Alright, here's a writeup (with a copy/pasteable bit with formatting below it!)
The Collegiate's gym challenge is rather unique, in that the challenger does not use their own Pokémon. Instead, they and the leader both are given a randomly-assigned team. The challenger will be made aware of the leader's team (but not vice versa) and given a chance to choose their final lineup based on that. This is because the goal of the challenge is to test the challenger's knowledge of battling, and ability to apply that knowledge regardless of circumstances.
To determine whether or not your character's challenge is successful, consider the following questions:
1. Is your character familiar with the different types of Pokémon and their strengths and weaknesses against each other?
2. Is your character familiar with at least the general kinds of moves and abilities Pokémon can have, and what sorts of advantages/disadvantages they could provide if used?
3. Can your character take the above knowledge and put it to use in the form of selecting and directing a team to take advantage of type, ability, and move combinations that have an advantage over the leader's team?
If your answer to all three of the above is Yes, then congratulations, your character's passed the test and won the badge! If one or more is No, then they probably need to spend a little more time studying and/or practicing before giving it another shot.
As an extra note for the curious, the reason why the gym recommended getting a region's full set of badges before doing the challenge was because that usually would be enough to acquire enough knowledge/experience to handle the challenge! Similarly, the actual criteria we used for judging badge approvals was simply looking to see whether the writeup demonstrated the challenger using some form of tactics that took advantage of what they team they got could do. And now you know!
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The Collegiate's gym challenge is rather unique, in that the challenger does not use their own Pokémon. Instead, they and the leader both are given a randomly-assigned team. The challenger will be made aware of the leader's team (but not vice versa) and given a chance to choose their final lineup based on that. This is because the goal of the challenge is to test the challenger's knowledge of battling, and ability to apply that knowledge regardless of circumstances.
To determine whether or not your character's challenge is successful, consider the following questions:
1. Is your character familiar with the different types of Pokémon and their strengths and weaknesses against each other?
2. Is your character familiar with at least the general kinds of moves and abilities Pokémon can have, and what sorts of advantages/disadvantages they could provide if used?
3. Can your character take the above knowledge and put it to use in the form of selecting and directing a team to take advantage of type, ability, and move combinations that have an advantage over the leader's team?
If your answer to all three of the above is Yes, then congratulations, your character's passed the test and won the badge! If one or more is No, then they probably need to spend a little more time studying and/or practicing before giving it another shot.
As an extra note for the curious, the reason why the gym recommended getting a region's full set of badges before doing the challenge was because that usually would be enough to acquire enough knowledge/experience to handle the challenge! Similarly, the actual criteria we used for judging badge approvals was simply looking to see whether the writeup demonstrated the challenger using some form of tactics that took advantage of what they team they got could do. And now you know!