Tag: Types

Pokémon Top 5: My Favourite Ghost Types

Welcome again Island Guests!  We have discussed Pokémon 15 Types so far.  Three more to go!  The Ghost type is not super effective against the poison type I discussed last time..which had determined my order until now ! But it IS super effective against itself! One of the fan favourite types that is kind of frail. While definitely one of my favourites when it comes to Pokédex Entries this type is my absolute favourite. When it comes to actually favouring a type it’s actually quite mid tier for me!  I did this list once.. but my answers have changed a bit with how much I learned!

Rules and Honourable Mentions

As always to keep this list diverse I will not allow Pokémon that were on prior lists. I am not sure any ghosts made it on my lists normally due to how prominent the typing is. So there aren’t that many conflicting issues. However under the same rule I only add one entry per evolutionary line in! Since Gen VIII made evolution harder to cancel if I do not like a final evolution, I will mark down the previous forms. Even if it’s not a Gen VIII Pokémon it seems fairer that way. Pumpkaboo and Phantump are for me forms I really like, but both their final evolutions feel a bit meh! With Trevenant being okay but Gourgeist not feeling fully evolved for me. I can’t shake the “is this it?” feeling. It’s fine.. but it really feels like a mid evolution to me! So Pumkaboo takes this honourable mention. Had there been a form above Gourgeist it would have made the list.

Another rule is that ghost types have to feel like ghost types. Decidueye for example doesn’t feel like a ghost type to me and simply gets the type because it’s based on an extinct Owl. However I talked about him enough so he doesnt get the honourable mention on this rule. That goes to Dhelmise. While I very much get why it’s a ghost.. and it’s possessed seaweed around an anchor..and it fit’s the ghost ship theme.. I feel like it should be a Steel Grass type. Dhelmise gets the ability Metal Worker which effectively gives it a steel typing in the form of adding Same Type Attack bonus to his attacks but I feel that should have been swapped out for Possessed..which would give Ghost STAB as a result. In the end I do just see a seaweed covered anchor. I love it but it’s the ghost part that is implied rather than the steel bit. 

Temporary forms also do not count! So Mega’s do not count. This for me excludes Mega Banette. Which designwise is one of my favourite mega’s. I like Banette fine enough in it’s normal form but it’s mega is something I found really amazing. One of the best designed Megas and a Pokémon that could really use one.  Banette is somewhere like my seventeenth favourite ghost type or so but it’s mega might have made it a contender. Unfortunately..we judge pokémon for how they are for the majority of their journey, without any special items or so! So it falls short! The backstory about Banette being a discarded plushie swearing on revenge though! One of my all time favourites.

Ghost Type #5 Mimikyu

I thought Mimiky would be higher on this list. It is cute, has a great backstory, is fleshed out in the anime a lot and truly is a fan favourite! I love Mimikyu as well..but I do not like putting it on my team all that much! It’s design is top notch and I appreciate it a lot more than Pikachu itself..but it’s a physical ghost and fairy type. Which does make it rather unique but also a bit trickier to use.  To effectively use Mimikyu you have to sacrifice one moveslot to use Sword Dance. One for Shadow Claw and probably one for Play Rough ..because fairy types do not get a lot of physical moves either.  That means Mimikyu is one of the most rigid and less versatile ghost types with  three moves more or less being set. It managed to fight off Marshadow from the fifth place though, who is arguably the better physical ghost type due to its move Spectral Thief, by sheer love! There is so much fun stuff about Mimikyu including his Z-move! Let’s Snuggle Forever. The story of this Pokémon wanting love.. despite it cursing people to death if they see it’s true form.. is just heartwarming and wins me over every time.  Even though I do not always want to run it on my team.. I can not stop from helping to want to adopt one! It is high on my list of Pokémon Plushies I want to get and it’s song is one of my more played Pokémon tracks!

As for his Pokédex entries! I am so familiar with his lore that I do not even need to look these facts up anymore.  No one has ever seen Mimikyu’s true shape….well at least no one who did lived to tell the tale. However, looking at the true Mimikyu gets cursed ..which if you get a good view of the thing usually means you die. This made Mimikyu sad as he also wanted to be among people! So it created a disguise it could wear.  It noticed that humans really liked Pikachu so it based it’s design on that! So it could be loved as well.  For those of you unfamiliar. The Pikachu-like head is completely empty ..the actual eyes are on its body!  If it’s costume ever breaks Mimikyu gets extremely down and won’t stop working on repairing it’s costume, no matter how long it takes. It shall not rest until it’s costume is complete yet again. Mimikyu is a bit scared of sunlight, probably because it might think it’s costume doesn’t pass as much or who knows what is underneath that disguise it might be allergic to sunlight. Mimikyu can get jealous of Pikachu if it really gets lonely! Yet all in all it’s a crafty little who knows,  with a heart that wants to be loved and a disguise that wants to be hugged.

Like I said before, Mimikyu in battle is kind of boring to use. His Ability disguise  allows it to take one free hit per battle , without taking damage. (Excluding Hazards and status) Mimikyu’s strong ability however is countered with a lackluster stat pool. It’s physical attack is only 90, which is not bad but no where near the ballpark of others. Since it’s most targetable weakness is ghost it does really benefit from his high special defence and his decent speed. I ran Leech Life as a final move on mine since Gen VII really improved that move , giving it 80 base power instead of 20. With his high defences it can get a fair bit of recovery of types Leech Life is super effective against. It doesn’t offer much covery though as it overlaps a lot with both it’s fairy typing against dark and ghost typing against psychic. Woodhammer is an option to make it more diverse.. but that last slot really depends on what kind of teams you are facing.. you can not swap the other moves out at all so that one changes depending on what you face. I always give it it’s Z-crystal as a held item because I want to use Let’s Snuggle forever! Cause you know! It’s cute!

Ghost Type #4 Polteageist

My Polteageist Earl Grave was one of my favourite Pokémon during my Pokémon Sword and Shield run! I bet the nickname has been passed around a lot so it’s not very original but I did not want to go South African/Dutch with Dooibos  and it was a male and I felt Deadjeeling felt a bit more feminine.  Still I never thought tea would make such a good Pokémon. When I say good I mean that for a while it was amongst the top 10 most powerful Pokémon in Galar. I haven’t kept up with it so I am not sure if it got a bit nerfed but I know this Pokémon without any imposed limitations can kick ass and take names. It’s design like a pot of tea also is quite unique and I really prefer pure ghost types a lot!  With only two weaknesses, one that it always has covered, it just works for me!  Also it’s dead it loses some of those other aspects. I never got why Gengar got the poison type! This is just ghostly black tea haunting a cup! Sure you could add the water or grass type to it.. but it would only end up with more weaknesses.  So they did well with this one!

What many people did not know is that Polteageist comes in two forms and this has to do with a lore thing. Polteageists are formed if you leave a bit of black tea in a teapot and another ghost usually another polteageists comes to visit it in the night!  If it does it will move into the tea and possess it after it leaves the beverage a new ghost is formed.  Ever after they roam around. Usually they originate from fake chinaware but once every now and again it is an official antique teapot they possess. Which is also mentioned in the Pokédex. But this is actually a feature in the game! If you manage to tilt the camera below your Polteageist, you can see a blue stamp of a prime brand if you have the anique form. If there is nothing it is called the Phoney form. If you use a cracked pot evolution item to evolve it .. your Pokémon is a fake antique..however if you used a Chipped Pot.. it is the real deal!  There are no stat differences here.. and it’s just tea possessing tea but I love how much detail went in such a seemingly throw away pokedex line. When it trusts its trainer it allows them to sample some of their tea. However if it is angered it will shoot some bad tea in your mouth that will cause severe chills. No gruesome stories for this one it seems!

