One piece of feedback I heard several times from the community after the Gigantamax Pikachu event was that they wanted to prepare more, but by the time they started, it was too late; they couldn't find the Chanseys and Excadrills to build out their team.

To that end, I wanted to post a list of things you should be doing right now if you want to be prepared for all the challenges Dynamax battles might throw your way in the future. Before we begin, here's a super useful guide on the basic mechanics of dynamax.

Also, when I refer to "tanks" going forward, I mean "bulky pokemon you use to charge the meter during the small phase before switching to an attacker in the Max phase". Max Guard users are, in my opinion, a separate category and will be addressed as such.

Long-Term Goals (things to always be working towards):

• I have a quick guide on how to bootstrap a viable dynamax team from the starting Wooloo here. Until you can at a minimum solo all 3* content, you should always be looking for ways to climb further up the "star ladder".
• Once you have a minimum viable team, you should look to flesh it out with meta attackers and tanks. This spreadsheet shows all of the best possible attackers by type (I would love to give credit, but I'm not sure who made it—if you know, please post). Here's a list of which pokemon are useful against actual bosses (because some types are more useful than others). Here's a list of viable tanks. Any time you see a chance to improve your team, take it.
• (Optional): consider building out a roster of potential Max Guard users. This post details the advantages of Max Guard when attempting harder dynamax challenges. Ideally, you want to be on a team with someone who is using it; if you have some strong Max Guard users of your own, you're always guaranteed to have such a player on your team. If you want to go this route, here's an analysis of the best shielders.
• You don't need a healer.
• Note that you should be actively ACQUIRING THE RESOURCES for the things on these lists, but you do not have to power them up now. It's good to have an Excadrill with strong IVs and a bunch of spare stardust and candy, but don't actually power that Excadrill up until you need it because you might get a better one first, or something might be released that supersedes it (like DMax Garchomp, say).
• (One exception: you might want to level Max moves on any days when you didn't use all your particles on battles, because you won't want to spend the particles to do this when there's good stuff in the rotation.)

Medium-Term Goals (things to focus on this month):

• Trapinch makes his Dynamax debut and will be virtually everywhere from April 6th to April 12th. In general, Flygon (the final stage of his evolutionary line) is not super useful, but he does have one niche: he's the strongest anti-electric tank available by a lot (about 62% better than Excadrill!) Single-type tanks are generally only useful for extreme shortman challenges, and there are a few things out there that could eventually top him (Garchomp, Torterra, and Stunfisk), but if you want to try some crazy challenges, consider hunting for an X/15/15 Trapinch and a bunch of candy to power him up.
• Excadrill will be the featured Max pokemon from April 13th to April 19th. IMO, most dynamax teams should have a good Excadrill given how easy he is to acquire and power up. Ground is an irreplaceable offensive type—it's electric's only weakness!—and Excadrill is near the top of the class there. If we ever get Garchomp or Landorus-I, they'll beat him, but only by 2.2%. Groudon would pass him by 5.6% and Landorus-T would pass him by a lot (nearly 28%), but they're both likely a long way off. Plus Excadrill can get some play as a niche tank and or mixed healer.
• Regirock will be featured from April 20th to 26th. He will be a tough battle, but if you don't have any of the great tanks or shielders, he's the best you're going to get. He has a 0.5s fast move (Lock-on) and his shields have 50k+ eHP against 13 different types and 90k+ eHP against four! He's not quite on par with Zamazenta, but he's in that next tier below as a Max Guard user (and also quite good as a Tank, beating Blissey against Normal, Fire, Poison, and Flying moves and giving solid performance against everything Rock isn't weak to). If you're early in the team-building process, beating a handful of Regirock battles will likely be the single best thing you can do this month for your team. Start leaving spare Regirocks behind at Max spots to farm the candy to take your best one to Level 40 and to power up its Max Guard.
• Shuckle will be everywhere between April 27th and May 6th. Shuckle might seem like a meme pokemon, but *if* you have a reliable team of four, and *if* you can count on your teammates to use 0.5s fast moves, then Shuckle can be a game-breaking Max Guard user. His shields top 70k eHP against a ridiculous 15 out of 18 types (for comparison, Zamazenta only does it against 9). Even against the three types he's weak to (Rock, Steel, and Water) he still has 40k+ eHP! You will need three other players with 0.5s moves to ensure you're not getting attacked twice per cycle, and you'll need a tank (likely Blissey) to use during the first small phase so Shuckle doesn't get KO'd before he gets his shields up, but under the right circumstances he can be a massive force multiplier.
• Edit: Forgot about the Kanto GMax day on April 25th! GMax Charizard is the best fire type attacker if you don't have a GMax Cinderace and can have some interesting niche tank potential (he double-resists Grass, for instance). GMax Venusaur is the best Grass type if you don't have GMax Rillaboom (though he's much further back). GMax Blastoise… is worse than a plain DMax Inteleon.
• If GMax Machamp or GMax Gengar are available on the Kanto Max Battle day, they should be your highest-priority additions. Gigantamax Gengar, especially, is arguably the most useful attacker we're ever going to get. GMax Kingler is the best water-type attacker if you don't have GMax Inteleon.

Short-Term Goals (things to do right now):

The big challenge this month is Regirock, so you should be focusing extra hard on steps that will help you take him down.

The best attackers are GMax Inteleon (100%), Crowned Zacian (98.6%), GMax Rillaboom (91.2%), GMax Machamp (89.3%), DMax Inteleon (77.7%), and DMax Excadrill (75.7%). We will have an entire week of Excadrills the week before. There is no excuse to not at least have a well-built Excadrill available to you for this.

Like Regice, Regirock has a lot of coverage moves and they're all deadly: he could potentially have Rock, Fighting, Electric, or Ground attacks. Blissey and Zamazenta remain the generalist tanks of choice, handling everything and even doing fine against stuff they're weak to (they're both bulkier against their weaknesses than Metagross is against stuff he's neutral to). If you want specialist tanks, Lugia will hard-counter the fighting and ground moves, but is weak to both rock and electric, so you'll have to roll a lot for the proper moveset.

Otherwise, Corviknight and the Bulky Waters (Suicune / Vaporeon / Blastoise) can be viable budget tanks (well, not in Suicune's case) against any moveset that doesn't include Zap Cannon, or Metagross can work against anything except Earthquake—especially if you have a strong Max Guard pokemon on your team drawing fire.

For shields, Zamazenta pretty much always works, though Latias will beat him against everything except Rock (nothing will ever beat Zam vs. Rock). Corviknight and Suicune are good against anything except Zap Cannon again, and Zapdos(!!) can be an interesting Max Guard user against Fighting and Ground moves if your team can't offset Lugia's 1.0s fast move. And, as always, Shuckle dominates provided your team meets the criteria to unlock him (4 players, each of the other three running a 0.5s fast move.)

Figure out what team you'll be able to put together for Regirock and start working on it now.

Edit: If you want to build a team for the GMax Kanto day, Gigalith is the best attacker against Charizard, while Venusaur wants your best Fire attacker and Blastoise wants your best Grass or Electric. Alakazam is the top attacker against Machamp, while Gengar's biggest weakness is… himself (GMax if you have it, DMax if you don't). Given the wide range of potential attacks you'll be facing, focus on generalist tanks, especially Blissey.