Showdown: Villainous Teams — Round III: Plans

Showdown is back and better than ever! For those that don’t know what our Showdown series is, or need a reminder: Showdown is where we hold a series of polls on our site and ask readers to vote for their top choice until we found our champion.

Voting periods will run for one week at a time and new rounds will begin on the following dates:

Round I: Leaders — December 2nd
Round II: Grunts & Admin — December 11th
Round III: Plans — December 16th
Round IV: Overall — December 23rd
Winner Announcements — December 30th

The results for Round II: Grunts & Admin have been counted, the polls are now closed! We’re happy to announce that the winner of the second round of our latest Showdown is… Team Skull! The Alolan Team Skull took first place with a 2% lead over Team Galactic.

The full results are as follows…

Round III will focus in the villainous plans of our Teams. Readers will vote and choose the team that they think had the best (or worst?) plan in the respective plans. Remember you’re voting for your favourite overall choice. For teams present in remakes and different generations: a vote for one counts as a vote for all variations of the team. A vote for Team Magma counts as a vote for both Third Generation and Sixth Generation iterations, for example.

Team Rocket

The ultimate goal of Team Rocket is to rule the world using the power of Pokémon. The entire team works together to steal and capture Pokémon that are then experimented on and sold on for profit.

Team Rocket’s oath “Steal Pokémon for profit. Exploit Pokémon for profit. All Pokémon exist for the glory of Team Rocket” is an excellent reminder of just how cruel the team really can be.

Team Magma

Team Magma is a team obsessed with the land. Their ultimate goal is to expand the worlds landmass.

After attempts to achieve their goal by causing a volcanic eruption are halted by a Trainer, they elevate their determination and choose to awake the Legendary Pokémon Groudon, wishing to use its power to grow the landmass of the planet.

In Omega Ruby Team Magma wishes to expand the landmass of the world in order progress the living conditions of humans.

Team Aqua

 

Archie and his team wish for the exact opposite of Team Magma. They wish to expand the amount of water in the world. Their initial plan involved flooding the crater of Mt. Chimney.

After a trainer stopped their plans, Team Galactic awakened Kyogre in an attempt to flood the planet.

In Alpha Sapphire Team Aqua wished to expand the ocean in order to wipeout humanity and provide Pokémon with an ideal environment, without interference from humans.

Team Galactic

Team Galactic is by far the team with the widest vision in their plan. They fight for their ultimate goal of not only recreating the Pokémon World, but the entire Pokémon Universe.

Galactic is perhaps the team capable of harnessing most power from Pokémon, effectively manipulating Dialga and Palkia, Pokémon capable of altering Time and Space respectively.

Team Plasma

 

The original goal of Team Plasma was fairly tame and civil compared to other villainous teams, but their action in order to achieve the goal were not. Plasma wished to liberate Pokémon from their trainers through any means necessary. Plasma were often found stealing Pokémon from their trainers, but occasionally would convince them through other methods. Team Plasma was eventually exploited by their leader Ghetsis who wished to rule Unova as the only person to use Pokémon.

After their initial defeat Team Plasma formed two distinct forces, one loyal to Ghetsis and his goals of ruling Unova and another loyal to N who chose to care for Pokémon in the wild.

Team Flare

Team Flare, found in the Kalos region, wished to create a better and more beautiful world for everyone to live in. While at first their goals seemed simple enough, eventually Lysandre, their leading, became nefarious in his actions and had no qualms about eliminating anyone who stood in the way of his dreams.

Team Skull

 

Team Skull was different to other villainous teams, in that they did not have a larger specific goal. They simply wished to cause chaos and strike fear into those in the Alola region. Because of this, they were not considered a major threat by residents of the region.  The team does however steal Pokémon from the trainers.

***

There is it! The third round in our Villainous Teams Showdown has begun! Get voting for your favourites and be sure to comment below with your thoughts and opinions on who deserves to win! Remember you’re voting for your favourite overall team here! Who has the best plan?!

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Be sure to check back next week for Round IV: Overall and stick around for more content as part of our ongoing Advent event!