Polteageist has a Special Attack stat of 136. Which means it is more offensive than nearly all other pokémon I listed before. No more than 5 pokémon of the 75 I mentioned before are more powerful than this tea!  Yet that is not all! Polteageist gets the excellent combination of  Shell Smash, a move that changes all your stats .. dropping your defensive stats for offensive stats and speeds, as well as Stored Power.. a move that deals damage equal to the number of stat boosts you have gotten. It’s ability weak armor raises its speed when it’s hit by a physical attack and equipped with a white herb or a focus sash; this combination can wreck teams if they do not have a proper special wall.  (A wall is a pokémon whose main purpose is to take damage and shift momentum in your favour)  It also gets moves like Willow Whips to lower physical damage, it gets Shadow Ball the most powerful Ghost special move and it gets Giga Drain which with 136 special attack can offer you some very reliable recovery. This Pokémon needs to be taken out because with just two goes of Shell Smash it can nearly one-shot an entire team…as long as the opponent doesn’t have a dark type or priority moves. Truely a scary ghost!

Ghost Type # 3 Gengar

While I do not understand why it has the poison type, and that typing often is more a nuisance as a boon, I do love the original ghost pokémon.  That is right both in generation one and two there was only 1 ghost pokemon line for each. Gengar is a classic and for good reasons. His design is haunting, the idea of incorporating him with shadows pays off, and the way he reflects Clefable in a way has led to many interesting theories. He is still one of the better designed ghost Pokémon for me. Both his Giganta Max and Mega evolution are amazing in their own rights. I particularly like the Mega! Even if its forbidden to use because of how amazingly powerful it is! It fits in Gengars Pokedex lore! So love that one! There is something intimidating about Gengar. It seems the most insane and chaotic of the ghost pokémon and Haunter and Gengar are arguably the first pokémon that killed Ash. Haunter at least ripped out his soul long before Mewtwo and Mew ever turned him to stone! Gengar was also the first trade evolution I ever managed to obtain so he was something very special to me!  Later becoming one of my staples in Pokémon Stadium! I also had a Gengar toy which looks awesome and translucent!  So with this many memories he was sure to be on this list and I am fairly sure that no one really thinks this is a bad ghost type Pokémon!

Pokédexwise this pokémon used to be moderately innocent. His earliest entries seem to focus on that shiver you feel down your spine when you’re scared or anxious! They explain it is Gengar stealing heat from its surroundings. It can hide in your shadow or mimic to be your shadow and if  your shadow ever overtakes you on a full moon or when you are passing by streetlights it is actually the ghost running and having fun. As soon as early as Pokémon Silver though it already mentioned that it preys on lives to steal.  Hiding in the shadows to do so. It becomes quickly clear that this stealing of heat is more a stealing of life force. He also likes to curse you without reason.. just to have a laugh. Yet Gengar is at his darkest .. in Pokémon Sun and Moon. Sun’s ingame pokédex entry states: Should You ever feel yourself attacked by a sudden chill it’s the sign of an approaching Gengar. There is no escaping it. Just give up! Which… is quite dark!  Moon then explains that it was once a human himself and now he is looking for a traveling companion which he achieves by taking the lives of other humans hoping the dead turn into other Gengar. If you ever think .. well I will just not leave the house then.. Ultra Moon states.  Not even your house is safe… all Gengar needs is a Dark corner to wait for a chance to catch its prey!… Darn Game Freak.. that would have given Kid Pinkie sooo much nightmares!

Gengar got infamy in the competitive scene when Mega Gengar was released. In its Mega form it’s base special attack became 170. The most Powerful special attack ever. So promptly Mega Gengar was cast into the Ubers Categorie.. where it rests with all the overpowered legendaries. Since that is not possible in Gen VIII I will discuss his non mega evolving set from the Under-used tier! Here he works as a special sweeper with 130 special attacks.  Ev’s go into special attack and speed and it is equipped with Focus Blast, Shadow Ball , Sludge Wave and Substitute. The idea is to keep a substitute up and bombard your enemies from behind cover.  Since virtually all sound based moves, except for bug Buzz, which Gengar resists,  are normal type moves he works great behind a sub. These moves offer a wide variety and deal a lot of damage against fairly common archetypes. Myself I oftenly swap out Focus Blast for Thunderbolt since I oftenly lack proper covery against flying types and the paralysis chance is neat as well. The Focus blast slot once more is the most swappable slot.. though substitute can also be replaced if you face off against a trick room team!   Gengar has a few options and lots of types covered.  

Ghost Type Number # 2 Mismagius

Mismagius to me is mostly an improvement of Gengar.. but more femine. It has a bit more defence, for a bit less offensence, It lacks the pesky psychic type and ground type weaknesses the number three has and it has a hat! While Gengar feels more scary. Mismagius feels more ghostly! It also has a bit of a scholarly quality! A mage! …well duh! Oddly that mage like quality isn’t on to many pokemon. Alakazam is more a mentalist like Uri Geller, Gardevoir is more of a Bride or something. While we had plenty of warriors , there are not that many real mages. So as a D&D Player I am happy! It is also something I really would like to cosplay as a Gijninka version.. which is basically the pokémon interpreted as a human. I just love this design that much!  The colours are more vibrant than on Gengar, it has a  better shiny form then Gengar (it becomes greenish yellow, where Gengar slightly hue shifts to barely noticeable less saturated). I really like how it differs from the other ghosts as well. 

Most Ghosts have insanely dark Pokédex entries. Like people dying from looking at them, them praying on human lives just to have a playmate to stuff like “this ghost is a child that got lost in the woods and starved to death’  , this ghost carries its former human face with it and sometimes looks at it and cries tears of blood (yes that’s a  real in game thing). Mismagius though is a half and half. It is a chanting/spellcasting pokémon befitting its name.  While it certainly can cause trouble with it’s chants, such as intense migraines and visions of absolute terror , Mismagius can also induce Happiness in people with some of it’s chants. The Pokémon is feared for it’s wrath and the curses that it places but it on a whim also bestows positivity upon humans. For example , besides the happiness, Mismagius is known to be able to cast love spells. It can make two people fall deeply in love with another. This means some people desperately seek it’s aid. I like how it once again is a bit of a counterpart to Gengar’s doom and gloom.. and with him most of the other pokémon. It makes Mismagius much more of a balanced Pokémon, a creature you could actually see people use as a pokémon.

Mismagius is a Pokémon in the Never Used Tier. It’s offensive stat of 105 makes it an average  but solid sweeper. This rating is mostly based on how dominant Inciniroar was a presence in the Metagame though.  In Sword and Shield it would most likely be more successful due to a much lesser presence of Dark types. It is best on a team with Webs, Hazards and possibly Sleep. As it is dependent on Nasty Plot to get properly set up! It having Nasty Plot though means that IF you can set it up.. it gets powerful FAST. People really used to run it with Power Gem but that is a rather specific counter.  Due to how Dynamax fighting moves offer one of the best stat buffs, Dazzling Gleam might be a better shout. Protect and Taunt are good support moves to run on it and if you can run it on a team that keeps you in the driver’s seat when it comes to momentum this pokémon is great. As it doesn’t require a trade but just a Dusk-Stone to evolve this Pokémon is also a lot more viable to use on gameplay stuff. Let’s be honest if you are playing an older game who is going to reliably trade a Gengar to you?! You already need a friend with a game! So while it’s not the BETTER pokémon I think it is the better pick.

My Favourite Ghost Type: Chandelure

A lamp.. My favourite ghost type is a lamp! Back in the early days of my blog I bumped him down a little as recently I had used a Gengar again and to be safer with my audience! However since then it has climbed in my list again. Somehow this always climbs back to the top! I love purple flames! The whole dark fire thing is one of the tropes I like the most! I loved it in Underhero, I loved in Pokémon, I love anything that has a canonical purple black flame! It is my main in Pokken.. not that I play Pokken a lot but as far as it goes..it’s my main. I just want to own one and swing on its arms.  I also want to hug it ..as long as it doesn’t burn me!  The Pokémon also has a great Gijinka which I love very much.. but that might be a topic I cover on it’s own.  There is just so much to love! The  black frame.. the bluish intended glass, those endless yellow eyes and the dancing purple flames together create a stunningly designed pokémon. I absolutely adore the design and it is one of the very few Pokémon that uses a jet(ish) black in it’s design so well. Zekrom is a thing but other than that most pokémon are more a dark blue than a black.. yet here it works so incredibly well! This makes it more unique in my opinion. Of course Jynx used to be jet black but we like to forget about that one and even if we considered it.. it’s not much competition. This Pokémon perfectly fits it’s ghost fire typing for me and it works very well in my shadowy mansion with a big haunted library ..old tea pots and seemingly moving plushie collection!

