In this guide, we’ll teach you how to play Mamoswine using a build that’s slightly more competitive and works great with friends. If you’re solo-queuing and trying to climb into Ultra or higher, this may not be of too much help, but the build is fun regardless. The release of Mamoswine in Pokemon Unite brings another tanky Pokemon into Pokemon Unite with a lot of control potential. Many players have been relying on Blastoise as their primary tank option due to the Pokemon’s solid range, high DPS, and high survivability, but I personally think that Mamoswine offers a lot more to teams than Blastoise does due to the Pokemon’s solid survivability and crowd control potential. One of the challenges with Pokemon Unite is that initiation is typically left to Pokemon like Lucario, Zeraora, or Charizard who have huge explosive abilities that can chunk opponents and leave them at a disadvantage. One of the nice things about Mamoswine is that it can reliably counter-initiate and remove an opponent from the fight while setting things up for the rest of your team.

For this build, we’ll be focusing on how to play Mamoswine as a tanky frontliner in Pokemon Unite that can either initiate or counter-initiate against its opponents. Looking at Mamoswine’s stats, Mamoswine has decent attack and HP. Unfortunately, its defense stats are a little lacking. Mamoswine’s defense is the second lowest at 510 and has the second lowest Sp. Def of all the tanks currently in the game with Slowbro having the lowest of them all at 360. Nevertheless, Mamoswine makes up for middling stats with it’s solid basic attack effect.

Basic Attack: Becomes a boosted attack with every third attack, dealing damage to the opponent and stunning them. 

In reality, Mamoswine freezes its opponent, setting them up for solid follow-up for your team. Mamoswine’s ability Thick Fat provides additional defense and special defense whenever Mamoswine deals damage (this ability stacks three times!) and transforms the next basic attack into a boosted attack whenever Mamoswine uses Ice Shard, Icicle Crash, or Ice Fang. If any of these moves creates a freezing AoE in an ally goal zone, it decreases the goal-scoring speed of opposing Pokemon in that zone.

As Mamoswine in Pokemon Unite, you want to engage with your opponents as much as possible, consistently dealing damage to them to keep up your stacks of Thick Fat and preventing them from running away with your abilities’ and basic attacks’ freezing effect. Unfortunately, you will have to rely on your team for follow-up, which can be hard to do unless you’re playing with friends. However, your goal will be to act as the initiator throughout the game, typically responding to enemy attacks by jumping their backline or controlling the enemy initiator with your superior crowd control. 

But how exactly are you meant to do that?

As you wanna control your opponents and survive their attacks, you want to increase your defenses as much as possible while also increasing your attack speed so that you can freeze your opponents more often.

The best held items to achieve both increased survivability and attack speed are Focus Band, Muscle Band, and Buddy Barrier.

Focus Band and Buddy Barrier increase your HP, defense, and special defense, making you tankier and challenging to kill. Focus Band’s special effect can help you secure trades against your lane opponents and get away with a sliver of health. Buddy Barrier’s shielding effect will help you last longer in mid-game to late-game team fights as Mamoswine’s Unite Move Mammoth Mash is a solid initiation tool that grants a lot of damage and control.

Muscle Band’s attack speed increase helps Mamoswine stack freezing effects quicker and more often, and helps increase your damage as your opponent’s health decreases.

Other viable items include Weakness Policy and EXP. Share. The HP increase of Weakness Policy plus its increase to attack damage as you lose health can combo well with Focus Band if you feel like your team doesn’t take advantage of Buddy Barrier’s shielding effect. EXP. Share can help Mamoswine’s rather dry and inactive early game by netting your lane partner and yourself more experience so you can hit that crucial level 6 a lot sooner and start team fighting.

For this initiator build, you want to focus on getting Ice Shard first, as it allows you to secure last hits on wild Pokemon from a safe distance. Ice Shard is also a solid anti-initiation tool that you can use on opponent junglers to prevent kills on either yourself or your lane partner. Eventually, you’ll learn Tackle which allows you to dash in a certain direction and knock up opponent Pokemon if you Tackle into them. 

Once you hit level 6, take Ice Fang as it allows you to begin controlling your opponent and making their life a living hell. Tackle into Ice Fang is a great initiation tool that puts you in a good position to burst an opponent with sudden damage, position your opponent behind you, then continue auto-attacking for the freeze effect. Once you learn Earthquake, initiation is a lot easier as Earthquake allows you to jump into an enemy, draw them toward you so you can auto attack them, then Ice Fang them once the first freeze expires. 

The goal of this skill build is to get you on top of enemy team attackers like Pikachu or Greninja, or to counter engage against other initiators like Talonflame. You can reliably remove an opponent Pokemon from the fight just by targeting them, which gives your team a lot of opportunities to follow up on other Pokemon in the fight.

Mamoswine typically spikes at around level 6 when you’re able to learn Ice Fang and start fights in Pokemon Unite. Before level 6, you want to play for last hits in the lane. When choosing your lane, you want to go to whatever lane has a lane partner that can either follow up your CC with their own or has a lot of damage output. Pokemon like Wigglytuff, Mr. Mime, or Pikachu are good lane partners as they have the means to contribute additional crowd control and burst that lets you kill your opponents early. If you’re playing with a lane partner like Gardevoir or Venusaur, play more conservatively and prioritize getting last hits on wild Pokemon until they also hit their level spikes.

Once you hit level 6, you should be able to initiate reliably, secure a kill and destroy an opponent’s goal, preferably bot lane as you want to help your team secure Drednaw. Once your team begins fighting Drednaw, your goal is to stay on the edges of the fight to prevent snipe attempts by initiating on the opponent teams’ initiator, like Talonflame, Blastoise, Garchomp, or Lucario. 

Once Drednaw’s been secured, your goal is to start teamfights with your teammates and demolish enemy goals. Work together with your jungler to determine which lane you want to prioritize and team fight in. Mamoswine is great at preventing opponent goal attempts, so feel free to teleport back to base to defend one of your goals if it doesn’t leave your team in a bad position. 

You want to make sure that you’re at least level 14 before Zapdos spawns as Earthquake gains increased vacuum effect and decreases your enemies’ movement speed once it hits. Using Earthquake into your Unite Move will stack a lot of damage early that should dissuade your opponents from trying to challenge your teams’ Zapdos attempt. If your team has been playing from behind up until this point, try to save your Earthquake and Unite Move combo to secure the last hit on Zapdos and receive the shield necessary to escape from your opponents. 

Learning how to play Mamoswine in Pokemon Unite can be a bit challenging because it can be difficult for newer players to know when it’s the right time to initiate. The Icicle Crash and High Horsepower combo is honestly a lot safer, but it doesn’t provide as much crowd control overall. Not to mention, initiating with this combo neglects High Horsepower’s secondary effect of increased damage to frozen Pokemon. The amount of strong, single-target disable that comes from using Earthquake and Ice Fang can have a huge impact on your games as long as you’re initiating intelligently and are able to communicate with your teammates.

Best of luck in your games!