Everything You Need to Know about Pokemon Champions

Here's everything you need to know to get started with Pokemon Champions. Starting with, what is Pokemon Champions? Pokemon Champions is a new Pokemon game centered around battling, and will be the home of competitive play moving forward. It lowers the barrier to entry of competitive play by a massive amount, with the intent of bringing battling to even more people.

There's currently a Switch and Switch 2 version out right now, and a mobile version has been announced for later this year. The main currency in this game is something called VP. You cannot obtain VP via microtransactions, but you get plenty of VP just for playing the game, so this isn't a huge issue. If you're not familiar, by the way, hello, my name is Wolf.

I am a competitive Pokemon player and have been since 2011, and I've been making videos here on YouTube about competitive play for over a decade at this point goal of bringing more people into the game. I've entered tournaments for many years and have even won the Pokemon World Championships. I'm posting a new video every single day until April ends to celebrate Pokemon Champions release so if you like that, you should subscribe or at least come back tomorrow because there will be another video.

Anyway, let's talk about the details of Pokemon Champions, starting with recruitment. Recruitment is the new terminology used for how you get Pokemon in this game since you're not going out and catching them in Pokeballs like you would in a normal Pokemon game. In Pokemon Champions, there are two ways you can get Pokemon. You can either recruit them from a pre-selected pool of 10 Pokemon that refreshes every day, or you can transfer them in from Pokemon Home. Every 22 hours, you'll be able to refresh the pool of Pokemon offered to you via the recruitment feature. The pool contains 10 different Pokemon with variable stats, moves, and abilities. These Pokemon will always have two of their stats fully trained and the remaining two points put into another stat,

but the way that these Pokemon are trained is not always optimal. If you don't wanna wait the full 22 hours to recruit a new Pokemon, well, you have some options. You can use Quick Coupon, which is a currency specifically for this reason,

to speed up the process. One Quick Coupon reduces the time until refresh by one hour. You can also pay VP to do this immediately. It costs a hundred VP per quick coupon, so 2,200 VP for a full reset. When you go to recruit a Pokemon, you have two options. The first is something called a trial recruitment. This is free and doesn't cost any VP. Trial recruitment will last for seven days, and the Pokemon cannot be retrained or have their moves changed during this time. Pokemon can be upgraded to permanent recruits whenever you want during this period.

And that's the other option that you have, which is to permanently recruit a Pokemon. This costs 2,500 VP or one teammate ticket. This allows you to keep the Pokemon forever and you can retrain it however you wish. Retraining comes with an associated cost,

which we'll talk about in a second. You are allowed to recruit multiple instances of the same Pokemon species if you would like. This can be useful for having several teams or if you want to use both the mega version of a Pokemon and the non-mega version of a Pokemon who may prefer different sets. One tip that I have for you when it comes to permanent recruitment is to think about how often you intend to use the Pokemon that you're recruiting as well as to think about how easy it is for you to get the decide to pass on it right now. For example, if you don't have Scarlet or Violet and Orthorn were offered, maybe you would consider taking it. Whereas if

you do have Scarlet and Violet, maybe you wouldn't use a permanent recruitment for that because you could just go out and catch an Orthorn and Scarlet and transfer it in. We'll talk about that in a second, I'm getting ahead of myself. Pokemon that you find in recruitment can be shiny. There will be a special Pokemon recruited or otherwise obtained through gifts in Pokemon Champions cannot be transferred to Pokemon Home. This is only true of Pokemon that you obtain through Pokemon Champions, not for Pokemon that you bring in and then want to take out again. Okay, speaking of bringing Pokemon in and taking them out, let's talk about Pokemon Home.