While it’s  pokédex entry  is nowhere near as scary as both its earlier evolutionary stages.. which are a candle that mesmerises you by looking at it’s flame.. but also drains you off life force as you do.. or a smaller lamp that if it burns you , you will experience that pain forever from then on out. Chandelure still is a bit of a creeper. It is said to live in ancient dilapidated mansions. It hypnotises those who visit it with it’s swinging arms. Then it burns your soul from your body. Leaving around a soulless husk of a corpse. While a part of your spirit fades a part of it is doomed to wander this world forever, never finding rest. Being a generation V pokémon it has only seen pokédex entries in Unova, Kalos and Galar. Unfortunately missing out on those sweet sun and moon dex entries. However Shield does have a bit of a zinger as well!  It mentions that those who have their homes illuminated by Chandelure will not get light in abundance. In place of lights, there will be lots and lots of funerals. At least it hypnotises you before it kills you! So that is better as just giving into your fear like is the case with Gengar! I much rather be murdered by a Chandelure!  So of course it is higher on this list.

Chandelure is commonly used as a Under-Used Tier Stall breaker. That means this is the Pokémon you set in if your opponent is bunkering down. It gets the ability Infiltrator which allows it to negate substitutes which can come in handy against some Pokémon! Yet you normally do not even have to run it to be effective. Just by being one of it’s possible abilities means  they can not risk staying in against it if they are weak against its unique typing. Fire and Ghost is great against a great many Meta popular types so it should get the most powerful but reliable moves for those.  Shadowball and Flamethrower. Yes Fire Blast is more powerful but the general consensus in the gaming community is that due to its accuracy Flamethrower reliably deals more damage. However Fire Blast should be taken if the enemy has some very big special walls, such as Aggron! While it is super effective against it. Aggron also can use super effective moves against it.  This means Chandelure is a bit more versatile but also more tricky than say Gengar. Like most Chandelure is best if it can set up. It’s set up move of choice is Calm Mind. With it’s 145 base special attack it  can already pack a wallop but with just One Calm Mind already..it becomes a massive treat leaving you in control of the fight.

Chandelure is everything I want in a Pokémon. It is more versatile to use, it is a bit trickier to use due to how frail it is but it is also something that really can boost your team rather than just be a stand alone thing. It’s slightly more than just a cannon. Combine that with one of the best ghostly designs and its ability to literally leave it’s mark upon one’s soul and it is not hard to see why this one is my bright and shiny light on top of the Ghost Pokémon list.

So what is your favourite Ghost Type? Do you prefer any of the legendaries maybe? What is your favourite ghost pokédex entry?! Do you use the ghost types often? Let me know and let’s talk Pokémon! Next week..we shall cover our penultimate type! The Dragon-Type! Feel free to let me know your favourites on that one in advance! Now I still feel a bit under the weather so Pinkie is heading back to bed.. or next time she might actually be a ghost herself.

Pokémon Top 5 : My Favourite Grass Types

Hello Island Guests, we are nearing this series completion! Five more types and we covered every single Pokémon type and made lists of my favourites for all of them! Today we discuss the grass type! One of my favourite typings over all that oftenly blend with another favourite typing of mine! The poison type! This does mean I had a bit of difficulty with the the number 4 and 5 on my list.. but my top 3 is something that will never change!  I love almost all grass types though and except for my top 3 they are all incredibly close to another.. except for a few but I will never tell them cause it will make them cry!

Like always time for some honourable mentions! As per the rules I can not state more than one entry per evolutionary line and if I like a final form less and it makes me want to use it less  than it can go on this list. While nowhere near as strongly as some of the other types this is how I feel about Bayleef!  I LOVE Bayleef! I am however not a big fan of Meganium.  It’s a bit safe, it doesn’t get great moves , let alone good grass moves. Since Typhlosion and Feraligatr do get some great moves with the Same Type Attack Bonus.. Meganium is just really the lesser choice. It is really outdone by most other grass starters which is a shame. Bayleef has so much personality though and will always be one of my favourites.

A Pokémon also has to feel like a grass type. Grass types usually have this covered except for some legendaries like Kartana the Ultra Beast and  Tapu Bulu the Island Guardian. Paper and a Tiki Bull do not shout Grass Type to me…However I don’t like to use Legendaries in general..only the earlier ones . There is one other Pokémon that I dont really find a grass type and that is Whimsicott. I see the fairy part, and I guess I can see how you look at it as a tree spirit thing or something.. but I just see a pixie like creature. It usually doesn’t rely on grass moves all that much either! It’s hella cute and a great Pokémon.. I am just not sure I see it as a grass type!

Speaking of almost not using legendaries there is one I do really like, no It is not shiny Celebi.. I know it is pink.. but it is just a lesser variable and more fragile version of Mew..and Mew is pink base form.  No I am  talking about Shaymin… I do not mind it’s normal form but I find it a bit meh design wise. Shaymin Sky Forme however is amazing!  I LOVE that design and the extra typing it gets puts it as one of favourites. However it is just a side form of Shaymin so I did not feel it was right to put it here as I really find regular Shaymin to be quite lackluster.

Pokémon that appeared on earlier lists will not make the cut either! Which actually includes what would be by definite number four! This Pokémon is Breloom! I love Breloom soooo much!  In the pokémon scene it has become very popular to react to Jaiden Animations , My First Nuzlocke!  In it a Breloom dies and I felt the pain! A Breloom is such an amazing grass type pokémon that it would just feel terrible to lose it! This is why I do not Nuzlocke these games. I’d cry my eyes out! In am a sucker for mushroom Pokémon and even though none of them made the list.. because they are all below Breloom.. a swarm of mushrooms would show up if this was a top 10 and every Pokémon was allowed! Breloom! You rock!

In the past I made an argument of including the “sound” type in Pokémon.. and a lot of my top five Pokémon so far would have fitted in that typing. Ludicolo, Chatot, Exploud, Toxtricity and now Maractus. I have a thing for sound based Pokémon. I am not even sure what it is because Maractus isn’t that amazing when it comes to gameplay! I just completely adore it anyway!  On a Stream of a Pokétuber called Patterrz he had a Maractus named Jeb! Jeb was amazing!  My own Maractus I used in a fan game was pretty sweet as well!  It is just such a nicely designed cactus Pokémon. A dancing cactus that has pink little flowers on its head. It is just one of those pokémon that makes me go N’awwww every time I see it. I think in part it’s it’s bunny like design , a bunny was my first plushy so I have something for bunny ears. Bunny eared cactus is definitely a win here! In the anime it’s adorable as well.. and I would like to hug it so much! It would be a bad idea! But still it’s just one of those things. 

Maractus live out in the desert where they would fall prey to some of the arrid region birds if they had not had their secret weapon! The power of dance! With a little uptempo dance they become some weird sort of scarecrow. A Marcatus can only move rhythmic and if it does it produces a Maraca like sound which scares of Pokémon..I assume because it sounds like rattlesnakes.. but maybe Pokémon are scared blind of Samba de Amigo games as well! Who knows?! The scarecrow thing they do to protect their very nutritious seeds once a year they shed ove these seeds and scatter them all across the desert. These seeds are an important food source to animals and humans in these regions alike!  Birds want to eat them while they are still on the Marcatus though..and pecks are super effective.. so you can’t really blame these cactus pokémon for defending themselves can you.

Maractus is a Never Used tier Pokémon and it’s base stat total of 461 is quite low! It has a very decent special attack and a fair amount of health though so it’s best if you equip it with a Big Root, and teach it Leech Seed and Giga Drain. Big Root boosts your health gains and it’s ability Water Absorb let’s you freely switch it in against water types and provide some extra heals even. Acupressure will help you give it some boosts on the turns your opponent is free to swap out but you can go with Growth as well.. but Growth will make speed an issue. If your opponent runs a lot of physical moves Spiky Shield is a good shoutout.. or use Maractus to counter your opponents walls and teach it toxic!  Personally I prefer to use it as a Wall breaker! A careless opponent can really let you buff your Cactus up nice and easy!  If you do run Acupressure, which gives you a random stat buffed you could take poison jab instead of toxic as well in case you get lots of physical attack buffs!

