#sandyghast

In SOS hunts, a pokemon calls another pokemon for help. Once it’s called a certain amount of pokemon again and again in a chain, you get boosted shiny odds!!! Pokemon are a lot more likely to call for help if they’re on low hp. So, to SOS hunt, you really want false swipe, to guarantee that the pokemon is on 1hp for the best odds.

Sandyghast is a ghost type, and since false swipe is a normal move, Sandyghast is immune to it :(

You may wonder ‘why not just chip sandyghast’s hp down with some other move that doesn’t do much damage and hope for the best???’

Wild Sandyghast know a healing move (I think it’s mega drain) so you gotta continuously keep it’s hp down, or it heals itself out of the range where it’s most likely to call for help. It’s wayyy too risky to do that with anything other than false swipe , you can and will probably accidentally kill your sandyghast otherwise

So, how do we get false swipe to work ???

Alomomola knows soak !!! Soak changes the type of the other Pokémon to water! Boom, Sandyghast is now a water type! It can be hit by false swipe!

There are quite a few Pokemon which can learn soak, and it could really be any of them (Wailord is another really good option since it also has intimidate which boosts sos encounter odds, I think Octillery and Pelliper are good and know soak too). I’ve opted for Alomomola though, because she also learns wish and heal pulse, you never know when your team (or your sandyghast) may need some healing.