Teams
Pokemon Champions team archetypes
Some Pokemon can change the weather, and others get stronger once it changes. Build a team around that and you get an archetype. These five are the ones the Champions meta is built on.
Rain
Drizzle brings rain for five turns the moment the Pokemon switches in. Swift Swim doubles Speed while it is up, and Thunder and Hurricane stop missing.
Sun
Drought brings harsh sunlight for five turns. Chlorophyll doubles Speed under it, Solar Beam fires without charging first, and Solar Power adds 50% Sp. Atk at the cost of an eighth of your HP each turn.
Sandstorm
Sand Stream brings a sandstorm for five turns on switch-in, and Sand Spit does the same when its holder is hit by a move. Sand Rush doubles Speed, and anything that is not Rock, Ground or Steel loses a sixteenth of its HP every turn, which is how sand teams win slowly.
Snow
Snow Warning brings snow for five turns. Slush Rush doubles Speed, Blizzard stops missing, and Aurora Veil can only be used while snow is up. Champions sets this with Snowscape. Hail is not in the game.
Trick Room
Trick Room reverses turn order for five turns, so the slowest Pokemon moves first. No ability sets it, so you spend a turn on the move and build around Pokemon slow enough to gain from it.
How these lists are built
A setter starts the weather just by being sent out. Its ability does the work, so you get the condition for free and can attack on the same turn. A payoff is a Pokemon whose ability sits idle until that weather is up, then does something useful, usually doubling its Speed. That pairing is the idea behind every archetype here: one Pokemon turns the weather on, the rest are built to take advantage of it.
The third number counts Pokemon that learn the move version instead. That works, but it costs you a turn and the weather runs out after five either way, so an ability setter is usually the better opening.
One thing worth being clear about: Champions does not label any of this. Choosing which abilities define each archetype is our call. Once those are chosen, every Pokemon listed is looked up from the game data, so the rosters are complete and stay right when the game is patched. Nothing is left out for being weak. What people actually play is a different question, covered by the tier list.