The pinkest grass type I could find (except for maybe Shiny Celebi)  is definitely on my favourites list. While again it’s stats are a bit lackluster, it is just such an interesting Pokémon.  We all know the walking twig bug is a bug pretending to be a plant. So Creatures Inc, Game Freak and Nintendo came up with a plant pretending to be a bug! Amazing! It’s a Totem Pokémon as well so if you play Ultra Sun or Ultra Moon you can get a special version of this pokémon.. which was a huge selling point for me to use it. It’s amazing!  Sun and Moon really made their mons so much more memorable. The design looks very feminine and elegant but you can also tell it is a physical attack that will use it’s sickle talons to attack. Its pre-evolution is absolutely adorable and I just want to hug it till it heads pops.. but not literally I’d be super super upset. I like cool evolutions fine but I love the graceful evolutions just a bit better.  Primarina , Gardevoir, Milotic and Lurantis, it is nice to see some “grace” in the pokémon world. This is definitely a monster I have taken a shine to.

Lurantis is very themed in with solar light! Not only is grooming  this pokémon an effort that requires a lot of love and sunlight, this makes it quite popular among non Pokémon Trainers who want to have the Lurantis with the most vibrant colours. So it has a pretty nice life. It has little defences against bugs however so it just pretends to be a bug itself! In its habitat there are still a few  bugs so that is probably a good move. However if you look closely you can spot that the cloth over its arm is actually flower petals. These petals are harder than they look super thin and razor sharp. So they are often used as a sickle! However these petals can also actually shoot laser beams! Yes it is actually called a laser in the Pokédex! These beams are so powerful that they can blow holes in , what else but, thick steel plates. The steel plate industry in the Pokémon world must REALLY be thriving with how much of those get destroyed! Of course this pokémon is a Alola region creation so  it has a more twisted pokédex entry as well. When it is slashing and cutting into its opponents and great speed and grace people almost look like it is dancing. If you see a Lurantis cutting up it’s opponent you will think it’s the most Glamorous Pokémon you have ever seen.

There are many ways to build a Lurantis  for battle. It has Contrary as it’s hidden ability so a Leaf Storm using Lurantis is a good way to build for victory! Z Sunny day for some speed and bam!  But that is not what we are after! Today I want to give you a build that does that whole laserbeam from it’s petals thing! So we make a set that has the ability Leaf Guard (which prevents status changes in the sun)  Sunny Day, which sets up the sun!  Toxic, to prevent your opponent from setting up (As toxic damage stacks over time) Aerial Ace  to deal with bugs and (most) poison types and Solar Blade.. which is buffed up by Sunny Day.EV’s  go into Health to make it sure it can take a hit and Attack to make sure it deals Maximum Damage. Your laser plant is ready for use!

Vileplume is just another Pokémon I am just in love with! From it’s simple but appealing looks, to its cry. Every time i see a Vileplume I want to use one. When I saw  it in Pokémon Snap it was my favourite Pokémon to put on camera. Vileplume has been on plenty of my teams and will continue to be for the future. It is great and bulky so it allows you to scout new Pokémon a lot as a result  I really like to use it during first runs and as a lead. That means I always see what nickname I give it first and most.. and our bond really grows! I also still like the fact that Oddish it’s prevolution can punch and tackle better than an Onix. Vileplume has that level of clunk in it..it doesn’t seem to be able to run very fast and the way it’s hands are shaped make think with how it’s head is shaped it can get into a few awkward situations! So in essence I really like this pokémon because I think it could easily get it’s head stuck in a door!

Right away from the first generation we begin with a zinger of a Pokedex entry. It’s big head is heavy and hard to hold up! Oh my Arceus I love it so much for that!  Mamma will help you with your head Boo! It also seems to be the thing with the largest petals in the world… Don’t tell it about Galarian Venusaur! The larger the petals are the more poisonous these things are. As it waddles about it spreads those toxic spores around oftenly making the sky tint yellow . This poison causes ravaging allergic reactions that sometimes can even lead to paralysis. Once a Vileplume has paralysed its prey will will walk up to it and devour it. It seems to prefer jungles as its natural habitat and it can be dangerous enough that people are advised to stay away from any pretty jungle flower because it might be a vileplume and it might not end well for you.

In combat Vileplume is one of those, Jack of all trades master of none type pokémon. It’s Special Attack is it’s best stat and the rest is actually “fine”. So EV it’s special Attack to the maximum and split what’s left across it defences and equip it with Moonlight, a powerful healing move, Effect Spore as ability to help you with you defences, Sludge Bomb And Giga Drain for offensive moves and toxic to status non physical attackers. It will be a nice set that allows Vileplume to do it’’s thing and hold it’s head up high proudly when it comes out of it’s battles victorious! It is a set focussed on enduring and out-stalling your opponent. Vileplume can also work well on a sun team but still can be a bit sluggish!  Trick Room might be an option as well if you give it a slowing item to equip, but I’d say it is best equipped with something like Leftovers who heal a little between turns.

Rowlet is just SOOO adorable.  It is one of my favourite starters ever. I wrote a lot about Rowlet before just before I joined OWLS!  Rowlet’s line is based on an Owl that is a plague in Hawaii.. evolving into an Owl that is becoming scarce on Hawaii into an owl that has gone extinct in Hawaii. I love that it is a bit a story of human hubris. First we see something as unwanted , so we try to bring back balance but we do not know what we do.. and we end up with only memories. This pokémon is so well designed and has so much personality! When the starters were revealed everybody loved Rowlet right away and I mean everybody! The little owl with a tie on it’s neck won over so many hearts including mine. The anime where Rowlet sleeps in Ash backpack just made me love it so much more. I love my grass starters but rarely do they turn out so well as Rowlet. I do think Chespin and Snivy are the weakest grass starters, respectively and seeing Creatures Inc return strongly in the form of this was amazing.  For a good chunk of my first blogging year Rowlet has also stood for OWLS. The Otaku Warriors of Liberty and Self Respect.. and a message I very much support which makes this more than a Pokémon it is a symbol as well.

Rowlet nesting in Ash bag is something that is actually explained in it’s pokédex entries. Rowlet do like to nest in caves or dark and tight spaces. It is even known to nest in Trainer’s Pockets if they are big enough! Which of course is completely adorable! Pocket Owl! It doesn’t mind being in the light all that much as well as it does sleep during the day to photosynthesis and store energy to use at night. It is a very silent flyer and on dark nights it will go out hunting for prey! When it spots something it will toss it’s feathers at it which are sharp and arrow like.. as a little..hint and what is to come. Rowlet is quite hot tempered though. It it moves too close to its opponent it doesn’t retreat of fly up and try to throw it’s feathers again.. no It just moves in close and treats their opponents to some vicious kicks.
So even though Rowlet is only 30 centimeters (or 1 foot)  tall and it only weighs 1.5 kilograms apparently it’s kicks are formidable. For those who need to know 1.5 kilograms is like 3. a bit  in pounds. This one is definitely on the list of Pokémon I would want as a pet.

Rowlet is first form pokémon, so the moveset here is a Little Cup Set, which means only unevolved pokémon.. that at least evolve ones created at level 5.  EV’s  are used to max out attack, just a little bit into special defence to tie it up with its other defensive stat and the rest goes into speed. Rowlet is a physical attacker and like most little cup Pokémon it is quite weak which means you will want to bring some set up. Rowlet’s best set up move is Sword Dance. Fittingly enough it’s best grass move is Leaf Blade. Brave Bird will give it it’s flying Same type attack Bonus and Sucker Punch will give it some hard hitting priority move your opponent really has to work around! Depending on your opponents team you give it either a Life Orb to maximize damage ,if you plan to burn it out quickly and need it for a few specific takedowns like ground or fighting types. If you want to use it to chip at your opponent you better be off equipping if with some Berry Juice though to let it endure for longer. While this format may not have the prestige of an O.U. (OverUsed Tier)  fight bringing Rowlet to a little cup fight certainly can be a hoot.

