Top 5 Pokemon Gimmicks

1) F.E.A.R (Focus Sash, Endeavour, Attack, Rodent)

The most famous gimmick that exists in the Pokémon universe that can still be used even in today's format. This strategy gained notoriety during the Diamond and Pearl era. The concept was simple. Send out a level 1 Rattata with a Focus Sash, take a hit and due to the sash be left with 1hp. On the same turn the Rattata proceeds to use Endeavour, brining the opponents health down to 1 hp as well. On the following turn the Rattata then proceeds to use Quick Attack, a priority move, and due to the fact each damage dealing move must deal a minimum of 1 hp the Rattata would be able to knock out just about any Pokémon, even a level 100 Dialga.

This strategy is not without its faults, there are plenty of ways to prevent the Rattata from doing its job. Seeing as your Pokémon is only level 1 any priority used by the opposing Pokémon will knock you out before you can move, multi hit moves will break the sash, they are unable to hit any ghost Pokémon, Embargo will prevent focus sash from working and weather such as sandstorm and status moves such as will-o-wisp will knock the Pokémon out on the first turn. This strategy has plenty of way to counter but if the user is inexperienced or unprepared it can do a lot of damage.

Just to note there are a number of Pokémon who can pull off this strategy but it was made famous by Rattata. Certain variations improve on the initial concept and have their own advantages and disadvantages. Kangaskhan has the ability Scrappy and can use Endeavour on ghost Pokemon but must rely on Sucker Punch for priority, Aron has an inbuilt focus sash and can use shell bell as its item in order to heal up and have Sturdy reactivate but has no priority and must rely on sand storm support and Togekiss, probably the best user of this strategy gets Extremespeed making it impervious to standard priority moves.

2) Riolu+Prankster+Roar+Copycat

This one was a personal favourite of mine and was popular in the Black and White era. The premise was simple, throw as many hazards n the field as you possibly could, then just keep forcing them to swap out. Simple right? Well due to moves that force a Pokémon to swap out having a -6 priority the strategy was extremely ineffective. Enter Generation 5 and the Prankster ability. Prankster increases the priority of non-attacking move by 1, so in the case of Roar it would go from -6 priority to -5. Neat right? But still the strategy still remains ineffective. Enter Riolu.

Riolu is the only Pokémon that has access to the Ability Prankster and the moves Roar and Copycat. For those that may not know Copycat is a non-attacking move that allows a Pokémon to reuse the last move that was used in battle. So if the Pokémon before me used Flamethrower then once I use Copycat the move selected will be Flamethrower. The strategy would work by getting as many hazards as possible down on the field before safely swapping Riolu in, more often than not equipped with a focus sash in order to survive a hit. Once in Riolu would use Roar, due to its low priority it would more often than not move after the opposing Pokemon had a chance to attack. On the following turn Riolu would then proceed to use Copycat. Due to Prankster effect, Copycat would activate with increased priority and seeing as Roar was the last move used it would once more use Roar at a now boosted +1 priority! Now this strategy wasn't full proof. While Riolu did have +1 priority on the Roar, it is relatively slow and frail and is not out of the question to be out speed and KO'd by other priority moves. Also these with sound proof would be impervious to Roar and Taunt would make it unable to use any non-attacking moves.

Unfortunately this strategy is no longer applicable in X and Y. In order to prevent such situations from happening they made it so Copycat now fails if Roar or Whirlwind was the last move used.

3) Beat Up + Justified

Now this articles is too look at gimmick strategies but one must remember just because it is a gimmick it doesn't mean that it's neither strong or viable. To the contrary they can be pretty damn strong, in fact there is one relatively well known gimmick which became very prominent in the Black and White era. While there are a number of variants to this strategy the most common one involved Terrakion and Weavile.
Terrakion is a fast Pokémon hitting a very respectable 108 base speed and a strong 129 attack who has the ability Justified, which raises his attack 1 stage every time he is hit by a dark type move. Weavile is a Pokémon who is faster than Terrakion who also has the move Beat Up, a dark type move which hits the targeted Pokémon for every Pokémon you have in your party. So in a VGC where you go in with 4 Pokémon, Weaville will hit Terrakion 4 times.

The strategy was simple, go into the fight with a Jolly Terrakion and a Timid Weaville. On your first turn using your Weaville target Terrakion with Beat Up, due to him being faster he will attack Terrakion before he can move and seeing as Beat Up hitting four times he will raise the Terraikions Attack by four stages or the equivalent of two Swords Dances. As a result of Terrakion resisting Dark and Weavile low damage output (forced by hindering attack nature and 0 EVs and IVs), Terrakion takes barely damage and can now OHKO a large number of Pokémon with STAB Rockslide and his above average speed makes him hard to outpace making it difficult to revenge kill him.

This strategy, while very strong, if fairly easy to play around once you know how to do it. Fake out ruins Weavile's ability to use Beat Up on Terrakion and can be killed by the second Pokémon, Rage Powder forces Weaville to attack the Pokémon that used it and due to the power creep of Generation 6 a lot more Pokémon, specifically the Mega Pokémon, revenge killing him isn't as difficult as it once was. Don't be fooled though, this strategy if played effectively can be extremely hard to beat once it has been setup.

