Underrated Picks for Pokemon Champions

Image Credits: Nintendo, The Pokemon Company, The Pokemon Works

Is it too soon to talk about Pokemon again? I know that I just did this back in April, but I want to try out a different style of article.

I’ve talked about this before, but I think that competitive Pokemon is one of the most fun and unique competitive games that I’ve ever played. Being able to create a team of six guys that you built yourself is so cool. And the amount of build variety in every Pokemon means that there are untold amounts of viable options for every Pokemon.

Having made it to Master Ball Rank in both seasons of Pokemon Champions’ ladder, today I wanted to talk about four underrated picks that you can get a lot of value out of. I’m specifically going to be looking at the Doubles format, as this is what Pokemon’s official tournaments use. That, and I’m just way too out of practice in Singles. I got to Ultra Ball Rank with a slapdash team and said “good enough”.

Hopefully you can find some cool new Pokemon to try out on your next team, and maybe this can even convince you to try the game for yourself.

Corviknight - The Wall

Image Credit: The Pokemon Company

Starting off is a personal favorite of mine. It’s Corviknight, the Steel bird from Galar. This is probably the most “rated” Pokemon on this list. At the time of writing, he’s sitting just outside the Top 30 in terms of usage, so top players are starting to see its value.

And for good reason. Corviknight’s role is to be a fat physical wall that can also do good damage in return. Look at the top Pokemon in this format. Sneasler, Garchomp, Kingambit, Basculegion, Aerodactyl, Tyranitar, Scizor. These are all physical attackers that Corviknight does not care about! And with his Mirror Armor Ability, he doesn’t have to worry about his stats getting dropped, instead bouncing them back to the opponent. So a Pokemon like Incineroar would end up lowering its own Attack stat with its Intimidate Ability.

As for what to invest in, I personally go with max HP, 13 Attack and Special Defense, and the rest in Speed. You don’t need to invest in his Defense, as it’s already so high, and you can supplement that with moves like Iron Defense or Bulk Up. And if you put him on a team with Sandstorm weather, then his Special Defense gets even higher due to him being a Steel type.

Speaking of moves, this is where it becomes harder to pin down what you want. The four moves you pick will boil down to what you need on your team. Corviknight has no shortage of good moves, including Roost, Tailwind, Bulk Up, Iron Defense, Iron Head, Brave Bird, Body Press, and Taunt. Pick any combination of those four moves, and it’ll probably be good. Just look at what your team needs, and Corviknight can probably do it.

When it comes to partners for the bird, I find that he works best with Sand teams; pairing him with Pokemon like Tyranitar and Excadrill. That being said, Steel is also a good type to throw onto a Rain team, as that will nullify his Fire weakness. Pokemon to use for this includes Pelipper or Politoed as the Rain setter, and a strong attacker to take advantage of the Rain like Swift Swim Basculegion, or Mega Dragonite with Thunder and Hurricane that won’t miss in the Rain.

Overall, Corviknight is a fantastic defensive wall. Being able to completely blank powerful attackers like Garchomp and Sneasler is a fantastic trait, and a well positioned Corviknight can easily win an endgame 2-v-1 depending on what the opponent has.

Ceruledge - The Sniper

Image Credit: The Pokemon Company

Now here’s one of my favorite Pokemon from Gen 9. Ceruledge is a Pokemon that perfectly tows the line between cool and edgy, and (for me) ends up as one of the most memorable designs in Scarlet and Violet. However, cool designs don’t always lead to competitive results (see Haxorus). Fortunately, Ceruledge has a niche use that not a lot of people have realized yet.

Now, the mark of a good off-meta pick is that it matches up well into a lot of the biggest threats at the top of the food chain. The current strongest Mega Pokemon in the game right now is Mega Charizard Y. This guy does everything. He hits hard, and he sets up the Sun when he Mega Evolves, further boosting his Fire type damage. There aren’t a lot of things in the game that want to take a Sun boosted Heat Wave or Weather Ball. And the Pokemon that do want to take it are gonna get blasted by no charge Solar Beams.

