How GOOD was Ninetales ACTUALLY? - History of Ninetales in Competitive Pokemon (Gens 1-7)

Ninetales! The Fox Pokemon! Fire or Ice, Ninetales has always been a beauty of a pokemon. Does it have enough fire (or ice) power to do well in competitive? Join False Swipe Gaming in this brief overview of Ninetales in competitive Pokemon!

The Official False Swipe Gaming Twitter:

0:00 - Intro
0:44 - RBY/Gen 1
1:55 - GSC/Gen 2
2:28 - ADV/Gen 3
3:16 - DPP/Gen 4
4:15 - BW/Gen 5
8:21 - XY/Gen 6
8:46 - Gen 6 VGC
9:22 - SM/Gen 7
10:47 - VGC Gen 7
12:32 - Outro

Directed by Kellen

Edited By CDK

Written By
Kevin aka BKC

Sound Designed by
Ryan Gonzales

Game Capture Artist:
Jago

FULL RESEARCH SOURCES HERE:

DISCLAIMERS ON FORMATS COVERED:
Notice I said POPULAR formats, meaning a format where there is a significant amount of people who compete in it for tournaments and so on and so forth. Now Popular does not mean official even though two of the formats I will be covering were official formats being Japan Nintendo Cup and VGC, but it is an indicator of what a good portion of competitive players thought was “optimal” at the time. Also sometimes the Pokemon Battle Historia doesn't provide enough information to talk about certain Pokemon so I add Smogon analysis to make sense of it. This is pretty rare though.

To the people asking why I don't cover Smogon Singles for Gens 1 and 2: It wouldn't really be a history video if I covered those because online Smogon gen 1 meta to my knowledge wasn't actually played until late 2000s. I wanted to cover tournaments/competitive battling that was actually played during the early years of Pokemon (late 90s).

To the people asking why I cover Smogon at all for singles: To my knowledge, Smogon was the most popular format for Gens 3-5 and held a number of tournaments throughout the years. As for Gen 6, I am not covering Battle Spot Singles because there is more information and explanations about sets being used relative to their own meta on Smogon. In other words, there are few written analyses about Battle Spot Pokemon besides the Top tiers and I would like to avoid theorycrafting because it may have a hint of bias (though I theorycraft if I REALLY couldn't find information on a certain Pokemon). The keyword here is explanations. Though I did find statistics of most Pokemon used and most moves used, there wasn't really any explanations on why. Also the few Pokemon I did find analysis of for Top Tier Battle Spot Singles had very similar move sets to the Smogon OU sets anyway.

For the record, I do not care what rules or formats people play their battles by nor am I saying these formats are the only formats that should be played. The way you play Pokemon is between you and your opponent and I will not fault you for using evasion or whatever, I just like examining popular tournament formats.

Songs Used (List of ALL Songs used for this series. Some may or may not make it into the video):

My Twitter:

Resources and Historical References

Smogon University:

Maikiri

Aaron Cybertron Zheng:

Pokeaim

Pokemon Battle Historia:

Nintendo Cup 2000 Team Construction:

Nintendo Cup 2000 Tier List:

Pokemon Japanese Battle Wiki:

Sprites From:

[Samaru]

I really wish I had played Gen 5 competitive, because every time I hear about the Weather Wars, they sound like this epic, almost mythical battle between players to see who could out predict the other and keep their weather alive longest. And I loved that Ninetales rose to become the sun setter, since it's always been an aesthetically pleasing Pokemon in my eyes, regardless of if it's Fire or Ice.
Can you please do a video about the Weather Wars at some point in the future?

[nicolaswarren]

It still baffles me that Ninetales was never given a secondary Ghost or Psychic typing. I mean, it's based on both a yokai and powerful oni from Japanese mythology and most of its 'dex entries talk about its psychic powers and penchant for curses. No idea if this would have helped or hurt it competitively, but still.

[film-runners]

I mean ninetales helped Naruto throughout the series I gotta say it was pretty darn good

[jordanfleming]

Ninetails is the union of nine saints, places hexes on people, and uses will-o-wisps.

Kanto Ninetailes really should’ve been ghost / fire type.

[foxdragon]

Ahh, ouch... Ninetales is my favorite Pokémon... this hurts to watch... but gen 5 made it worthwhile...

[the_blahhh]

The reason why Ninetales fell all the way to PU in XY was not just because drought was no longer permanant, but because the UU tier leaders at the time were experimenting with a different way of processing bans, and never allowed drought or drizzle in UU or any tier beneath. So Ninetales was stuck with Flash Fire. It probably still wouldn't have been an excellent poke even with drought, but I don't think it would've fallen to PU.

[Glasseshoodman]

How good was Scyther, Actually? You've teased it in both Steelix and Scizor videos, so its time to deliver.

[kiekiefall]

I had a ninetales i received through a shiny trade in x and y which had perfect stats, fire blast, solar beam, hidden power and willo wisp. It’s ability was drought and held charcoal and it was brutal. It would even take out other fire types with one-two fire blasts

[alexandradordzhieva]

5:59
"Hidden Power Fire".
You sure about that?

[JN]

It hurts seeing my favorite pkmn described like that :(

[mylilbro]

How GOOD was Tangela & Tangrowth ACTUALLY?

We need blue spaghetti! Assault Vest buffed so many pokemon! Vote for Tangela!

[lindleland]

How GOOD were Tangela/Tangrowth ACTUALLY?

[metagross]

Really wish the 100 special went to Ninetails' Special Attack instead of Defense same with Hypno who I'll reccomend for the next video

[MrRobson]

Hey man, recent sub but really love your videos, binged almost all of them over the past couple of months. You can really tell how your delivery and confidence has improved from your earlier vids to the more recent ones.

Keep up the good work much love peace xx

[rcinus_orca]

How GOOD were Tangela and Tangrowth ACTUALLY?

[AsianWithHat]

*How GOOD was [Insert Patreon vote] ACTUALLY?*

*I WILL NEVER GIVE UP*

[teleportaat]

How good were *ROSELIA* and *ROSERADE* ACTUALLY? The Beauty and the Masked Ivy need their episode ASAP!!!

[jaydengan]

"Hidden power fire was good for breaking heatrans balloon"






Hidden Power fighting was good for breaking gengar's balloon

[kanlalonde]

Going from OU in gen 5 to PU in gen 6 is an almost hilarious drop. I never see anything get that bad that quickly.

[JohnDoe-qqws]

How good was Ditto Actually? I'll never give up!