Was there ever any doubt in my mind that this would be my favourite grass type? Hell no! Not only is Bulbasaur my favourite Grass type, it may very well be my penultimate favourite pokémon just behind Sylveon. This was the first pokémon I ever adventured with and with very few exceptions, whenever I can pick Bulbasaur. I think I used about 18 different Bulbasaur in games. Not counting Delta Bulbasaur in Pokémon Insurgence and Browniesaur in Pokemon Sweet Version. This is more than a Pokémon to me.. even more so than Sylveon. Bulbasaur is the single most important pokémon in my life without a shadow of a doubt. That first journey I went on with Bulbasaur the Bulbasaur changed my life. I would not be writing this today without that little guy.  Bulbasaur was something I nurtured, it started my trent for rooting for the underdog! We had Pokémon Red which meant Charmander.. and we had Pokémon Blue which meant Squirtle and while I indeed actually picked Squirtle first..empty batteries soon fixed that.. as if I got a signal from above that the little leapfrog with the bulb on it’s back should have been my partner. Now well over 20 years later.. I still partner up with Bulbasaur whenever I can.. it made me fall in love with Pokémon and taste the geek community!  It is just a super big part of me! It is part of my soul!

Pokédex entry wise Bulbasaur isn’t all that facinating though… but there is an interesting factoid all the same. The moment a Bulbasaur is born a seed is planted on it which grows out to be it’s bulb. This means that a Baby Bulbasaur technically is born without it’s bulb.. just as soon as it is born it gets its own bulb. After that moment the bulb rapidly grows every day. Bulbasaurs like to sunbathe and nap in the sun a lot as this allows them to store nutrients in said bulb. If the bulb is filled with nutrients Bulbasaur can survive on whatever nutrients it stored for days. Not having to eat a single Morsel. That is about all there is to tell about Bulbasaur’s Pokédex entry. Yet there is a question I can not shake. Who plants the seed on Bulbasaur.. is it it’s parents? What if you get a bulbasaur egg from the daycare.. do you get a seed to plant on it from the old folks taking care of the daycare?  Does the egg itself maybe plant the seed?  Is there like a sandman of bulbs?  What does a bulbasaur say when it comes out of the egg bulbless! Is it just called Saur or Asaur until it’s seed grows?! I do not know! One of my favourite pokémon in the world and I do not have an answer!

In Little Cup Bulbasaur is an amazing Pokémon as well, but I don’t think Sword and Shield have the little Cup format at all. So we are going for a Sun and Moon build here! Which means taking advantage of Z-moves and in this case Z-Celebrate. Z-moves are a form of super moves and while Celebrate is a worthless move that just gives your opponent a present Z-Celebrate will be a big and useful stat Buff!  Sludge Bomb, Giga Drain and Sleep Powder will decimate your opponents team in the later phases of the fight. If you burn out there counters against the little thing early game you are sure to sweep your way to victory using this amazing Bulbasaur build. It looks festive too!  If your opponent runs a lot of grass types, or steel types take hidden power Fire instead of sleep powder to get around those. Z-Celebrate and Little Cup will make sure that Hidden Power still has enough oomph to realling bring the pain! Who says you need to evolve to be strong!

Bulbasaur and I go way back..it is one of those pokémon I’d say I have a genuine bond with! It  opened up a new path in my life! It went with me to the  first geek gathering I ever had.. even if it did not play. I have a Bulbasaur plushie watching over me at night, I have a hard time not picking Bulbasaur whenever I can.. I genuinely feel bad.. as if we belong together. That First Bulbasaur may be gone.in terms of data, it got reset over.. and I played the other two starters as well. I also made a new game and came back to Bulbasaur. A new one! Bulbasaur accompanied me in Pokémon Leaf Green, it was on my team in Let’s Go Eevee. Bulbasaur was there for me in Pokémon Reborn, Bulbasaur was there for me in Pokémon Mega Adventures. I played variations of it, I ran a grass TCG deck just so I could play a Bulbasaur and if someone asks me what is the best starter I can without a shadow of a doubt say it’s name. My sweet Bulbasaur you will always be my number 1.

What is your favourite Grass-Type? Which of the starting types you like best? What was your first ever pokémon? Do you have any loyalty toward it?! Let me know in the comments! Next time will be the last time I can add to the chain of typings that are super effective against the previous list. Next time we discuss my five favourite Poison types! Now it’s time for me to be all plantlike and play in the sun for a bit!

If you like my content please consider supporting me on Kofi!
Only with disposable income though!

Pokémon Top 5: Favourite Water Pokémon

After the really off-beat fire type favourites of last time it is time for a much more conventional list of pokemon this week! The water type is without a single doubt THE type all pokémon trainers , until recently always ran on their gameplay theme. Let’s see if my list holds water and can make a splash! These are my top 5 favourite water types.

Like every list so far, I follow four main rules. Only one entry per evolution line, and if the later stages are really disliked by me, while the first form adds little on it’s own it will not make the list. Such is the case with Sobble. I really love this little crybaby up to a point where it might be my favourite designed water starter. However it’s monotype evolution line with a creepily slender final evolution didn’t do anything for me. I have a problem with human-like starters, it takes away from their pet quality a starter should have. Water evolutions don’t often work for me as Oshawott, Mudkip Piplup and Totodile all are dear to me but I do not care for their final evolutions.

The second rule is a Pokemon has to feel like a water type to me, since like 90% off all water types are either blue or a fish they most of the time have this covered but one that really doesn’t feel like a water type to me is Golisopod. While it has powerful water moves , Surf and other powerful water moves have been available to the weirdest pokemon! Like Pikachu, Rhydon and Nidoking amongst others. So Golisopod having a water move doesn’t make it a water type and a fast bug monster that can switch itself out when taking damage, that liked priority moves doesn’t feel water to me in any way! The Legendary pokemon of space, Palkia is yet another one that missed the mark.

Finally I am not allowed to use temporary forms.  Some Pokemon gain a type or switch types like Meloetta for example. Yet in the case of water types there is a Mega Evolution I adore while not caring a lot for the base Pokemon. That Pokemon is Mega Slowbro.  While this pink creature is great at defence I think its look is a bit generic nowadays. It did not age that well for me. Galarian Slowbro  fixes this for me, but Mega Slowbro did it so much better. I love the commercial design and this take on mega evolution, evolving the former shellder on its tail to make it almost consume it whole. A great wall in its mega form and adorably awkward!

The fourth rule, a Pokémon can only be entered once! Cloyster  and Walrein are examples of earlier water type entries. Ducklett is excluded from this list for a similar reason. It already was on my top 5 favourite Pink Shines list. I mentioned it in a few posts in and outside of Pokémon so I do not think I have much more interesting stuffs to add to it hence it is not on my list either. I want to show as much love to as many Pokémon as possible! So if your favourite one did not make the list check out if was on an older list!  Gyarados and Lapras just fell short. Usually when I get Lapras I already have a water pokémon and Gyarados I think is fundamentally flawed with it’s water flying typing, making it more pointless to level up a Magikarp just to see it one shotted by a simple spark.Same goes for Ducklett.. but that is a baby Duck! I can accept that! Plus it has a pink Shiny!

When we got introduced to Feebas in Hoenn I firstly thought..beh just another Magikarp! Yet  there was so much more to this Pokémon than meets the eye! Quite literally! In these games to Evolve A Feebas into A Milotic it needed to be deemed beautiful! By having it participate and win Beauty Contests!  Feebas is quite an ugly fish but by showing it’s inner beauty this pokémon could unleash that beauty and transform into one of the most beautiful water pokémon designed. One that feels like a water pokémon but also one that reads that theme and it’s story very well. Pokémon Twilight Wings released a beautiful story about a Milotic as well and you can check that out by visiting the Pokémon Official Youtube Channel right here. It is a Pokémon that is all about obtaining beauty by being yourself and that is a message I’ll always support. It may be a bit fairytale like but just as every frog might be a prince to some.. every big lipped Bass with a triangle on its head can be a magnificent sea serpent!  It was one of the most interesting evolutions, and its a shame that over time it became easier to evolve taking away that theme a bit..which is why it isn’t higher on this list.

