Five ways to play
Every mode uses the same five-on-five rules and the same 291-player roster. What changes is how long it lasts, how many picks you get and whether anything carries forward.
| Mode | Picks | Length | Carries over |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quick Play | 5 | One game | Lineup only |
| Season Draft | 10 | Simulated season | Team and result |
| Franchise | 10 | Nine weeks and playoffs | Full career |
| Online | 5 | One game | Nothing local |
| Watch | 10 | One game | Result only |
Pick any gym leader or the Elite Four, draft five Pokémon against them, and play on any court. There is no season, no stamina carry-over and no table — the result is the whole point.
Best for
Learning the shot meter, or settling an argument about which centre is better.
Draft ten instead of five, hand the team to the simulation, and get a graded season back: record, seed, playoff run, All-Stars, a player of the season and a shareable card.
Best for
Testing a draft idea quickly without playing nine weeks of games.
The long game. Draft ten, beat the eight Kanto gym leaders and the Elite Four across a nine-week season, manage stamina and injuries, trade, sign free agents, and carry levels and evolutions into next season.
Best for
Anyone who wants the roster to mean something beyond one match.
Quick matchmaking or a private room code. The game shows a ping meter during play and backs off the control rate on a bad connection. If the queue is busy it says so and single-player still works.
Best for
Playing a human, which is the only way to meet a team you did not draft around.
Both teams are controlled by the CPU. Speed cycles 1x, 2x and 4x, and Skip jumps straight to the result, which is then tagged as watched in the season table.
Best for
Simulating a fixture to see how a lineup performs without playing it.
Online is the newest part of the game and the one most sensitive to where you run it. The match is synchronised through the game's own backend, and browsers give a third-party frame less storage and fewer permissions than a top-level tab. If a match will not start or you cannot sign in, open the game in its own tab from the play page — that is the fix for almost every online complaint.
Two smaller notes: a room code is the only way to choose your opponent, and the ping meter is worth watching before you commit to a match. Watching the same fixture at 4x is a good way to see whether your team is actually better than it looked.
Quick Play, twice. The first game teaches the meter; the second teaches you that the draft matters more than the meter. Then run one Season Draft to see how a ten-player roster grades out without committing to nine weeks. If the grade annoys you — it usually does — start a Franchise and fix it properly.