It also worth to note that while Weavile was the Pokémon that was primarily used with Terrakion when the strategy was first coming too, Whimsicott has now become Terakkion's partner of choice. Like Weavile, Whimsicott is fast and also has access to Beat Up but unlike Weavile it does not gain STAB from Beat Up, has lower attack, is immune to Rage Powder and has an extensive list of support moves including but not limited to Tailwind, Encore and Taunt.

4) Truant/Chandlure

Pokémon Black and White was a great time to be a Pokémon gimmick, sometimes it just felt like Gamefreak wanted these combinations to be put together but didn't think about how threatening some of them could be.
There are some pretty strong abilities out their such as Adaptability, Simple and Wonder Guard. These abilities are strong but are often prevented from being broken by limited distribution to mediocre Pokémon. One of these strong abilities is Shadow Tag, which prevents the enemies Pokémon from being able to swap out. Until Black and White this ability was exclusive to Wobbuffet, a Pokémon who was incapable of directly attacking other Pokemon.

In Black and White they decided to provide this ability to another Pokemon, Chandelure, an offensive Pokémon which lack any real defence but was able to pack a punch. The combination of this ability, a setup move in Calm Mind, good coverage moves, high Special Attack and decent Speed meant that Chandelure could swap in one Pokémon it could beat, setup on them and blast holes in the opponents team. Easy right? Well not quite. Chaldelure's frail defences meant that even neutral attacks dealt heavy damage, limiting its opportunities to setup and number of times it could swap in on other Pokémon. So how do you get around this? Well ladies and gentlemen you pair this with another Pokémon with arguably the worst ability in the game and you have a recipe for success.

Meet Durant. He likes long walk on the beach, eating ice cream on warm summer nights and abusing the combination of Entrainment and Truant to his advantage. For those they don't know Truant is an ability that makes the user unable to use an attack every second turn, while Entrainment forces the opponents Pokémon to take on same ability as the user. While in theory this combination of move and ability seems great, in general it isn't as the opponent is free to swap their own Pokémon in and out meaning that one in general is unable to take advantage of the situation.

But let's say one was to run maximum speed EVs and minimum defences on Durant so that when the opponent used a move it would die in one hit but still would be quick enough to use Entrainment on them to pass on the ability Truant. This would allow the Durant user a free switch in thus allowing Shadow Tag Chandelure to swap in and prevent the opponent from being able to swap out. From here on in the plays became low risk but very high reward. Generally consisting of a set using Substitute, Calm Mind, Shadow Ball and Flamethrower with a Salac berry as the held Item, the setup was simple. On the turn Chandelure is switched in the opponent will be unable to move due to Truant so Substitute is used. On the next turn Chandelure uses Calm mind to boost its Special Attack and Special Defence and even though the opponent will be able to move Substitute will protect it. The user then proceeds to alternate between the two moves until Substitute has forced their health below 25%. At this point Salac berry will be consumed provide a +1 Speed boost to go along with the +3 Special Attack and +3 Special Defence. At this point using its boosted stats and being behind the protection of a Substitute, Chandelure should be able to sweep through a good portion of the opponents team .

This strategy was relatively common throughout Generation 5 but unfortunately Gamefreak realised how strong an ability Shadow Tag was on an offensive Pokémon like Chandelure and changed its hidden ability to Infiltrator in Generation 6. The strategy can still be used with Gothitelle, which gained the ability as Chandelure lost it, but due to its more defensive nature and sub-par stats the sweeps are much harder to pull off

5) Infinite Battle

The final gimmick on this list. Funnily enough it is the only one on this list that rose to fame during Generation 6 even though the tools to use it have been available in the game since Generation 5. Unlike the other gimmicks on this list, this one can be considered against the nature of competitive play, leading to much frustration to the opponent as they become unable to do anything and are forced to watch as you keep the battle going. While the player themselves aren't able to win using this strategy along, the frustration it causes to the opponent generally forces them to quit the game, handing the user the win.

The primary user of this strategy is Slowbro, who uses he great bulk and supportive moveset to his advantage. In order to work Slowbro must be bought in on a Pokémon who is incapable of doing much damage. Slowbro uses Mean Look on the first turn in order to prevent them from switching out and the proceeds to use healing moves, in Slowbros case Slack Off, to counteract all damage done to it. At first you may think that PP (Number of time a Pokémon can use a move) may become a problem, but the combination of Leppa Berry, which restores PP of any move with no PP by 10, and Recycle, which allow the use of any berry multiple times, allows one to make sure that Slowbro never runs out of PP.

For those of you more familiar with Pokémon you may be thinking "Yeah, this is cool and all with Slowbro being able to keep himself alive indefinitely but eventually the opposing Pokémon will run out of PP and be forced to struggle, eventually killing themselves from recoil." Well normally you would be right, but Slowbro has access to the move Heal Pulse which allows it heal opposing Pokémon. So not only does Slowbro have a way to keep itself alive and restore its own PP but now it also has a way to prevent the opponent from dying. This leads to an infinite loop whereby neither Pokémon is unable to die and must rely on the timer to finish the battle

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Any feedback you have would be appreciated! This is meant to able to be read by those with minimal Poke-knowledge, so if it can be improved in any way I'd like to hear it. Thanks!