You are able to bring Pokemon from Pokemon Home into Pokemon Champion, and in my opinion, this is the best way of getting Pokemon into this game. Transferring a Pokemon in doesn't cost any VP, and stats, moves, and abilities will transfer over. If you want to do this, it's actually relatively straightforward. First, you want to select Pokemon Champions

in the Pokemon Home app. Pokemon transferred in only visit from home. They will actually remain in Pokemon Home even when they are present in Pokemon Champions, but they can't be altered or moved in Pokemon Home while they are visiting champions. Pokemon keep their previous training when they're transferred to champions,

but they can be altered in champions without affecting the Pokemon in Home. There is no cooldown or cost to importing Pokemon from Pokemon Home, but they do take up a box space. If you don't want to spend any real-life dollars, you will only have 30 box spaces, so you need to be intentional about how you use these. If you get the starter pack, this 30 limit upgrades to 80, and if you get the membership, it goes to 1000. These do not scale linearly.

Like I said, transferring a Pokemon from Pokemon Home is probably the best and quickest way to get a Pokemon easily, especially because it doesn't cost any VP, so if you've been playing the other games, you already have a leg up when it comes to Champions. Just like with Recruitment, you can have multiple of the same species of Pokemon transferred in from Pokemon Home. So you could have a fast Incineroar and a slow Incineroar, and even a medium Incineroar. In Pokemon Champions, you can train Pokemon however you want using either VP or a training

ticket. Raising a Pokemon's stat point costs 5 VP per point, for a total of 330 VP to fully train a Pokemon. Changing a Pokemon's nature costs 500 VP. Changing its ability also costs 500 VP, and changing a move costs 250 VP. To change all 4 moves, that's 1000 VP.

Training in Pokemon Champions appears to be somewhat opposite to how it has been in previous games, where training in Pokemon stats was the most tedious aspect and changing the moves was often the easiest, whereas in Pokemon Champions, changing a move is actually the most costly. This is why Pokemon Home can be so big, because you can bring Pokemon in that already have the right ability and moves that you caught in other games that were relatively easy to get. You get 500 VP and 24 quick coupons daily as long as you log in, recruit a Pokemon,

and do one ranked battle, regardless of whether you win or lose. There's also weekly missions which award lots of VP and quick coupons. Various objectives including winning ranked battles, using moves of certain types, using super effective moves, landing critical hits, and more are all potential mission objectives. Some missions, for example type-based ones, can be re-rolled for free. So if you don't have any grass-type Pokemon, you have a grass-type mission, you may be able to just get rid of that and get something else instead. Starter missions award quick coupons and VP.

These are basic tasks like reaching Great Ball tier, changing your outfit, or even just winning a casual battle. Membership gives you exclusive missions that award teammate tickets or training tickets. Replica Teams. This is different than it's been in past games. In the past, Replica Teams were a rental team, and the way it worked is if you shared a rental team online, anybody who entered the code would be able to use that team in battle. Replica Teams are unfortunately different and not necessarily in a positive way. Replica teams require you to train the Pokemon

to match the team. It requires you to have all six Pokemon and the items before you can train the Pokemon to match. It is a convenient way to get a team quickly, but it does still consume resources unlike rental teams in previous games.

Training for all six of the Pokemon will happen at one time with one button press. You get three battle team slots without membership or 18 with it. That's 18 total not 18 new. There's four different types of battles. The one that will be most popular is ranked. The ranked battle lets you obtain VP after matches. You win matches against players with a similar ranking on the ladder. You rank

up from Pokeball tier all the way to champion tier. This is a new tier that's after Master Ball. How much VP you earn depends on whether you win or lose, and also depends on some other factors such as what tier you are in. Ranked battles are the default and encouraged way to play Pokemon Champions. The tiers are the Beginner tier, which is the tutorial tier, then Pokeball, Great Ball, Ultra Ball, Master Ball, and finally Champion tier. Each tier has four stages, starting at four and ending at one.

So you go from Pokeball 4 to Pokeball 3 to 2 to 1, and then you go to Great Ball 4, so on and so forth. The next battling style is Casual Battles. These are functionally identical to Ranked Battles, just with no VP rewards and also no ranked ladder. They are a good way to play if you are worried about losing ranking points, or if you just want to test an idea out on the ladder. The third form of battles is not currently available.