It is known as the most beautiful pokémon in the pokedex lore! They have scales that reflect the light differently depending on what angle you look at it , giving it a rainbow like glance over it’s entire body as all it’s scales are also in different angels! This has led the pokémon to become a muse for artists all across the pokémon world. Which again is reflected in the Pokémon Twilight episode, where both a model and the photographers use it to improve their career and create shots of true beauty. Yet Milotic is more than just about beauty. It’s beauty is said to be so vast that it will mesmerise anyone who looks at it. This effect causes people to lose any negativity in their heart, with hate and their will to fight being specifically highlighted. So not only is this a radiant pokemon it is also an envoy and a symbol of peace. If there is one supermodel in the world that CAN achieve world peace and happiness for everyone it is Milotic!

In combat Milotic works best as a wall.. it can tank a lot of damage due to it’s excellent defensive stats. It’s special defences are amazing and it’s physical defences are decent enough to take a hit or two as well. Having access to the move recover, which is considered a staple for Milotic will make it even better. Scald is the move that is placed on it for chip-damage and burns to make physical attacks weaker. Usually you equip the pokémon with leftovers for even more recovery and longer tanking. The other two moves are flexible and dependent on your team. Ice Beam is a favourite as it helps deal with pesky Ground and Dragon Types and usually Toxic is slapped onto it to give dots. Depending on your opponents team though Toxic might be swapped out with Haze..with resets set up moves like Swords Dance or Calm Minds and if you run the toxic stalling set , you might want to replace ice beam with Refresh for even more recovery and longevity. Whatever you build.. you can make it work with Milotic! It has a more supportive function in your team rather than a flat out offensive so adapts it move-set to your team’s strengths! But keep Scald and Recover!

Hoenn had some really good water Pokémon, which makes sense because of how much of the Region is covered in water. One of my favourite water types is the gigantic whale Pokemon Wailord. Why.. because it is so comically big and so ridiculously light for its size.. yet still heavy enough.. to be something incredibly memorable! Of course it famously breeds with Skitty ..the little cat pokémon too so there is already a lot of fun to be had with this pokemon. Skitty is 60 centimeters tall while Wailord is 14,5 meters tall. Respectively about 2 feet compared to 48 feet. Yet they can still make eggs together!  Wailord with it’s 398 kilograms of  877 pounds of weight has a Body Mass Index of 1.9.. compared to that of a human at 18 to 25 that isn’t very high! That being said, Skitty is not the only weird paring this whale of a pokémon can get it on with! Diglett is also a great partner. Wailord is just this really unique  water type who just for its size has taken a place in people’s hearts but he is still a pretty solid Pokémon as well!  Especially during Gameplay or the friendlier competitive scene this is a beast! Also it’s a symbol of friendship between me and this girl so I have lots of positive associations with it!

Pokedex wise there is mostly more stories about how big Wailord is and how much it can eat.  It can eat entire schools of Wishiwashi (which is a very tiny fish Pokémon) and if there is a pod (a group of whales)  Wailords near fishing beaches they decimated the pokéfish population so much that fisherman have to scare them off in order to keep their livelihood. The lungs of a Wailord are so big that it can dive 10.000 feet or +/- 3 kilometers deep and still have enough breath to come up for a new gasp of air no problem! It does this by breathing through its nostrils that it sticks above the water in it’s time of need. Wailords hunt in packs and heard their prey by leaping out of the water completely, which causes such big splashes that it can drive their prey in one direction or even flat out knock them out by the massive shockwave of a wailord hitting the water again. While it is the pokémon that is known as the largest one.. some smaller Wailords do exist. If it is targeted by Pokémon like Sharpedo or Dhelmise..all the Wailord in it’s pod flock together to deal with the treat to their smaller pack member. That smaller one probably is the child of a Diglett!

In the competitive Meta Wailord mostly uses its ability pressure and it’s fabulous healing to PP stall their opponents and making them unable to use moves!  While that is a good set to build it isn’t particularly my style. I prefer the “Moby Dick” set. Which uses moves like Curse, Waterfall , Rest and Avalanche to up it’s defences and rest up while becoming near immortal. Than just chipping away damage at the enemy. This works best with a Chesto Berry to make it snap awake early so you can do it all again! This set let’s your enemy despair. Since it’s health is insanely high , 170 base total using the move Water Spout  which deals damage based on how much health you have remaining is a good shout out as well. This usually means equipping it with a Choice Scarf for speed.. but I prefer to run this set on a sticky web team so I can boost the damage through the use of Choice Specs and see it kill everything! Fun and an excellent use of Wailords flavour! Both movesets also shout “big and clunky”  so you know it has my love!

Lotad , the basic form of Ludicolo was the first pokémon I ever caught in Hoenn after starting with Torchic .. I did a Mudkip run as well but since I never knew what kind of animal Mudkip was I felt closer to the fire chicken.. which was blatantly wrong.. but hey without that mistake I would not have loved Lotad as much or Ludicolo if i had started ..properly.. with Mudkip. A Water and Grass type pokémon combined was an excellent idea, and to base it around a lillypad.. that .. kind of becomes like a dancing Pineapple with a duck bill is amazing.  Because all ducks are amazing! Ludicolo even became more special to me when I played trough Colosseum and Gale of Darkness XD.  I actually started with Gale of Darkness XD for some reason and encountered a man named Mirror B! Who used mostly Ludicolo and dancing based themes. When I faced him in Colosseum  though he had this amazing conga-line like music theme. It became Ludicolo’s theme for me as it fits it so well! A pocket monster with it’s own music theme is amazing! 

Ludicolo is just the epitome of cheerfulness which is reflected by it’s lore.. which mostly a single entry across almost all generations. It loves to dance! It loves to dance so much that whenever it hears music it’s muscles become so charged with energy that it can not help not to dance. It grows stronger through dancing as well as it actually gives it energy rather than take it away. Any little happy beat will trigger this as well.  It is said to love dancing so much that it can be summoned by children, who hum just for fun! It will join them and dance on their merry melodies! Which I take as a lesson to never completely grow up! When we are adult we don’t hum a lot anymore! At least not like we did as a kid! We might mimic what Kanye song is hip .. or do whatever song is now a meme.. but we don’t really do our own melodies anymore! Like we used to. Ludicolo is a Pokémon that is a very odd duck that dances to the beat of it’s own drum.. and whatever drum people choose to walk to. So it teaches us a lesson to just do it! Go Ludicolo!

As a moveset, Ludicolo is very versatile again.. it functions best when it is in the rain as it activates it’s abilities Swift Swim, which speeds it up in the rain. Or Rain Dish which lets it heal in the rain.  The Rain Dish set is more often used in competitive using leech seed, giga drain and moves like that to keep sapping and gaining health.. a near immortal pineapple duck lily pad that never stops dancing. The Swift Swim set is usually quite aggressive with powerful water moves such as Hydro Pump, Giga-Drain again and two other offensive moves.  I personally like the aggressive Ludicolo a lot,  and if you make it set up the rain it is a great teammate on any rain team. With Dynamax setting up the rain is easier than ever so this pokémon is great!  The healing one is definitely more versatile though and helps you much better if you  your opponent lacks a bug type or another good counter for Ludicolo. It stats are lackluster compared to most of the other pokémon here, as it only has a 480 base stat total which is in the lower end of a fully level monster but given how easy it can boost itself this pokémon is still a keeper! 

Blastoise and I have a kind of weird relation. While it is not my starter of choice and nowadays I rarely pick it up anywhere, I still love it dearly… I just love another starter more. As a kid me and my sister used to play with Legos and at one time there were these Pokémon Gashapons which you can get.. we combined with lego’s to play Pokemon. The pokemon toys were about the right size so me and my sister would spend an entire day to build our pokémon same including a battlefield and a gym puzzle. My sister got Pikachu and Charmander, I got Blastoise and Gengar.  Our Gym leaders would visit each others gym, solve the puzzle and battle the gym leader.. which my sister always won..because if not she would break my gym!  But it was fun! We played our Pokémon talking to each other after the fight was done and Blastoise was my hungry lovable oaf. Gengar was an edgelord and he never got a lot of love! One time I won a gym battle and my sister got angry and tossed Gengar away and I did not find it again for a very long time.  So Blastoise was all I had. I grew super close to that toy so it will always have a warm place in my heart.

