Welcome to our new series of articles, looking to detail every single Non-Gym or Rival trainer battle throughout Pokemon Sword & Shield. We’ll be including details about the Pokemon they use and tips for how to beat each one, so if you’re looking for some help or you just want to read about our trainer battles, then look no further!

Team Yell Grunts

Location: Motostoke Hotel

Pokemon: Zigzagoon – Lv.9, Nickit – Lv.9

The Team Yell Grunts will ambush you at the Hotel in Motostoke, before you’ve even signed up to go on the gym tour, the cheek of it! You’ll face them both in a 2 versus 2 battle next, but for now we’ll detail the initial battles against the grunts where they each bring one Pokemon to the battle.

The first grunt will throw out a Zigzagoon, which is a Normal/Dark Type, making it weak to Fighting, Bug and Fairy Type, immune to Ghost and Psychic and resistant to Dark Type.

The second grunt will bring out a Nickit, which is a Dark Type. This makes it weak to Fighting, Bug and Fairy Type, immune to Psychic Type and resistant to Ghost and Dark Type.

Guide

It’s unlikely that these battles will give you any trouble at this point, unless you’ve completely ignored the wild area – as you can see, our starter Pokemon has already evolved into Thwackey just due to exploring and capturing new things out there.

Should you be struggling at all then it’s worth mentioning that both of these Pokemon are weak to Fighting attacks, which you may have access to already depending on your level & captures to this point.

If not then stick to your regular attacks like Scratch or Tackle and you’ll do just fine – neither of these Pokemon have a high physical defence rating and they’ll go down pretty quickly.

Recommended Pokemon

If you have a Scorbunny at level 12 or above you will have access to a Fighting Type ability, which will completely destroy both of your opponents.

Additionally, you may have chosen to capture a Blipbug before getting here, which as the name suggests will have a Bug attack which does some good damage. You may also have explored the wild area and found a Pancham, which will learn some Fighting Type abilities when levelled up slightly.

Well that’s the two grunts taken down, separately at least, up next is the 2 versus 2 fight against them both! They appear to be a fan posse of sorts for another trainer, so maybe not the new Team Rocket? We’ll see…