That Eevee is a Royal Pain to Breed
I recently acquired an Eevee with Anticipation, its Hidden Ability, from the GTS. Many of the Eeveelutions require their Hidden Abilities to really shine, so I decided to start breeding up a standard Eeveelution Baton Pass team. A little research and experience have led me to the conclusion that Eevee will be a major pain in the neck to breed.
Fig1. - The villain.
I have always wanted a bulky, Baton Pass Vaporeon. Vaporeon has the highest base HP stat of all the Eevees (130), meaning he can pass massive Wishes or Substitutes, and he is easily bulky enough to pass an Acid Armor.
Fig2. Vaporeon.
My complete Vaporeon build:
Vaporeon @ Leftovers Water Absorb Bold EV's: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD - Wish - Scald - Baton Pass - Substitute / Acid Armor
The trick, of course, is Wish, which is one of Eevee's egg moves. Vaporeon, Umbreon, and Sylveon are all bulky enough to run Wish, so breeding it into an Eevee line is highly useful. Here's the rub: no one in Eevee's egg group, Field, learns Wish through level-up. In fact, Wish is rare at all in the Field group; only Eevee, Pikachu, Skitty, Girafarig, and Spinda learn it as egg moves. Of those, only Pikachu and Skitty belong to a second egg group, Fairy, which includes only three Pokémon that can learn Wish through level-up: Togetic, Swirlix, and Flabébé.
Our options thus limited, let us consider the potential combinations. Flabébé is automatically out of the running since they are all female and thus incapable of transferring anything to another species. Togetic learns Wish at level 20, but has a baby form. Swirlix has no baby form to deal with, but doesn't learn Wish until level 45. From there, one can breed Wish into the Field group through Pikachu, who has a baby form, or through Skitty, which hatches 75% female. So, in both choices--Togetic vs. Swirlix and Pikachu vs. Skitty--you are left to pick your poison.
Fig3. The pool for breeding Wish into the Field group.
My particular poison was Togetic to Pikachu, which required two baby evolutions but wasn't too annoying. I already happened to have a 5V male Togepi that I got from Wonder Trade. Pikachu's 50/50 gender ratio helped minimize the breeding time.
The difficulties continue once one is ready to breed Wish and an appropriate Nature into Eevee: (1) Eevee hatches at a rate of 87.5% male and 12.5% female, which limits one's abilities to breed from a stud of another species and to line-breed; (2) it has a high-ish beginning egg cycle count--36, compared to a mode of 21 across all Pokémon--which means it takes about 1,900 more steps to hatch after factoring in Flame Body (3,800 without Flame Body); (3) it must learn Wish from a different species, which means a lower egg-laying rate unless the parents come from different trainers.
I lucked out in that my Anticipation Eevee is a special-perfect male, which means I only need to breed a single Bold female with Wish. After I have that first female, I can begin breeding it with my Anticipation Eevee until I get a Bold, Anticipate Eevee that knows Wish. I expect this to take a long time and a lot of eggs.
