u/Frequent_Development

Hi guys I'm pretty new to the community, I've currently just bought a binder and pre-ordered some booster packs of the chaos rising expansion from totalcards.net.

I'm based in Manchester and I was hoping if someone could guide me on finding people to trade cards with? I hope as my first goal I'm able to complete the chaos rising master set...

Also, do any of the Asda/Sainsbury's shops in Manchester stock booster packs?

Hey everyone, I'm new to Pokémon Showdown and I just broke the 1200 elo barrier. I'm just curious, what ELO is actually considered good?

Got back into Pokemon after a decade, never played competitively before, only FireRed and Emerald. I've played for like a day and the highest ELO I was able to reach was 1198. I really want to hit 1500 in this format, got any tips for me?

A few specific questions:-

1. Tera usage – When should I hold Tera vs use it early? I've won some games by Terastallizing early, as in use it to change a super effective move to use the boosted attack stat and not the sp. atk stat but also lost games where I saved it too long.
2. Switching vs sacking – How do you know when to preserve a mon vs let it die to bring something in safely?
3. Setup moves – I tend to spam Calm Mind / Swords Dance when I get a free turn. When is setting up a trap vs actually winning?
4. Common noob mistakes – What's something you see low-ELO players do that immediately tells you they're inexperienced?
5. Resources – Any YouTubers or written guides you'd recommend for RandBats specifically?