COMPETITIVE PLAY:
Smogon is home to a wealth of metagames centered heavily around competitive 6v6 singles. Due to the often unequal balancing of Pokemon and the wide selection of Pokemon the game provides, Smogon's tiering system is usage based with 5 primary usage tiers: OverUsed, UnderUsed, RarelyUsed, NeverUsed, and PU. Each official Smogon format operates under varying clauses and bans to optimize competitiveness and the average player's experience, and unlike Game Freak-endorsed formats, allows the use of transfer moves and Mythical Pokemon. In order to learn more about Smogon's tiering philosophy and its framework, you may refer to the following thread for more information.
Furthermore, there are other official formats that aren't usage based, but feature different rosters of Pokemon that are not represented by usage tiers to allow widespread representation of Pokemon, moves, and battle styles that may not fit the mold of standard play. For example, Little Cup focuses around Level 5, first stage Pokemon, Ubers focuses around Pokemon that are banned from standard play, Doubles OverUsed focuses on a doubles-based format, and Monotype is another official format that has a fun twist to it, featuring teams that all share a type. Because of this innate variety, there will always be a metagame for a Pokemon or playstyle you may resonate with!
Ruins of Alph, or RoA, hosts discussion of the metagames of previous Generations of Pokemon. Within RoA, you can find the sub-forums for the first eight Generations; RBY, GSC, ADV, DPP, BW, ORAS, SM, and SS. Each forum features tier discussion threads, Q/A threads, collections of sample teams, and a wide variety of forum projects. Once a year, each sub-forum also hosts a Generation-specific Premier League — a team tournament where the community comes together to play many historic metagames. To learn more about competitive Pokemon history, please visit each of the forums!
One of the Ruins of Alph forum's signature projects is the RoA Spotlight, where the community votes monthly to decide on an old-generation tier to be featured as a ladder on Pokemon Showdown! Whether you have a favorite format or want to experience something new, anyone is welcome to vote. The Ruins of Alph Tournaments forum is another large community project. There you can find old-generation Spotlight tours, Live tours and Team tournaments. These tournaments feature the tiers chosen in the RoA Spotlight and help to maintain interest in metagames that might otherwise be forgotten. Come compete!
Tournaments are where the strongest competitors across Smogon formats duke it out to find out who is truly the very best, like no one ever was. Through a wide variety of tournaments ranging from team tournaments, where you can play alongside fellow competitors in numerous formats, to individual tournaments, where you compete yourself against others in the same format, the arena of tournaments is the best stop for those looking to play competitive Pokemon at a high level. This forum includes both official and unofficial tournaments, which tie into the famous trophy tournaments as well as the circuits for each respective metagame.
Official trophy tournaments may bring in the most excitement of anything on Smogon; they showcase the strongest and most consistent players across our most popular metagames ranging from the current generation of OU to different alleys for both lower tiers and old generations. In addition, each individual current generation tier and old generation of OU has its own circuit of unofficial tournaments, which gives everyone a chance to play their favorite formats!
Ever get tired of playing the same ol’ metagame? Maybe you want to try out something new. What if the metagame gave Tyranitar Sucker Punch or Heatran Levitate? If you’re always eager to try out the what-ifs in battle, Other Metas is the place for you.
Other Metas is a forum where community members create and try out unique metagames. All metagames in this section consist of one simple change in a mechanic or ruleset that affects all Pokemon. For example, Almost Any Ability gives Pokemon access to almost any ability, STABmons gives Pokemon access to moves that match their type, and Camomons alters a Pokemon’s typing to match the types of their first two moves. Each of these metagames were created by regular people like yourself on Smogon. We house the successful ideas of many in our subforum and are always looking forward to a fresh batch of new ideas. Will you create the next metagame?
Pet Mods, on the other hand, is a section also dedicated to the creation of unique metagames, but with the primary twist being the emphasis on individual submissions and custom assets to build custom metagames as a community. Personal Pet Mod projects can also be made by one person or a small group, dubbed Solomods. To learn more about Pet Mods and our process, check out our post.
The Create-A-Pokemon Project is a project where we as a community design and create Pokemon of our own utilizing what we know and understand about the OU metagame. The process is split into different stages that represent an aspect of the Pokemon we wish to create; we begin with establishing a specific concept we want as a foundation, and then we discuss, suggest, and vote on its typing, abilities, stats, and movepool. CAP also has its own OU-based metagame with over 30 CAPs available to play with, but there are many other metagames like CAP LC, which features the pre-evolutions of the main CAPs, and plenty of CAP-based Old Gens metagames, where the CAPs available are limited to the ones created at the generation's time. As a whole, the CAP community is a great tightly-knit and welcoming community to join if you want to help to create Pokemon through a competitive lens.
You can find where all of the process goes into making a CAP here. You can also find discussion and information on the main CAP metagame and other various metagames here.
Smogon aren't the only ones crafting Pokemon formats, as even Nintendo and Game Freak have done it! Battle Stadium Singles (BSS) is Gamefreak's take on singles battling. While it doesn't have the official tournament presence that VGC has, BSS is generally the most active ladder you'll find in-game. OU players may see familiar Pokemon such as Landorus-T roaming around, but two major rules make BSS a far different metagame than OU: Only being able to bring half your team into battle, and Item Clause. With these two changes, players may be shocked to find strange Pokemon such as Mimikyu, or Hippowdon without a recovery move, to be major forces, or even aliens strategies such as Fling + Light Ball.
Unlike Smogon formats, BSS rulesets do not have suspect tests: they have static banlists that Gamefreak decides to run for a given amount of time, known as a "Series". At certain times, Gamefreak will change the Series into drastically different rulesets, such as blanket banning top Pokemon, or even allowing Ubers as "restricted Pokemon". The in-game ladder also has a different focus than Pokemon Showdown: each month is divided into a "season", where players compete to "win" the ladder at the end of the month!
VGC, on the other hand, is Pokemon's official format, being a bring 6, pick 4 Doubles-based format. To learn more about it, you can check out the forum here.
