Pokémon Champions Trick Room Teams

Trick Room inverts the rule the rest of the game is built on. For five turns after it is used, turn order runs from slowest to fastest, so the Pokémon that would normally act last acts first. It is a move rather than an ability, which means it has to be used deliberately, on a turn where doing nothing else is acceptable. A Trick Room team is therefore built backwards: low Speed stops being a flaw to work around and becomes the qualification for the job.

Two problems define the archetype: getting Trick Room up safely, and being ready to use it the moment it is. The setter has to survive the turn on which it acts, which makes bulk more valuable than anything else it brings, and support that prevents the opponent from interfering with that turn is worth as much as an attacker. Behind it you want slow, heavy attackers that gain the most from the inversion, and a second way to set the move, because five turns is rarely the whole game.

Trick Room is at its best against fast offensive teams, which lose their principal advantage the moment it lands and cannot switch it back off. Its weaknesses concentrate on the setup turn and the clock. Taunt prevents the move outright. An opposing Trick Room cancels yours and restores normal order, a reversal no other archetype has to plan around. Fast teams can also remove the setter before it acts, or simply wait the five turns out. A team whose slow attackers are useless outside the inversion has already told the opponent how to beat it.

The five turns expire whether or not you have won, and your team is, by design, the slowest one on the field when they do. The two workable answers are to set the move again, which requires the setter or a second user to still be available, or to have built enough bulk that the turns spent at a Speed disadvantage are survivable. Planning only for the turns while Trick Room is up is the most common way these teams lose.