Enter Ceruledge. He has an Ability called Flash Fire, which nullifies Fire damage, while boosting the power of his own Fire type attacks. This one Ability makes Charizard unable to touch Ceruledge. His best attack into Ceruledge is Solar Beam, which is a 4-hit knockout! Meanwhile Ceruledge can hit back with a powerful Poltergeist attack, leaving it in chip KO range for the partner.

During my time playing with Ceruledge, I found Choice Scarf to be his best item. This boosts his speed by 1.5x, making him faster than basically every relevant Pokemon that I need him to be faster than. With a Jolly Nature (+Speed, -Sp.Atk) and 26 points of Speed, it will outspeed max Speed Jolly Choice Scarf Basculegion. Sneasler is also a sitting duck, as Ceruledge is immune to both Fake Out and Close Combat, while Dire Claw does very little damage.

As for the moveset, we’ll be running four attacks to maximize our coverage. Bitter Blade is a must. This is his best Fire type move, and it heals him when he uses it. Poltergeist is a fantastic Ghost STAB move, or you could use Shadow Claw if you want more consistency. Psycho Cut is a good 3rd move, as it can catch opposing Sneaslers in one hit. Sneasler can’t hit you with Fake Out because of Ceruledge’s Ghost type, and you’ll outspeed it with Choice Scarf and it will faint while accomplishing nothing. And Close Combat is a good final coverage move. I almost never used it, but it’s there for the occasional Tyranitar or Archaludon.

Beyond the great matchup into Charizard Y teams, there are also a bunch of other common Pokemon that he can scrap with as well. Sneasler doesn’t get to do much with its usual moveset of Fake Out, Close Combat, and Dire Claw. With a Choice Scarf, Ceruledge can outspeed opposing Choice Scarf Basculegion and take it out with Poltergeist. Bitter Blade can one shot other notable Pokemon like Sinistcha, non-Mega Venusaur, Mega Froslass, and Mega Skarmory.

If you want to try out a team featuring Ceruledge, here is the team that I used to reach Master Ball Rank this season. This is a very defense focused team, running a lot of bulky Pokemon like Mega Venusaur, Mega Tyranitar, Rotom-Wash, and Corviknight. Ceruledge didn’t come in every match, but she always made her mark on the battles she did come to. This is a modified version of this team, but I changed a few things to make it fit my playstyle better. If you’re looking for a good team that’s easy to pilot if you’re getting started, I’d highly recommend trying this one out. 

I think that Ceruledge is a very niche pick in this format. It’s really here to help you have an easier time into one specific matchup. But in a format with so few options, I think that you could do a lot worse. A lot of Pokemon don’t even have a role, so at least Ceruledge can be considered viable.

Meowstic - The Support

Image Credit: The Pokemon Company

Hey look, Meowstic got a new Mega Evolution! That’s neat. Throw that in the bin. We won’t need that.

Anyways, Meowstic is an interesting support Pokemon. In previous Pokemon games, I tried to make Meowstic work, but it’s usually too weak to do anything. It isn’t as universally good as other choices like Whimsicott, Sableye, Aerodactyl or Talonflame. But it does have a very niche role as support for other Psychic types.

Like a lot of the good support Pokemon, Meowstic gets the Prankster Ability, giving priority to his support moves, of which he gets plenty. I’m not gonna list all of them, but the important ones are weather moves like Rain Dance and Sunny Day, Reflect and Light Screen to reduce incoming damage, Speed control with Thunder Wave, and the main draw: Psychic Terrain.

Psychic Terrain is an interesting move that sets up a Psychic field which boosts the power of Psychic type attacks, and nullifies priority attacks like Fake Out and Aqua Jet. This is a format of Pokemon that doesn’t have any Pokemon with Abilities that set Terrains upon entry. Pokemon like Rillaboom or Indeedee aren’t available. So being able to set up one of these Terrains with priority is incredible.

You’ll typically want to pair Meowstic with a strong Psychic type attacker like Mega Gardevoir, Hatterene, or Armarouge. Not only will this boost their STAB Psychic type attacks, but Psychic Terrain also changes the move Expanding force into an attack that hits both of your opponents, rather than just one. Also, you unfortunately can’t use Mega Delphox with this because of its Levitate Ability. Terrain bonuses only affect grounded Pokemon.

