What Pokémon Auto Chess Is

Pokémon Auto Chess is a free, browser-based auto-battler: a strategy game where you spend a planning phase assembling a team of Pokémon, then watch that team fight another player's team on its own, with no direct control once the battle starts. You are not aiming your moves or dodging attacks. Your entire job happens before the fighting begins — which Pokémon you buy, how you upgrade them, what items they hold, and where you place them on the board.

Eight players share one lobby. Every round, the game pairs you against one of the other seven (or against a small computer-controlled "wild" board on certain rounds). Win the fight and your opponent loses health; lose it and you lose health. When your health hits zero you are out. The last player standing wins, but because only the bottom four placements are really "losing", a huge part of getting better is learning to reliably finish in the top half rather than swinging for first every game.

Where the game came from

Auto-battlers started as a Dota 2 custom map ("Dota Auto Chess") in early 2019 and exploded into standalone games like Teamfight Tactics and Hearthstone Battlegrounds. Pokémon Auto Chess is a fan-made, open-source take on the genre built by the keldaanCommunity project. It's non-commercial, it runs entirely in your browser, and it has its own competitive ladder, tournaments and monthly events. It is not affiliated with Nintendo or The Pokémon Company — it exists at their discretion, and everything on this wiki (including this guide) is community-made.

The practical consequence for a new player: the game patches often, sometimes every couple of weeks. Synergy thresholds change, Pokémon gain and lose types, items get reworked. Any specific number in this guide can drift. The patch notes are the source of truth, and the meta report on this site is regenerated from real ranked games so it stays current.

What a match actually looks like

You start with a small board, a handful of gold, and a choice of three starter Pokémon. Each round follows the same rhythm:

• Planning phase (about 30 seconds): a shop of Pokémon appears at the bottom of the screen. You spend gold to buy them, drag Pokémon between your bench and your board, buy experience to raise your level, and rearrange your board's positioning. You can also reroll the shop for 1 gold to see new options.
• Battle phase: your board and your opponent's board are placed on the same battlefield and the Pokémon fight automatically. Units walk toward enemies, basic-attack to build up their power points (PP), and cast their ability when PP is full. You just watch — though you can still learn a lot by watching how you won or lost.
• Results: the loser takes damage equal to a base amount plus the number of enemy Pokémon left alive. You collect your income for the round, gain a little experience automatically, and the next planning phase begins.

Certain rounds break the pattern. On some rounds everyone fights a shared "wild" board of neutral Pokémon that drops items and gold. On others, all eight players walk through a shared carousel and each grabs one Pokémon that is already holding an item. These special rounds are covered in the next chapter.