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402 thoughts on “Showdown: Villainous Teams — Round III: Plans”

  1. For me easily Team Plasma.
    Although I am a massive Hoenn fan and admire the sheer evil behind TG, I feel that TP plan/purpose had this unparalleled depth and it played out really well in BW. It was a plan that made you think should there be liberation, should trainers have Pokemon but in the end still had the evil and psychotic Ghetsis manipulating for his own gain.

    I do like the simplicity yet effective TR approach ans Flare’s brutal approach. Skull are cool but were never a major threat.
    For me Plasma > Galactic = Magma/Aqua > TR > Flare > Skull.
    Galactic, Hoenn and TR for me are all very close.

    Reply
  2. Also I must say I loved Aqua’s and Magma’s goal of expanding the sea and land respectively.
    They’re such crazy and senseless goals or means to their goals and that’s what makes them devastatingly good and also I love the theme of natures forces. Shame I couldn’t vote for them.

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  3. I personally prefer Team Aqua’s plan as I really enjoy their ORAS designs plus a world of water would be pretty cool. Thankfully I didn’t choose a very unpopular opinion this time around.

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  4. Oh, Team Galactic easy. I’ve already gone into why I think their plan is really cool in the team leader post so I won’t do that again. In short, their plot leads to a fun sci-fi adventure that has probably the best and most intense climax of any pokemon game due to actually achieving a lot of their goal combined with Spear Pillar’s ominous theme that really amplifies the tension.

    I really like Team Plasma’s plan until it’s undermined by Ghetsis just wanting to be evil. Opposing ideals was a better plot for that game than “stop evil man who wants to rule” (which is not truly Cyrus’ objective by the way if anyone was going to try and mention that). Luckily most of that great plot is about N’s different views than ours. They get second.

    Team Skull, as I’ve said a bunch of times, has a very unique plot that wasn’t fully explored. It could’ve involved the trial captains, giving us a plot to rival Black and White’s fun story that involved a lot of characters, and also dove deeper into characters like Plumeria that were largely unexplored. Instead they are basically shoehorned into the game and serve as just people you need to battle before you get to Lusamine. But I think they have a really good team hidden under all that Aether Foundation/Ultra Beast/Necrozma crap. It just didn’t mesh for me. 3rd Place.

    Team Aqua and Magma are fun and way over the top, nothing more or less. Good redesigns in ORAS. 4th.

    Rocket is okay? Their teams are boring though and I never liked the repetitious battles when dealing with them in Kanto and Johto. 5th.

    I have nothing good to say about the Galactic-rip off that is Team Flare. Horrible designs for the members (except maybe Malva who barely counts) and horrible plot. Last, and they will always be last.

    Reply
    • I respect your opinion and agree with most of it except I’d rank Plasma ahead of TG.
      TG had a great frantic end with Distortion world and the late game events. However Plasma had their moments too. Taking over the pokemon league!
      Although Ghetsis evil plan is the real backbone of TP I still feel it doesn’t overshadow the ideals theme.
      Overall TP and TG are best overall imo

      Reply
  5. Plasma

    Followed by Rocket probably

    All the others had plans that were way over the top. Destroy the sea, destroy the land, destroy the universe and make a new one, use the ‘ultimate weapon’, and I don’t even know the purpose of Team Skull.

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      • Of course it wasnt, what was I thinking.

        I guess destroying the Land and Sea weren’t Maxie and Archies plans either, just side effects right?

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        • I mean, kinda? His plan wasn’t to “destroy the universe” It was to make a better one, which comes at the cost of the old going away. He never says, “I want to destroy the universe.” For him it’s all about making a new one. I don’t really see Cyrus as evil. He has done bad things, but with good intentions. He’s not really in it for himself.

          The whole thing with Maxie and Archie is that they don’t realize the consequences of their actions, while Cyrus does.

          Reply
          • Well we can argue he doesn’t realise the consequence of creating a world without emotion.

            But again I’m not really arguing In favour of Magma or Aqua either, just using them to counter point Galactic. While gen 3 and 4 were arguably th3 fan favourites we can’t deny the evil team plans were excessive.

