What it does
If this move is successful, it breaks through the target's Baneful Bunker, Detect, King's Shield, Protect, or Spiky Shield for this turn, allowing other Pokemon to attack the target normally. If the target's side is protected by Crafty Shield, Mat Block, Quick Guard, or Wide Guard, that protection is also broken for this turn and other Pokemon may attack the target's side normally. This attack charges on the first turn and executes on the second. On the first turn, the user avoids all attacks. If the user is holding a Power Herb, the move completes in one turn.
At 90 base power it is the
15th strongest of the 42 damaging physical
moves that appear in this format.
Who carrys it
6 of the 282 Pokémon measured on the
Regulation M-B ladder carry Phantom Force.
The one that matters most is Annihilape,
which is on 4.8% of teams and carrys it on 48.4% of its sets.
The full list is above, ordered by how much of the format each one is.
What it hits
As a Ghost move it is super effective against Ghost and Psychic, resisted by Dark, and does nothing at all to Normal.
3 other Ghost moves appear in this format: Shadow Ball, Shadow Sneak, Poltergeist.
Who could and does not
25 Pokémon legal in this regulation can learn Phantom Force at all,
against the 6 that actually bring it. The gap is the interesting number: it is
the set of Pokémon that have the option and decline it.
The most-played of those are Basculegion, Sinistcha, Ceruledge, Sableye, Zoroark-Hisui and Basculegion-F — each of them measured on the ladder, each of them leaving this move on the shelf.
How concentrated it is
Across the ladder, Phantom Force accounts for an expected
0.03 of the six slots on an average team, which makes it the
103rd most-brought of the 126 moves this format runs.
82% of that comes from Annihilape alone, so it is really one Pokémon’s move rather than the format’s.
Its carriers are mostly Ghost (6).
Where these numbers come from
Usage is Smogon's published statistics for the Regulation M-B VGC ladder, and the description is
the one shipped in the Pokémon Showdown data set. Both are regenerated on every build rather than
written by hand, so this page follows the format instead of trailing it. Take any of it to the
team builder or the damage calculator.
Annihilape
4.8%
48.4%
Houndstone
1.4%
3%
Dragapult
0.73%
34%
Mimikyu
0.57%
31.7%
Mega Golurk
0.30%
6.5%
Trevenant
0.05%
25.2%