That being said, there are some things you can do to have a sense of where the metagame is at. It provides direction in teambuilding and threats to prepare for, but if you only use what’s popular you might miss some hidden gems, and as mentioned it can be misleading at times. In my opinion, it’s best to be aware of but not bound to the metagame. How do you learn more about the current metagame? Dramatic changes mean that players will find themselves in new contexts strategies that were useful before may not have great tools for managing the new landscape. When a metagame shifts, Pokémon rise and fall in popularity. This often happens after big tournament performances, but it can also happen under other circumstances as well. What does a metagame shift actually look like? All it means for a metagame to shift is that the common perception of which Pokémon are strong has changed. The metagame can shift over time, or because of the success or popularity of a specific team– maybe even the one you’re using! If you’ve ever used a team that a streamer used, or a team that won a tournament, and found less success than the original user had, it may be because of shifts in the metagame. Then I’d have to think more carefully about them when I go to make my own team. For example, if I see that rain teams are picking up in usage, I’d say that rain teams are a more important part of the metagame. This refers to a rebalancing of popularity of Pokémon, teams, or archetypes. That being said, the Pokémon at the top of the metagame are often useful in many scenarios, and countering them might not be as simple as taking advantage of the type chart. If the top Pokémon are all physical attackers, I might prioritize means of reducing Attack, such as the ability Intimidate and moves like Will-o-Wisp or Reflect. As a simple example, if Water-types are extremely popular, I might say that a Grass-type Pokémon like Rillaboom has a good matchup versus the metagame. If a Pokémon matches up well against the metagame, it does well against popular Pokémon or teams. The metagame influences how we think about the game– when building a team, it’s important to consider matchups. In this article, we’ll define what metagame means to us– and how we keep track of how a metagame grows over time. There’s never one “right answer” about what the metagame is at any moment in time. A metagame is more than just raw usage statistics or popular teams– rather, it loosely encapsulates which Pokémon, Pokémon combinations, or teams people currently view as favorable. A metagame is practically useful to you because it describes which Pokémon you are likely to play against. It’s worth noting that the metagame is a concept and not something concrete. If you’re going to your weekly local tournament, or playing versus one of your close friends, there’s still a metagame: the metagame is whatever Pokémon are popular there! When we talk about metagames, we’re discussing the concept broadly, which roughly describes “what Pokémon people in general are using right now”, but it’s important to think about whether there’s a more specific contextual metagame that the team you’re making will battle in. If you’re playing on the ladder, the metagame’s context is going to be very general, and you’re going to see a lot of popular Pokémon. The metagame is specific to whatever context you will be battling in. However, functionally speaking, you could probably win tournaments while only knowing the top 50 or so, or in some cases even less. If you’re new to VGC, you might have balked at the idea of learning nearly 1000 Pokémon in order to play competitively. Metagame is the term used to describe which Pokémon are popular and which aren’t. Not all Pokémon are created equally, and as such not all Pokémon are used equally. There’s no ruleset where you’re going to see Metapod with high usage. However, regardless of the number of Pokémon legal, the distribution of their use isn’t going to be even. The amount of Pokémon that are legal vary widely: some years barely over 100 species of Pokémon are legal, and some years it’s closer to 1000. The rules dictate which Pokémon can or cannot be used, and these rules change at least once a year. So, functionally, what is the metagame and why do we care? Technically speaking, metagame simply means “game within a game”, which I know wasn’t especially helpful for me when I first started playing. One of the most common terms heard when talking about competitive Pokémon is “the Metagame”.
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