The best way to describe Meowstic is “We have Indeedee-F at home”. It will do a lot of the same stuff that she did, just slower and with less bulk. But again, this is a niche use in a format where no other Pokemon is even thinking about Terrains. I can promise you that Bellibolt isn’t going to be clicking Electric Terrain.

And Meowstic also has options outside of Psychic Terrain. With Sunny Day, it synergizes with Fire and Rock types, as well as boosting Armarouge’s other STAB type. And with Rain Dance, it can help Water and Steel types. You could pair it with Archaludon to get instant Electro Shots. Plus, you’re using those as moves, which happen after Mega Evolution. Meaning if you’re up against Mega weather setters like Charizard Y, Tyranitar, or Froslass, you’ll immediately remove their preferred weather.

All of this specifically applies to Male Meowstic because he gets the Prankster Ability. If you want to use Female Meowstic, disregard all of this.

Mega Manectric - The Hidden Tech

Image Credit: The Pokemon Company

I want to close this off by talking about an underrated Mega Evolution. In the current format of Pokemon Champions, you’re mostly going to be building around the Mega Evolution you want to use. Charizard Y and Aerodactyl are two of the best Pokemon in the format because they want to hit hard and fast, and they have teammates to support that. Sneasler uses Fake Out to steal turns, Whimsicott can shut down opponents with Encore or boost your offense with Tailwind. Some Megas are just naturally harder to use than others.

I think that Mega Manectric is the Mega with the most potential, and I could see it getting better as more Pokemon get added in. Mega Manectric is a Pokemon that hits hard and fast, boasting a staggering base 135 Special Attack and Speed. Without modifiers, this puts him tied with Mega Lopunny as the 6th fastest Pokemon in the game. Relevant to Doubles, he’s only slower than Mega Aerodactyl (base 150) and Dragapult (base 142). This means that you have a fast, strong Thunderbolt that can be used to snipe an opponent's Pokemon.

One Thunderbolt will instantly drop Pokemon like Mega Charizard Y, Basculegion, Mega and non-Mega Aerodactyl, Mega Blastoise, Corviknight, and dealing up to 80% to Milotic. You can also use Overheat to pick off Pokemon like Kingambit, Sinistcha, Scizor, non-Mega Venusaur, Mega Skarmory, and deal massive damage to Aegislash. And you can run Snarl as your third move to lower your opponents’ Special Attack as support.

The other hidden draw of Manectric is that it doesn’t even have to be run as a Mega. You can bring it on a dual Mega team, and keep it as base Manectric depending on what Ability you need it to have. In its base form, Manectric has Lightning Rod, which nullifies in Electric type moves and buffs his Special Attack. While when he Mega Evolves, it gets Intimidate, which lowers the opponents’ Attack stat. While there aren’t many notable Electric types in the format (only Rotom-Wash is in the top 50 as of writing) it can be good for catching random Electric coverage moves like Electro Shot from Archaludon, or Thunderbolt Gardevoir.

Now, Manectric doesn’t fit well into every team, but he does get to shine with Rain teams. Worth noting is that while writing this, I found this team from a player that ranked very high on the ladder at the end of last season. This Rain team is running Dual Megas with Floette and Manectric, as well as Maushold for support. It also features Ceruledge, which I thought was really cool.

I think that the biggest weakness of Mega Manectric is that his moveset is very limited, but he’s not so bad that you couldn’t make it work if he’s your favorite Pokemon. He just needs the right cast to support him.

Closing

And there’s four ideas for you to potentially build your next team around. I’ve been really loving Pokemon Champions. It’s been taking me back to ten years ago playing Pokemon X and Y, theory-crafting and teambuilding with my friends. 

I know that the game can feel a bit stale right now with everyone running variations of the same teams, but there’s also a ton of Pokemon that haven’t been explored yet. These are just some ideas to get you to look at what has lower use, but still has a solid niche that no one else is thinking about.

I hope that you all enjoyed this mini-article. I’ll be back next month where I tell you that I didn’t like another popular game!