I played plastic Blastoise as someone who was always taking of it’s next apple as we had an apple toy as well!  Which neatly blended in with lore that was added during Pokémon Gold and Silver. A Blastoise likes to eat and keep being fat. It does this so that it is not jetisonned when it fires it’s own cannons. For these water cannons are powerful enough to punch a hole into thick steel plates. It can use it’s cannon to create water bullets that are so precise it can hit a tin can 160 feet or 53 meters away. It can use the pressure of it’s cannons to launch itself into a highspeed tackle and it likes to  crush it’s opponents with it’s heavy body until they faint. So that is already a lot of fire power! However if Blastoise Mega-Evolves the additional cannon it grows is about equal in strength to that of a tank!  Still very accurate. If it Dynamaxes however it loses all sense of accuracy for some reason so instead it just fires it’s 31 cannons over and over again, with the central cannon being powerful enough to blast holes into mountains.. once more proving that Pokémon hate steel vehicles like Dump Trucks and tanks but hate mountains even more…. I think it’s all the Zubat!

Our cannon turtle is a bit difficult to build because it really depends in what generation you build your set. Blastoise is often used as a Rapid Spinner, which means he should know the move Rapid Spin, which removes hazards your opponents sets! In  Generation VIII this move has become so much better due to the increased base power and speed boosting effect of this move.  Next you’ll want Scald in the pokémon to inflict burns and render physical move users pretty worthless! Dragon Tail gives you momentum control by forcing your opponent to swap out and Ice Beam is nice weakness coverage, which you can take advantage off because of the speed boosts.  This also works nice with Dynamaxing as it gives you access to four offensive Dynamax moves, even losing the low priority of Dragon Tail once you upgrade it to Max Wyrmwind. If you play a generation where you can Mega Evolve Blastoise you want to go hyper offensive with moves like Hydro Cannon and Dark Pulse.. as well as ice beam again.

Both my number 2 and number one pick aren’t even the characters I prefer to choose but these Water Pokémon are amazing.  Initially I was on Team Popplio when Sun and Moon where announced but I fell for the charm of Rowlett. It felt more consistent. However where I really love Rowlett so much it is in my top 5 of next week.. I did not particularly care for it’s evolutions. Primarina though… is amazing.  A water Fairy Type.. based on an seel who opera sings who gets her own sound based water move?! Sign me up for this this! I love the fairy type and Primarina is no exception!  I spend 5 hours mystery trading so I could add a Popplio on my team next to my Rowlett just so I could have a Primarina.  So it came to be that I became the first champion of Alola with all three starters in my squad! Heck I even wrote a little story about Popplio which is a testament on how much I like this evolution line! It still can not hold a candle to Rowlet on it’s own but throughout the entire evolution line this one is my clear winner.  In fact I dare say this is my final fully evolved starter ever.

Having not been around for long in the pokémon world it’s pokedex lore is a bit lackluster but this Primadonna requires a lot of it’s trainer.  As allegedly Primarina uses its singing voice as it’s main weapon, it is up to the trainer to maintain his poke-partners throat at all costs. So I bet Primarina stays perfectly hydrated and gets to eat lots of yummy ice cream to cool it’s throat. With song a primarina controls water balloons filled with sonic waves which form the basis for its attacks. These songs are passed down down for generations , thus a Melody should be able to tell you if Primarina are family of another or maybe if  they have been captured to early. Primarina is the Idol Girl, the Hatsune Miku, if the pokemon world as well. They don’t really care about battle, they battle simply so they can set foot on the “stage’ to display their songs. On moonlit nights it goes out in the see and looks quite mystical as it searches for other Primarina as they burst into song together!  That seems like a very on brand water pokémon for me!

Primarina is another one of those pokémon that is is a bit version specific. The Alola starter for example works best with Sparkling Aria, it’s signature water move that does that exact water Balloon thing we mentioned earlier, Moonblast which is the most powerful Fairy Type Move, Ice Beam  for weakness coverage against grass  and Psychic for weakness coverage against Poison. Equipped with a Primarinium Z to give it access to it’s signature and very powerful and good looking Z-Move, Oceanic Operetta. In Sword and Shield Surf is the better option over Sparkling Aria because it’s equally as reliable and powerful but functions better in Double Battles as well. It has one of the highest special attacks of all the pokémon on this list so it works best as a physical sweeper. Good items to equip it if you aren’t going for the Z-moves are items like a Life Orb or Choice Specs.  The latter may prove to be tricky though as Primarina is rather slow. Choice Scarf can make it faster but not enough so stay away from that. If your opponent doesn’t have many counters for Primarina you may want to consider putting an Assault vest on the pokémon.. which increases her defensive stats in trait for her not being able to use non offensive moves. 

Water Pokémon are a bit of a weird brand for me, I always feel a bit forced to use them so they do not always impress me as much, plenty are a hassle to evolve  or require you to commit hard to a single direction. Primarina is an amazing easy to start , easy to learn Pokémon that can offer joy to everyone! Her moves all by herself is pretty amazing so no need to hunt for moves to make her decent!  The design is resonates really well with me and it’s one of the most unique fully evolved starters out there that even can get rookies pretty far in their journey! This pokémon really sings to me! The winner! Primarina.

So who is your Favourite Water Pokémon? I do expect a lot of Lapras and Gyarados answers here but I have been wrong before! What is your favourite starting type? Next week we will cover the last of the starting types with the grass type! Let me know your thoughts in the comments and see you next time!

Psy-ai-ai-ai! I have been forgotten!


Pokemon Top 5: Favourite Fire Types

This is it! The list that would kill my blog if it had still been just about Pokémon! After reading this list not a single pokémon fan will take me seriously anymore.. after reading this list the man with the long sleeved coats and the soft walls will come collect me! All because the fire type beats the steel type! No Charizard will not be on my list! I find him overrated and overused! It’s like you talk about Pokémon and there he is well not this time Charizard this post will not mention you……D’oowww friggin crabcakes!

With this post we will be two-thirds into every pokémon typing so the rules should be clear by now. Only one entry per evolutionary line and I am free to pick my favorite but if I dislike the final evolution a pokemon might miss a nomination..because of all the steep competition Raboot and Scorbunny come to mind, but not because I dislike Cinderace, in fact I don’t mind him at all. I just REALLY dislike how little rhyme and reason there is to their evolution line. From a though kid with  a patch on his nose, into a ninja like, into a soccer player.  Now I know the ninja like look may be a soccer player warming up .. but I see a ninja and an edgy kid. So I can’t help but feel like “this doesn’t evolve into THAT when I see it. I would have loved to see Raboot somewhere else.. in the game..not as starter but like a thing of its own.. it doesn’t seem to fit Galar in the way I interpret it but I love the design I really want to see it in a more fitting line.

Secondly a pokémon has to fit a certain flavour for me to fit the typing. The fire type mostly has that covered for me. A weird one I do not really find a fire type is the pokémon Ironically named Talonflame…yet even with fire in the name and bright orange feathers I am not sold that it is a fire type. To me it’s a speedy hawk. With its ability Gale Wings I usually run it with Brave Bird anyway and run it more as a pure flying type.  The reason  I think this is is because it gets a primary typing change. It starts as Fletchinder who is a normal flying type like most birds. Yet when it evolves it’s primary typing gets changed. That doesn’t happen a whole lot and since the time I did actually pick it up I ran with a Fennekin I gave it a normal and flying moveset and that feeling stuck for me! I recognise it’s a Fire type.. but I rarely use it as such so to me it’s like all the other birds.

Nothing with a temporary form either, while I vastly prefer Primal Groudon over regular Groudon, a primal reversion is not a form you constantly have on your team You can choose not to give it the red ob and then Groudon will stay a ground type! I think this Pokémon should always have had the fire typing because of that it represents so I was really glad when Omega Ruby gave me what I had been asking for all those years! However, it only happens when you send it into battle so no this pokémon unfortunately will not be making my list.. unlike.. a pokémon I am sure will get me discredited as a pokémon fan. 

