Substitution Placeholders (The Long Version):
Your Attack Clauses and Chance Clauses may use the placeholders when specifying what Pokemon they are watching.
Your substitution's Trigger may include "any opponent", "any ally", or "any Pokemon", in the place of a specific Pokemon. If you use these placeholders in your Trigger, then you can use the corresponding placeholder reference -- "that opponent", "that ally", or "that Pokemon" -- in your Result.
Your trigger may also include "no opponent", "no ally", or "no Pokemon" in your substitutions, but these negative placeholders do not have corresponding placeholder references.
A substitution Trigger may have up to two (2) placeholders in it, and the same placeholder can't be used more than once per trigger. Attempting to add more placeholders makes the entire substitution illegal.
When your trigger with a placeholder is checked, it is checked for each matching Pokemon. For each matching Pokemon, the trigger is checked, and if the trigger is met, the result is processed with any matching placeholder references referring to that Pokemon.
Old method (4 substitutions):
- IF Mamoswine is to use a damaging Ice-type combination on you THEN use Protect on yourself.
- IF Mamoswine is to use a damaging Ice-type combination on Serperior THEN use Protect on Serperior.
- IF Hariyama is to use a damaging Ice-type combination on you THEN use Protect on yourself.
- IF Hariyama is to use a damaging Ice-type combination on Serperior THEN use Protect on Serperior.
New method (1 substitution):
- IF any opponent is to use a damaging Ice-type combination on any ally THEN use Protect on that ally.
In addition, you can phrase a Placeholder with "any other" to exclude the substitution's user. For example, you can say "any other ally" in a Triples match, and the substitution will watch the user's allies but not the user. This works best with "any other Pokemon" for checking all other Pokemon's status for some advantageous situation. I'm not sure there's any possible situation where "any opponent" and "any other opponent" have different meanings, but it doesn't hurt to leave it in.
You can use placeholder references in your substitution trigger if you use the exact corresponding placeholder first. For example:
- Legal: IF any opponent is to use a Damaging Evasive move AND you are slower than that opponent THEN do X.
- Illegal: IF any opponent is to use a Damaging Evasive move AND you are slower than that Pokemon THEN do X.
Placeholder Check Order
The order that Triggers with Placeholders are checked with each matching Pokemon can decide the outcome of an entire match, so it's important that the rules for such checks are precise and clear.
A trigger is first checked using the first Pokemon that matches each placeholder. If the trigger is true, the result is processed; and if not, the result is skipped (just like any other substitution). Then, the next matching Pokemon is used for the first placeholder (the first placeholder is "indexed forward"), and the substitution is checked again.
Once all matches for the first placeholder have been checked, the next placeholder in the trigger (if any) is indexed forward, and all matches for the first placeholder are checked in order once again. This process continues until all matches for any and all placeholders in the trigger have been checked.
Pokemon are selected for placeholders in turn order; accounting for modifiers such as priority, Quash, Stall, Trick Room, and so on. This is true even if the substitution is being checked in the middle of the step, and even if some Pokemon have already acted.
If you can't make your substitution's placeholders to check in the order you would like within the above rules, you might need to consider a trigger without any placeholders, or reworking your trigger entirely.
What Placeholders Can't Do
Placeholders are strong for compressing triggers would formerly take multiple subs, but they have their limits.
If you try to protect "any ally" from "any opponent's" damaging Ice-type combination, your opponent can overload your substitution with two combos at the same time, causing one of your Pokemon to go without protection during that step and take a large amount of damage. Furthermore, they can try to beat your answer with other strategies, such as attacking with a multi-target Ice combo to push even more damage onto your team.
In that instance, it may be easier to have each Pokemon try to protect themselves from combinations, which costs more substitutions but is much less risky. And with "any opponent" placeholders, it still costs much fewer substitutions than it would have using older methods.
You can't further specify what Pokemon match a placeholder beyond what is permitted above. That is to say, you can't look for "any Pokemon except Weavile" using a Placeholder.
Sub Repetition Rule and Using Placeholders Responsibly
Currently, the following rule helps keep substitutions from creating tangled, looping messes of activations and conditional changes.:
For each Pokemon, only one of their substitutions can activate per action. (a.k.a., Per step, in the new terminology.)
This rule does not stop the same substitution from from activating multiple times in that step. This has rarely relevant before, even in doubles. There was no reason to care if your order that step was changed to "Use Shadow Claw on Alakazam" multiple times.
This does become relevant with the advent of placeholders. Now, if each of your opponent Pokemon activate your substitution to use Fake Out on "that opponent", then you can end up hitting the second Pokemon to trigger your substitution and letting the (presumably faster) opponent attack without hinderance.
Be sure to include modifiers such as "Once per Step" or "The first time" if you want to catch only the fastest opponent with a placeholder.
Furthermore, be certain that you're careful with "do X and push orders down", with "do X on first instance and Y on second instance", and so on. If the trigger is met multiple times in the same step, then the result will be processed multiple times that step, which can create havoc with your orders.
Lastly, since a substitution will overwrite your trigger each time it activates, performing a different action depending on the target can be very tricky to make legal. The following is a complex, but legal (and powerful!) way to defend against one, the other, and both opponents trying to Taunt you:
- At the start of the step, IF any opponent is to use Taunt THEN use Taunt on that opponent on first instance each step, and use Magic Coat on any later instance in that step.