The fourth battle mode is online competitions. These are online ladder style competitions, where everybody starts out of the same rank and then you see who can get the highest on the ladder within a set time period. If you know what the grand challenges or global challenges are from Scarlet and Violet, that's where these will be. All forms of battle can be either single or double battles. Double battles are the official competitive format and the format that I personally specialize in. Single battles are the 3v3 format instead, so you bring six Pokemon to a battle and pick three.

There's currently no way to play 6v6 single battles in Pokemon Champions. All items in the in-game shop are purchased with VP. There are no microtransactions. If you're interested in playing competitively, the majority of things you'll be purchasing from the shop are the held items, including the megastones. The selection of items that are in the game at launch is actually very small. We have reason to believe that this will be expanded over time, though how quickly is difficult to say.

In the meantime, you'll want to stock up on staple items though. Berries cost 400 VP, held items are variable as of launch but typically range between 700 and 1000 VP. Megastones are 2000 VP each. Clothing items, cosmetics, throwing styles, and victory poses are all variable. And the battle music is 5000 VP and features music from all previous mainline games. Currently there are three main packages offered to players who want to spend money. The starter pack costs $6.99 and gives you 50 training tickets, 30 teammate tickets,

and gives you the music from the trainer battle from Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee. I think if you want to spend money this is a pretty good deal. It's a one-time purchase, it's $7 only. The 50 extra box spaces are nice and the 50 training tickets can save you a bunch of time, especially if you don't have a previous Pokemon game to transfer in. The next option is the battle pass which costs $9.99 each season. This is the premium version of the standard Battle Pass. You earn SP from these, which are season points, for doing ranked battles and missions.

The Battle Pass resets each season with new rewards. They award Mega Stones, teammate tickets, training tickets, quick coupons, Pokemon, and profile cosmetics. It's difficult for me to judge right now whether the Battle Pass is worth it in my opinion.

I think it probably depends on your situation. For example, I have many of the previous Pokemon games, so the Pokemon offered through the Battle Pass is not really an especially appealing factor for me, but if you haven't played those games and you don't have access to this Pokemon, maybe it's more worthwhile for you. I'd recommend looking at what the potential rewards are and keeping in mind that you only get the higher tiers if you actually play a lot and get up to that.

The third form of monetization is membership. It costs $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year. Membership allows you to store 1,000 more Pokemon in your box. It allows you to have 15 battle teams usable at one time. It unlocks membership-exclusive missions and membership-exclusive battle songs. This is the priciest option, so I don't really feel comfortable telling you whether or not it's worth it, because it really depends. I will be getting membership, but also I'm a Pokemon YouTuber, so my circumstances maybe are likely different than you who is watching this.

General advice, make smart financial decisions, don't spend money you don't have, you know the drill. The current rule set is called Regulation M-A, and it runs until June 16th, which is after the North American International Championships which is the final tournament

before this season's World Championships. It has a specific list of Pokemon that are allowed, and I will say it's a very unique format for a number of reasons, but in part because the item pool, at least unless they add more in, is so small. We're missing many of the classic items such as the Assault Vest and the Choice Band and the Life Orb and the Flame Orb and many other classic important items. This is pretty unprecedented. We've never had a Pokemon game without access to all of our held items. The following regulation is called Regulation M-B, and we don't know much about this except

that it starts after Regulation M-A. This year's World Championships will be played on Regulation M-B. Now that you know how to get started with Pokemon Champions, you may be thinking, okay, how do I win? Hello, I'd like to win a game, hello. Well you're in luck, because the current plan is to post an introduction to competitive in competitive Pokemon, covering many of the basic concepts, on April 11th, which is this Saturday, as of the time I'm posting this.

It may be in the past, depending on when you are watching this. So if you wanna learn more about competitive Pokemon and how to get started, keep your eyes out for that. If you want more content right now, you can check out patreon.com slash WolfieVGC,

you can check out patreon.com slash WolfieVGC, where I've been posting a lot of high-level guides