Battling / Specific Battling Concepts

When facing a Trick Room setter, you should ask yourself two questions. 

1) Can I stop Trick Room from going up?

2) How bad for me is it if Trick Room goes up? 

If you don’t explicitly want Trick Room up, it can be good to KO the setter, but there are many instances where that isn’t possible. So, if you can’t stop Trick Room from going up, what do you do? 

The Basics

Your goal is to minimize the amount of turns where your opponent can actually benefit from Trick Room. Trick Room only lasts for five turns (effectively four because the setting turn counts). The most straightforward way to stall Trick Room is to make use of Protect. Trick Room only provides four turns to attack, so in the most simple case you can waste half of those by Protecting both your Pokémon every other turn. Although double Protecting frequently is exploitable (setup moves, switching, etc), it’s a good starting place.

Other methods of wasting your opponent’s time during Trick Room are making smart switches (switching Pokémon in defensively when you expect a move of a certain type), status moves, or finding opportunities to use Fake Out. The most effective way, however, is to pay attention to positioning.

Positioning Against Trick Room

Teams that want Trick Room up will frequently avoid leading with their Trick Room sweeper, as they either don’t want it to get focused with attacks immediately or they need some support for their setter. For that reason, a typical lead is Trick Room setter + Trick Room support. Let’s use the example of a bulky Trick Room setter like Dusclops, and a support Pokémon like Indeedee-Female. Many players will KO the Indeedee turn 1 as it uses Follow Me, Dusclops will set Trick Room, and now the Trick Room sweeper comes in and has four turns to exert pressure. But what happens if you DON’T knock out that Indeedee turn 1?

Well, now it’s turn 2 and your opponent has a choice. Stay in with Indeedee and hope it gets KO’d, which is susceptible to a defensive play (like Protecting both Pokémon, switching, or setting up). This would mean your opponent only has 3 turns left of Trick Room which gives at most two for the sweeper to make use of. Their other option is to switch Indeedee out into the sweeper to make use of the remaining 3 turns, which is susceptible to the sweeper taking damage or even being knocked out as it comes in. Compare this choice to what happens if you knock out Indeedee turn 1- your opponent doesn’t have to make a difficult choice and instead can exert pressure immediately.

Pokémon is in many ways a game about making your opponent make difficult decisions.

This is an example of a situation where taking a KO is bad for you in the long run. If your opponent has led two defensive Pokémon, leaving them on the field to waste turns is extremely valuable when you want to stall out a field effect. 

What Happens When Trick Room Ends?

You want to be thinking ahead to the turn when Trick Room ends. Just because you stalled out Trick Room doesn’t mean you’ll win automatically. Identify what conditions have to be met in order to prevent a second Trick Room from being set up, and further consider which Pokémon you need to have in order to win the game once Trick Room expires. This isn’t an easy skill but it’s invaluable especially when playing against Trick Room.

I’ll also throw a little note in here that Trick Room is the biggest reason why Hyper Offense (teams that focus entirely on their offensive capabilities and synergies and have little to no defensive capabilities) don’t often perform well. It’s very difficult to use smart defensive positioning without the proper defensive tools.

Wrapping Up

Playing against Trick Room can be challenging (and, at times, frustrating), but it will only get easier the more experience you have fighting in those twisted dimensions.