), rain pays out every turn. Rain Dish restores 1/16 max HP and Dry Skin 1/8 — but Hydration heals nothing: it cures status instead, which is the stronger effect against a burn or paralysis and useless against damage. Dry Skin also takes 25% extra from Fire.

Sand Veil on a bulky body (255+ defensive total) — immune to sandstorm chip and 1.25× evasion while the sand blows.

Ice Body or Snow Cloak on a bulky body (255+ defensive total) — passive healing or extra evasion while it's snowing.

Learns Gravity, which raises every move's accuracy ×1.67 and grounds airborne foes — improving the accuracy of low-accuracy moves and enabling Ground moves for five turns.

Aliases: gravity

Carries a 60–70% accuracy move that Gravity turns into a guaranteed hit — a 100+ power STAB attack off its better attacking stat (Thunder, Blizzard, Focus Blast, Hurricane), or a sleep move like Hypnosis.

Aliases: gravity-abuse, gravity-user

A physical attacker (90+ Atk — the stat Intimidate actually drops) whose ability ignores stat drops — Clear Body, White Smoke, Full Metal Body, Hyper Cutter… — so Intimidate can't weaken it. Defiant and Competitive are deliberately NOT here: the drop still lands, they just answer it with +2 — that play is intimidate-punisher.

Intimidate activates Defiant / Guard Dog for +2 Attack or Competitive for +2 Sp. Atk; the matching offensive stat must be 90+.

Unburden doubles this Pokémon's Speed once its held item is consumed or knocked off; it also has 90+ Attack or Sp. Atk.

Dark types cannot be hit by a status move that Prankster gave priority to — the boosted Taunt, Encore, Thunder Wave or Will-O-Wisp simply fails. It is a typing fact rather than an ability or a move, which is exactly why it is worth a tag: type:dark will show you the same 32 Pokémon and never tell you why Dark is the answer to a Prankster lead.

Aliases: blocks-prankster-support, blocks-prankster, prankster-proof

A bulky body (165+ HP+Def) with a contact-punishing ability (Rough Skin, Iron Barbs, Flame Body, Static…) that can damage or inflict status on attackers that make contact.

Aliases: contact-punish, punishes-contact

Stops the opponent from switching — via Shadow Tag / Arena Trap / Magnet Pull or a trapping move (Mean Look, Block, Jaw Lock…).

A bulky body (280+ defensive total) with repeatable self-recovery (Recover, Roost, Slack Off…).

High bulk (280+ total) with a Protect-family move and residual damage from Toxic, Will-O-Wisp, or Leech Seed.

Sets entry hazards — Stealth Rock, Spikes, Toxic Spikes, or Sticky Web — to chip or slow everything that switches in.

Clears entry hazards from its own side with Rapid Spin, Defog, Mortal Spin, or Tidy Up.

Magic Guard blocks every source of damage that is not a direct attack: entry hazards, burn and poison chip, sandstorm and hail, Leech Seed, Curse, recoil, and Life Orb. It does not block the attack itself, and it does not block the status — a burned Magic Guard Pokémon still has its Attack halved, it just takes no damage from the burn. This is the -immune naming in its strict sense: nothing is spent and nothing is done, the chip simply never lands.

For these four Abilities a status condition is an upgrade, not a problem. Guts adds 50% Attack while statused AND ignores burn's own Attack cut, so a burned Guts attacker hits harder than a healthy one. Quick Feet adds 50% Speed and ignores paralysis' Speed cut the same way. Marvel Scale adds 50% Defense. Poison Heal turns poison damage into healing. It inverts the usual read of an opposing Will-O-Wisp or Thunder Wave — and of your own Facade.

Aliases: status-fueled

Fast (100+ Speed) Electrify turns a foe's move Electric — so with a Ground-type or Electric-immune partner out, that converted move does nothing to the partner.

Aliases: electrify

Endeavor sets the target's HP to the user's own — so from 1 HP it drags anything healthy down to 1 too, whatever its bulk and whatever it just did. Getting to that 1 HP is what a Focus Sash is for, which is why the gate is not an Ability but a BODY: fast enough (90+ Speed) to act on turn one, frail enough (260 or less bulk) that surviving at 1 HP is the expected state rather than a surprise, and carrying its own priority move to finish the foe before it heals or switches out.

Aliases: sturdy-endeavor-lead, endeavor-sweeper