How to beat Hau in Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon

Hau can give trainers a bit of trouble in Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.

He may not be at the level of Cynthia or Iris (given his starter choice, the player is guaranteed to have one matchup in their favor), but an unprepared challenger might have to reset once or twice. Either way, it won’t take too much tweaking to beat Hau, a solid team with good coverage should do fine.

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Which Pokemon work best against Hau's team?

The following is Hau’s team, depending on which starter is selected by the player:

• Alolan Raichu
• Vaporeon/Leafeon/Flareon
• Tauros
• Noivern
• Crabominable
• Incinceroar/Decidueye/Primarina

The nice thing about playing Hau is that it is essentially a 6 vs 5: Hau always picks the starter Pokemon that is weak to the player’s starter (e.g. if the trainer selects Litten, Hau will select Rowlett).

This doesn’t exactly let the player off the hook, though. For his Championship team, Hau will also select an Eeveelution with a type advantage against the player’s starter. So, sticking with the example where the player picks Litten, Hau will have Vaporeon on his team. Therefore, every trainer will have to deal with a type weakness.

As for the rest of Hau’s team, though, he is incredibly weak to one type in particular: Fairy. Hau has no Fairy resistance, and Noivern and Crabominable are weak to Fairy. On top of that, Fairies with high Special Defense have great matchups against Hau’s Alolan Raichu.

Strong Fairy-types like Sylveon have a good matchup against Hau (Image via The Pokemon Company)

So, a team with a strong Fairy (like Sylveon) and a way to deal with their starter’s weakness really only has one issue: Tauros. Conventional wisdom might dictate just picking a Fighting-type to hit Tauros for super effective damage.

This can be a pitfall, though. Hau’s Tauros learns Zen Headbutt, and with the Intimidate ability, it can lower a Fighting-type’s Attack and pick up a KO in two Zen Headbutts.

One way to deal with this is to use a pivot. This is essentially a Pokemon that can soak up a hit and go into another counter. Vikavolt, for example, can take the Intimidate and then Volt Switch out into Pheromosa or Kommo-o.

With this in mind, trainers basically need four things to beat Hau. They need their starter to be reasonably high leveled, a way to cover that starter’s weakness, a strong Fairy like Clefable or Sylveon and a counter to Tauros. Any trainer with all of these will become the Alola Champion with ease.