Pokemon football roster rules for the all 22 board

The house rules on one card

None of these rules is a hidden mechanic. Every one of them is visible in the grade the board shows you the second a body lands in a slot. Together they stop the two things that would ruin the game: infinite stacking of one great body, and infinite rerolls until the schedule is kind.

Rule one: one body per slot, every slot filled

The starting board is 11 offensive jobs and 11 defensive jobs: QB, RB, WR1, WR2, TE, LT, LG, C, RG, RT and K on offense; LE, DT1, DT2, RE, LOLB, MLB, ROLB, CB1, CB2, FS and SS on defense. That is the modern 11-on-11 alignment, and there is no fullback slot, no nose tackle slot and no separate nickel job. Whatever a fullback does on a real snap lands with the tight end or the running back, and nose tackle work lands inside DT1 and DT2.

The simulator counts filled slots before it does anything else. Eighteen names and four empty jerseys is not a season, it is an unfinished build, and the board says so rather than handing you a free win. That single rule is why you should think in jobs rather than in players: you are not collecting great Pokémon, you are hiring twenty-two people for twenty-two positions with twenty-two different definitions of good.

Rule two: twenty-two names on any board you compare

This is the rule that keeps the ceiling honest. The draft modes and the reference boards use 22 different Pokémon, one per job, because a roster is twenty-two people. In the free builder you can place one body in as many slots as you like — it is a sandbox, and stacking is a useful way to see how far a single grade can carry a unit — but a stacked board is not comparable with a 22-name board, and every published lineup card should say which version it is.

The cost of the rule is visible in the numbers. One body, Avalugg, grades 74 at left tackle, 74 at left guard, 74 at right guard and right tackle, 72 at center and 73 at defensive tackle. Stacking it fills six premium jobs at once and the overall rating jumps; spreading it around forces you to find four more 120 kg-plus bodies from a pool where only 147 bodies clear 120 kg and just 20 clear 460 kg. The 22-name rule is what makes interior line the scarcest resource in the game instead of a solved problem.

How the drafting restrictions work

Most draft nights open with a rolled restriction, and the daily challenge rolls one from the date. There are three families: a generation restriction, a region restriction, and a typing restriction. All three do the same thing to the pool — they delete bodies you were counting on — so the restriction is never a gimmick, it is a new scarcity map.

Region restrictions use the familiar groups — Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, Alola, Galar, Paldea — and behave the same way. Typing restrictions are the hardest of the three, because a rule such as every pick needing a fire, fighting or steel type cuts the pool to 142 bodies and leaves exactly one elite kicker, Marshadow at 62. Lose that pick and the slot drops to Hawlucha at 54, which is a two-point hole in your team average that no receiver fixes. When a typing restriction is rolled, the kicker comes inside the first six rounds.

How height and weight convert into a position

Body type is 28% of every grade, and it is the part new players misread. The formula compares a body's height and weight against the job's band and gives its best score at the middle of that band, not at either edge. Height carries 45% of the size term and weight carries 55%, so a body that is the perfect height and half the right weight still loses a big chunk of the term. Nothing about the body changes between slots — only the band it is being measured against.

Read the table as a set of doors, not preferences. A 950 kg dragon does not get partial credit for being spectacular: it weighs more than thirteen times the top of the receiver band, which is why Eternatus grades 50 at its single best job despite 130 speed. A 0.8 m bug fails the receiver band on both measurements, which is why the second-fastest body in the pool grades 45 at its best job. And a 20 m legendary fails every band on the board, which is why the tallest body in the dex tops out at 50 — half the scale — at its single best position.

Why stat totals alone do not decide a grade

Base stat total is the most natural way to rank Pokémon and the fastest way to lose a board. Stats are 62% of a grade, and even inside that 62% a job only reads the three or four categories it cares about: the tight end formula reads attack, special defense, hp and defense, and never looks at special attack or speed. Add the size term and the typing term and the total becomes a tiebreaker inside a job, not a ranking of players.

The bottom two rows are the whole lesson. Avalugg carries 514 base stat points, the lowest total in the table, and it owns the highest grade anywhere in the game at 74, because 505 kg at 2.0 m is the middle of the line band and 184 defense is a near-perfect stat mark for a job that reads defense first. Zeraora at 600 outgrades Arceus at 720 by 18 points. Rank the pool by stat total and you will draft a museum; rank it by fit for the job and you will draft a team.

The 180 cap, and why the last 20 points buy nothing

Every base stat enters the formula as stat divided by 180, capped at one. That means a 200 speed body and a 180 speed body score identically in the stat term: Regieleki's record 200 speed is worth exactly what a hypothetical 180 would be worth. The same cap applies to Avalugg's 184 defense and to Deoxys Normal's twin 150s. Once a body passes the cap in the categories its job reads, extra points there are decoration, and the remaining grade has to come from the size band and the typing term.

The typing term is small, and it decides ties

Typing is 10% of a grade. The term starts at 50; a primary type on the job's bonus list adds 22, a secondary adds 10, a primary type on the penalty list costs 26 and a secondary costs 12. Because the term is a tenth of the total, that whole swing is worth about two or three grade points — not enough to save a badly sized body, and exactly enough to separate two similar ones. It is also the reason the two receiver jobs are not identical picks: WR1 rewards electric, flying and psychic, while WR2 rewards electric, flying and ice. A fast, correctly sized body with the wrong type is a 64 where the right type is a 67.

How to audit your own board against the rules

1. Count the slots. Twenty-two jobs, one body each, all filled before you simulate. An empty slot is a guaranteed zero in the unit average, and the average is what the schedule reads.
2. Check the size band before the stat line. For every starter, ask which band the job uses and whether the body is inside it. If it is outside, the pick is already a loss no matter how famous the name is.
3. Read the stat weights, not the stat total. The seven heavy jobs read defense and hp; the four coverage jobs read speed and special defense; the quarterback reads special attack first. Everything else on the card is noise for that slot.
4. Apply the 180 cap. Stop paying for stats above 180 in the categories the job reads, and start paying for stats in the categories it does not.
5. Use typing as the tiebreaker, never as the argument. When two bodies are within a point or two, take the one whose primary type sits on the job's bonus list. Typing cannot rescue a body that fails the band.

The rules in pick order

House rules do not tell you who to draft, they tell you when to draft. Scarcity does that job: only three bodies grade 65 or better at left tackle, four at defensive tackle, one at right edge and none at cornerback, while twenty-four bodies grade 60 or better at each receiver job. Combine the scarcity with the size bands and the pick order writes itself. Take the seven heavy jobs while the giants are still in the pool, take the two edge jobs before the single elite right end is gone, spend the speed on receivers and corners later, and leave the kicker — a job with a 62 ceiling — until the last pick.

Pokemon football roster rules FAQ