          • Yeah, you could definitely argue that. It would be interesting to see what that world would even have looked like. Probably not too different from the distortion world: bland and devoid of life (though the distortion world is cool, no one would want to live there). I think the difference for me is that Cyrus generally knows what he’s doing. He may not fully understand what his creation will be, but his convictions believe that it will be better. It’s not really something we, with our knowledge about the universe can predict. While for Archie and Maxie it’s, “there’s not enough of this, so let’s have more of this instead,” where scientific theory could definitely tell us how a world with no water or land would be. And it’s crazy that they just didn’t see that coming. It’s a silly plot, but fun if you take it as just that.

            That’s also an issue I have with flare. Lysandre’s plan to “destory this world to make it pure again,” is so dumb. Justifying mass suicide is literally stupid as hell. It’s not silly or interesting. Just dumb.

  6. I have to say I’m slightly disappointed Team Galactic are getting so many votes.
    Sure they are one of the stronger teams, their goal, admins, leader and how everything plays out in Platinum is really good. IMO a really a good team.
    However I feel they are a tad overrated and people tend to overlook other teams in favour of TG.

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  7. TP has the best one, but it’s ashame that it literally just becomes a puppet plan for Ghetsis’ super cliché plan.

    Galactic is fun because Cyrus clearly knows what he’s doing (*cough Archie and Maxie cough*) and he has a goal that makes sense from his one beliefs. It’s pretty much an exaggerated version of Lysandre’s goal anyway hence why I score Lysandre under him (Lysandre’s goal was okay but the story really drags it down, as does his terrible team) and Guzma and Giovanni just don’t have plans, or have plans that are even more clichéd than Ghetsis’s.

    Cyrus > Ghetsis > Guzma > Lysandre > Giovanni > Maxie > Archie

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  8. I still can’t get over Archie wanting to expand the seas tho

    Maxie’s makes a little sense because overpopulation in our own world is way more prevalent in land or fresh water in our own world, so if it’s reflected in Pokémon its still a bit dumb but makes sense

    Archie is just a total idiot because his world is probably already mostly water and the majority of Pokémon we’ve seen are land based. I just think he’s salty he failed geography and wants to piss off his old teacher

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  9. Plasma, even though its plan was just the typical dominate the world in the very end, had the best plan imo.

    Like, they actually try to convince people that they’re right and almost does so, but N really carried the team, he almost seems like he’s right and really pushes the black/white narrative of the game.

    For the other teams, rocket was evil just for the sake of being evil, magma and aqua were senseless beyond belief, galactic was too over the top imo, Flare is weird to me like, making the world more beautiful? What does that mean? And then he tried to destroy Kalos for some reason, and for Skull, their motives are unclear really, they want to disrupt the island challenge but they only tried to do that once..

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  10. Finished USUM yesterday here are my thoughts.

    * In comparison to SM they didn’t have many changes, essentially a 3rd version game. What they added and changed were very good though.
    Not an issue for me as I only played SM once so the journey was still fresh for me.

    ** As a stand alone game. Wowow easily best game so far. Well polished. Rich in story and detail. I love everything from the region design, story, characters, graphics/overworld to post game.

    Stand outs are.
    – Side features such as M surf and the Ultra hole Warp ride are amazing and fun time pass.
    – Loved the story. Long and very engaging
    – Games were challenging and enjoyed the difficulty.
    – Characters such as Gladion, Lillie and Hau were very well developed. Kukui was good too.
    – Pacing of game was great.
    – Alola is beautiful. Malie City is the best.
    – Again a very long game.
    – RR episode was great way to wrap up the DS era.
    – No real weakeness in the game

    I do wish they lengthened the climax, gyms had some return and can’t think of much more atm
    These maybe the last poke games I play so a fitting end for me!

    Reply
          • I dont wanna waste money on a Switch that I will most likely use only for a potential Pokemon game.

            No I’m not really much of a gamer besides Pokemon.

          • The 3DS I bought for my little brother, way back when it first came out, and yes I used it to play Pokemon. I only ever owned a 1st Generation one and never bought an updated one they released some years later.
            Since then he’s got a PS4 and mainly plays that now.

            Fun fact: I never owned an original Nintendo DS either.

          • Would you consider selling your 3DS toward buying a switch then? I know you’d be giving up the ability to replay older pokemon games, but it would at least enable you to play the new titles.

          • Lol, I’d be lucky to get £20 for it at this point. It’s not that I don’t have the money for it, I just think the money could be better spent elsewhere.

