Hi! I’m an electric type gym leader, and I have a Luxray, Ampharos, Jolteon, and Manetric. Thing is, I need a starter team of three Pokemon for newer trainers. Do you have any ideas for electric type Pokemon that are easy to raise? (If possible, ones that weren’t mentioned already) Thanks so much!

Honestly, mareep and electrike are excellent choices and could be easy to obtain if the members of your team have breeding partners. Mareep are a rather timid pokémon and thus are considered to be easy to tackle for newer trainers. (Novices in Johto tend to train against these, wooper, and bellsprout, for example, along with the usual pidgey, hoothoot, sentret, and rattata offerings.) Electrike, meanwhile, is speedier and a bit more aggressive, but it’s just loyal enough to understand what you mean if you order it to hold back.

Other than that, it would largely depend on which region you’re living in. While rules vary from league to league, most gym leaders seem to prefer building teams of pokémon that are native to their region. Do research into what’s available in your location and compare the average battling capabilities of each available species. Take into account both physical and special prowess, as well as what moves they can naturally learn and their special abilities.

As for which is easy to raise, they all have their individual strengths and drawbacks, but it may be important to note the following:

1. Pikachu can sometimes be a handful for unprepared trainers, as they can be both capricious and ornery at times, particularly to trainers they don’t trust.

2. While grubbin (which is not an electric-type but evolves into one) is one of the easier ones to evolve, charjabug only evolves when exposed to strong magnetic fields and thus may be difficult to raise to maturity as a result.

3. If the reason why you’re preparing a new team is because many of your challengers are novices, keep in mind that your trainers may only know the very basics of battling and type matching. Hence, pokémon such as emolga or those that can resist most types of damage (such as togedemaru and members of the magnemite line) may prove to be a bit too difficult for your average challenger.

4. Voltorb don’t learn Self-Destruct until they’re old enough to understand that using it freely is dangerous, but this doesn’t mean they won’t use Sonic Boom or Spark more often than they should.

Best of luck, anonymous!