You won't need two 3DS consoles to transfer Pokemon! The DS and single 3DS should be enough to transfer Pokemon from Gen 4 to Gen 5!

I specifically urge you to get either Black 2 or White 2, as they're the games that introduced PokeTransport in order to put Pokémon into Bank. Note again, you have to beat the game and enter post game.

You technically CAN get additional games (gens 6-7), but it's not necessary as Home has a way to connect to Bank until the shut down, as long as you have Bank on the 3DS (and a subscription on Home).

Bank functions similarly to Home in holding Pokemon from different games, as It's capatible from Gen 5-7. But if you want to just move them into the Switch era, you can without having to go through the 3DS games.

Just to correct some information:

It's Pokemon Bank (transfers pokemon Gen 5 and up) that will be at its end of service, and will no longer be compatible with Pokémon Home.

At minimum, you would need a GBA-compatible DS (for GBA to DS), a 3DS (for Gen 5 and up), a single switch and a Home subscription to get everything into home.

You also at least need a Gen 4 (I see you have HG) game and BW2 in its Post Game to transfer beyond the DS era.

If you have some games already, great. If you can get a couple more in a fast time, also great.

I think shelf support is my answer! They screw into a side of my cupboard, where it holds up a plank to make a shelf! Thank you!

I use Molly as my main app for Signal!! (I don't use GMS), but considering it's the most "tech noob friendly" option I've seen, I might get my friend to do that for their Android tablet

I saw a lot of folk saying the mobile client was still maturing, so I wasn't 100% sure if that's enough for just voice chat

My friend lives in the UK while I'm based in Austral-Asia region, and I'm honestly not tech savvy enough for P2P or self hosting...

I also unfortunately don't have the best WiFi (MediaTek on a Lenovo Laptop in the great 2026...)

This was my original proposal, but my friend is worried about messing up their Signal acc that could render it useless (they've seen me brick my laptop while installing Linux Mint...)

(They use signal on a phone, but want to use their android tablet and worried about messing up the linking device part)

Personally that's okay with me cause I don't need much of the features.

And I plan to mainly do 1 on 1 calls with a single friend (cause I don't think moving roughly 5-8 people will work), so not worried too much about server features

When I think of a mobile client I think of a native app (mainly in app stores) or a github for android (bit of a foss user lol)

Does Snikket + XMPP require set up on my end? I'm not the most technical person so I'm worried I'll over-complicate things for myself...

I took a look at Stoat, but they don't have a mobile client ready unfortunately(T_T)

Thank you for the suggestiom though

I saw that they had unofficial builds for their mobile clients (with iOS being unmaintained since 2017) and the android one being an F-Droid repo. Have you had experiences with either?