Information; Battles

Battles are going to be commonplace on a Pokemon forum - really, let's not kid ourselves here. And even moreso when the plot comes into play. It'll effect everyone when it does.

Battles can be handled two ways. The first is arguably the simplest; just to play and keep fighting and improvising until you end up with a winner determined by a mixture of strategy and levels. Obviously, a LV100 Garchomp is going to kick the living snot out of a LV5 Ralts, but there are times when things MIGHT not be so clear-cut.

For this, we've actually come across a plan which works rather well. Online, you can grab a piece of kit called Pokemon Online, which is free, and has a relatively small download. You can build teams of ANY combination imaginable, then head out into the fray and battle with them.

So what a number of members may well do is construct teams BEFORE a battle, then play the two teams off against each other - with each player representing their trainer character - and then simply taking the simulated results. It'll help settle a lot of arguments. It'll be almost mandatory for later Gym and Elite Four battles, and the software itself seems a touch daunting at first but is really very straight-forwards.

It's up to you, really - but I know the staff do have an affinity for PO.