Pokémon Sword & Shield: 8 Pokémon To Dominate Multiplayer

Toxapex isn't a new Pokémon, nor does Sword and Shield offer it much new in terms of moves or abilities. However, with the addition of Dynamaxing, it's now imperative that you have some way of stopping these giants from tearing holes in your team, especially if you've already used up your own Dynamax.

Enter Toxapex - a Water/Poison type with high defence and special defence and incredible recovery potential. Toxapex centres around stalling out your opponent: its Regenerator ability restores a third of its health each time it switches out, it can heal by 50% with the Recover move and its signature Baneful Bunker attack protects it from damage while also poisoning any opponent that hits it with a contact attack.

By using Toxic Spikes twice, it can also badly poison enemy Pokemon when they enter the field, allowing Toxapex to soak up damage and recover repeatedly while the opponent slowly succumbs to poison damage.

Toxapex thus provides the perfect Dynamax counter. Switch it in to soak up a max attack, use Baneful Bunker to negate most of another (and potentially poison the opponent), then use Recover or switch out to restore its health. Used right, Toxapex can completely negate an opponent's Dynamax and whittle down their Pokémon's health at the same time.