            Meh, don’t worry about it, life goes on, and Showdown still exists 😉

          • Hm, good point. Forgot about the fee that will make trading, banking, and battling more difficult. Okay then I really hope they’re not pulling two versions bullsh*t going forward. That’s just too much money from the consumer.

      • Not just Pokemon any game.
        I’m not 100% with this choice so we’ll see what happens.
        The reason being is I wanna grow out of gaming and focus on more serious aspects of life. I did say ‘may’ so we’ll just see what happens :]

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  11. Hmmmmm dis is a toughy
    I would only vote to the most astronomical outcome to the world

    It boils down to
    Galactic for basically rewriting the laws of fundamental existence
    Flare for a threat of terrorism via a literal doomsday machine
    Plasma for their extremely unique and controversial liberation of Pokémon

    Reply
    • Rocket’s plan isn’t nonsensical, just..okay. I would say that Skull also didn’t even know what they wanted or how to achieve it so they settled with being losers and thugs. Not sure that exactly makes them cooler than anyone else.

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      • Well ok Rocket isn’t bad? It’s just not very interesting. That’s perfectly fine though because in gen 1 that was all they needed but Team Skull was always the team I wanted.

        They didn’t want to destroy the universe, they just wanted to be rad bad dudes

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          • Well the plot sucked

            Sun and Moon would be way better without Aether if anything. They muddy it up.

            Which like, in a bubble I love Aether. But they totally conflict with the region itself anyways which I get was their intention, but I still enjoy low threat thugs to FATE OF THE UNIVERSE

            Just make Guzma after the legendary for some reason that isn’t world domination.

          • Aether IMO is what made the plot interesting. Skull were just an annoying interrupting gang of failures that had no real purpose. They were like keyboard warriors, talk a lot but didn’t have anything to back themselves up.

          • Aether doesn’t belong in this story. And it sucks because they take up most of if. But like, what does summoning ultra beasts or Necrozma have to do with the trials?

            Nothing!

            You see like in gen one all the side plots kinda went together? Like you had the main plot of you beating gyms and getting stronger, then you had your rival who was always a step ahead of you and eventually becomes the champion, then Giovanni is the final gym leader so they all kinda tie in together

            But how do trials and interdimensional aliens have to do with eachother? Plenty of kids complete the trials so why the hell isnt someone like Kahili or Kukui fighting Necrozma

            Or… I don’t know? THE ULTRA RECON SQUAD

          • The ultra recon squad are the most pointless addition to any pokemon game.

            And It’s annoying that GF did the whole trope of “you’re the only one who can stop Necrozma now!” when there are tons of characters out there who could come help. Hau straight up JUST LEAVES after Lusamine and Guzma yeet through the wormhole so he can go be more strong. Wtf? No, you little bitch, you’re going to come help me fix this sh*t.

            I would literally be calling up everyone telling them to get their asses to the altar of sunne and moone.

          • They do belong in the story as right from the beginning they are introduced and slowly developed towards the climax.
            I liked it in SM because of Lusamine but I guess in USUM they looked a little out of place.
            Maybe if URS were the evil invading team and AF were helping us and weren’t villians, I guess that would be an alternative way.

          • Lillie and Lusamine’s plot weighs down the entire game because it stops you to tell you story involving them.

            Skull at least has its own encounters. They should’ve been fleshed out more because they’re great.

          • Skull defos had some strong points. The development of them being one family of failures. Guzma and Plumeria were cool.
            IDK I think if they had URS as the evil team or no URS and have TS as the evil team and have AF opposing them.

          • It’s just unfortunate because having both in the same story lead to neither reaching their full potential. I’m not even sure how it could be fixed without completely removing one from the game. Or just made the whole Necrozma and Aether Foundation thing a post-trial plot. So by the time they come around, Skull is more developed and wrapped up.

          • I would say expect them to go back to basics for the plot to draw genwunners and casuals in. Nostalgia will most likely be a huge marketing ploy and Kanto will be dick rode some more

          • They did it when pokemon made the leap to the 3DS, so I would expect it to be even worse with the jump to the switch, which is more aimed at adults who are more likely to be genwunners

          • Hmm possibly who knows.
            I do feel with gen 7 they shifted their focus towards the games being more challenging and not all for the young ones. Like the direction felt more mature in other aspects as well.
            Of course we had plenty of gen 1 pampering.
            I honestly think gen 8 is a reboot and it will be similar to BW.
            The move to switch is massive and GF know they have to cook something big and maybe to waht they’ve been doin for 20 odd years now.
            I think for GF at some point they have 2 think it’s time to make a change and take a few risks and I think that point is switch/gen 8.

          • Lack of conviction on their goal? As far as I can tell, their goal was just to mess around and they were pretty convicted to that.

            I’d call their goal confusing cuz they say their goal is to ruin the trials but they only do that once.

            If they said that their only goal was to make Alola a mess like they do in the game, then I wouldn’t have any problem with them really

          • Yes. Especially towards the end with AF. An evil team which in the end was working for another organisation. This has never happened in any of the prev games.
            I guess they had conviction in causing mischief and mayhem but in a broader sense they didn’t feel relevant. Like street thugs compared to large mafias.

      • Why because they were actually fun?

        Can we stop judging Pokémon teams by how serious they are because other than I guess Plasma they are all ridiculous.

        Skull at least recognizes this.

        How dare we have a team that isn’t threatening the world. How dare we have a team that’s just fun

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        • Sorry that’s just what I like to see in a team. I don’t mind the fun aspect just wanted them to have more strength. I liked them but preferred the other teams for being the leading force of evil rather than the assistant team.

          Reply
  12. out of sheer boredom or insanity i booted up my Crystal rom to scope out my run, and i’ve spent over 20 in game hours smashing Phanpy’s skull into every tree in hope of finding a Heracross and there are NONE of them in Azealea town or route 33

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    • got my Larvitar from a tree and now i’m fighting Blissy after Blissy to power level, or i can just summon some Steelixs or Scizors and play with them i don’t care anymore i’m bored and lonely

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      • Even a level 22 Larvitar 2 levels higher than Whitney’s FAT COW WITH A TYPE ADVANTAGE AND ALL HER MOVES ARE INEFFECTIVE AND STILL BSs a win!

        Rock Slide missed and Milk Drink was spammed

        Reply
        • She’s a nightmare

          And at that point in game she meant to be OP as

          Only about 4 Pokémon in game have a type advantage at that point and only one is 50/50 Gender, being Geodude (Gender 100% matters in this battle) and starters being 12% female doesn’t help, also knowing about only 1/5 of Pokémon can out speed it then as well

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  13. Come ON!!! I dont understand how synchronize is 50% but it only works 25% of the time. Sync should just be1 00%, it isnt a 50% to spread the status the ability says.
    I had to SR my shiny Blacephalon because it didnt get the sync nature. Stupid RNG game.

    Anyway Im voting Plasma, I liked their idea of trying to trick people to rule the world. It was a pretty smart plan. I wish it went more in depth on who it affected though. Because as we know it literally the only person ‘tricked’ was N. There were no trainers that said they released their pokemon like Plasma wanted

    Reply
  14. I vote Rocket as

    Meh Aqua and Magma have interesting goals, but they rely too much on Kyogre and Groudon for the plans

    Galactic is good, but they have some very unrealistic goals. Also why didn’t they battle using the Lake trio after they captured them? Seems now like it would’ve been a fun challenge

    Plasma tbh I don’t like, they act too much like real life politicians, says they want to do one thing and then do the opposite. And let me say it… I hate their redesigns

    Flare had a philosophical goal, but they didn’t do it very well and they really were boring as they primarily carried non challenging generic Pokémon like Electrike and Houndour. And there admins… they had 0 relevance at all

    Skull didn’t have a big motive, but they at least owned up to the fact they just wanted to f*ck sh*t up just because, so they would be my second choice if I had one

    Reply
    • Oh and a little pissed at Go

      Went to the Grocery store and hatched a 5k egg that I’ve been at for about a week and it was a Stantler…. Damn It!

      Needed Diglett, or Mankey, or Vulpix, or Poliwag, or Machop! Why did it have to be Stantler!?

      And 2 Zigzagoons, A Skitty and an Abra all fled while I was there!

      Reply

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