That’s right the most hated pokémon of all times, is in my top five favourites and no that is not a stunt for attention I really and genuinely like this pokémon. I like it so much that one of the first posts I made on my website was a promotion of this adorable simian.  No one shared love for it so now it is back with a vengeance! I honestly feel that everything deserves love so when I saw Simisear get so much hate I just could feel it weeping that nobody cared for it.. I heard it cry so I picked it up and realised..this isn’t so bad at all. In fact this a solid mixed attack, sure it isn’t all that special but I had a lot of fun with it. On Pokémon Showdown while doing random battles this pokémon also came up a lot for me and every  time I was happy.  I am like the patron of unloved pokémon .. I try them out and try to find the best in them and often I do and I had a blast with my sweet monkey! Who’s a good boy! Mamma Pinkie loves you even if no one in the world doesn’t!

Lorewise this pokémon isn’t particularly interesting but it has enough endearing info for me to fall in love with it more. This pokémon survives by keeping a flame within itself alive, for this it needs a lot of energy which it prefers to gets out of candy and other sweets. It reminds me so much of my OC Luma who is a near godlike creature who also needs lots of energy so she is a candy fanatic herself. Since it’s like a counter to your opponents starter and a static pokémon the pokemon fan titled “trash monkeys’  have a 87.5% chance to be male! Biologically speaking at least! I do not assume gender of course! Simisear evolves from Pansear once you expose it to a fire stone and it gains the ability to shake embers from it’s head and it sprays out fire from his tail once he is excited. The more excited this pokémon becomes the hotter it gets. So a happy little monkey is a hot little monkey!

Simisear has fairly low stats with his attack and special attack only being 98  aside from speed being at 101 the rest is all lower resulting in a fairly lackluster base stat total of 498. However Simisear gets a pretty decent moveset that can really surprise his opponents. Obviously you will want to run flamethrower or at least a powerful fire type move for same type attack bonus moves! Since it’s stats are fairly low you will want to run Nasty Plot to boosts it’s special attack!  Put on the move Focus Blast which provides Weakness covery against rock but also is a very powerful way to get around earth types and even most dragon types or anything resisting fire. Grass Knot is a great final move since all of his weaknesses usually are heavy and slow pokémon. Grass Knot deals damage based on the pokémons weight and it covers all three of it’s weaknesses so that is absolutely a great move to put on this  guy that kinda looks like Giorno Giovanna! So the best part is you can play Giorno’s theme when kicking ass with a pokémon people really can not stand! That is a win in my book!

The guy gal or otherwise who came up with the idea to make an Alolan Marowak based on a Hawaiian fire dancer should be given an award of some kind because oh my! While Cubone’s lore has always been super special Marowak always just was that  mother that just kinda got killed. I like it fine but the way it Alola treated it was amazing. One of my if not my favorite regional forms and and for those keeping track.. I really like alolan forms! It might not even be the last one we see in this format!  The hawaiian fire dancers that pay tribute to the dead alone would be enough to make it pretty special.. but they also had to give it the ghost time? Remember Marowak?! Well it’s still dead! Yet they did more with it.. you see.. this Marowak is not that pokémon that got killed.. it is actually that Cubone but it evolved.  There are  actual layers to this pokémon. And when it literally evolves an okay but sorta bland design into an almost identical looking one but better in every way with just some subtle tweaks and recolourations you know you are doing something right! , I can gush about how right this pokémon feels like me for ages and I think that is on it’s own a very powerful achievement.  For once I am not particularly  called back to my pokémon but how it fits in the entire pokémon world! Mad Props!

There is no Alolan Cubone, instead this Cubone is something that takes a different path. It’s mother was a regular , or an Alolan Marowak that got killed and Cubone this time took her bones instead of just her skull. However these bones were filled with regrets  of it’s mother of being unable to keep her child safe. Mother and child now sort of fuse into a spirit of vengeance where the former cubone functions as the body while it can manipulate the spirit of it’s mother into being flames that burn it’s targets.  With a burn that does not go away by applying water! Due to its nature and their familiarity with loss Alolan Marowak make graves for their fallen companions and honour their fallen by dancing for them, the graves consist out of little mounds of dirt. As a result of its loss it has a rivalry with the pokémon Mandibuzz, which is apparently responsible for it’s mother. Both Pokémon can be found in rocky mountainous areas, which is Marowaks habitat because it has trouble living in green environments on account of it’s fire abilities.  This calls back to the fact that cubone is the lonely Pokémon! This pokémon lives with its allies in relative isolation not to set the region ablaze. It’s lore keeps very much in mind where the pokémon came from as well as the region and I love it for it.

Alolan Marowak is much like his Kantonian counterpart a physically defensive pokémon.. as they share stats amongst each other it means their defence is the highest stat at 110 and both their offensive stats cap of at a mediocre 80. With a speed of 45  this thing is quite slow despite of its nimble dancing so it is not something you want to send in and take a hit from something it is weak against. I personally run the set with Willow Wisp.. a 100% burn guarantee move that halves your opponents physical attacks damage! Allowing it to maximise its own defences. Depending on your team set up this can be replaced by stealth rocks for entry hazards or sword dance for additional damage .. (if you have another way to burn them that would be great) you run it with its signature move Shadow Bone, which offers great same type attack bonus and as a ghost type move has some good coverage and the move Flare Blitz. THis move could be swapped out for Fire punch if you decide you rather have lighting immunity on your team with it’s lightning rod ability rather than Rockhead which prevents recoil damage. In my opinion Rock Head/Flare Blitz  is superior combination in general especially in regular gameplay moments as electric moves types usually do not want to swap into this pokémon because it knows Bone Club and Earthquake which should be your last move anyway. 

I always favoured Magmar over Charizard, because Charizard to be honest is my least favorite starter  of Gen I , I just like the other two better, since Growlithe never appeared in Pokémon Blue that meant my options were either Ponyta or Magmar when it came to a fire type. I could trade with my sister but she usually really liked Charizard and never ended up really catching fire types. At school I was a bit of a bullied kid so Growlithe was something I missed out on for quite a while. Not until a Pokémon event I visited would I get that one. So while I love Growlithe and Arcanine.. I never had the same bond with it as I had with Magmar.. my fire duck!  For those who are a bit familiar with me they know I love ducks!  Of course it doesn’t hurt that it has a pinkish shiny!  When my Lava duck got a trade tiem that evolved it into a super duck! I could not be happier! Magmar already had the previous two entries defeated in the stat department and now it got even better! A super artillery like fire duck that had some cool pairing with Electabuzz evolution as well! Sign me up!

Lorewise Magmortar is the most boring pokémon on this list. It has basically one relevant pokédex entry and it states that it can shoot fireballs that are about 3600 degrees fahrenheit which are 2000 degrees in the real temperature of Celsius (1982 to be exact) and for those who say.. Go Fahrenheit.. I say Celsius scales to Kelvin.. it just has a different zero point.. and Kelvin is the absolute temp measurement.. so if you really want to nag ..sure then  Magmortar fires fireballs of 2255.15 degrees Kelvin which is the absolute best temperature measurement, there we go. But yeah other than those fireballs it doesn’t do a whole lot.. it body becomes a bit whiteish when it does that according to most Pokedex entries and it’s breath is boiling hot and can sizzle.. which is not strange if you consider that Magmar , it’s pre-evolution’s body temperature is already 1477.594 degrees Kelvin, which is 273.15 degrees more than it’s temperature in Celsius and it’s 2200 degrees of that weird one.|Obviously Sun and Moon had to make this pokedex lore a bit darker because that is what they did.! Apparently if Magmortar fires these balls in rapid succession it’s body becomes so hot that it begins to melt. Whatever it hits turns into a blackened shrunken , charred nothingness… so it prefers to kill its prey in other methods because there isn’t enough left to eat otherwise. Thanks Sun and Moon!

In combat Magmortar has many options , but let’s build a set that really capitalised on his amazing 125 special attack!  I think one of the best ways to use it to its maximum potential is to make it a Sunny Day user. This is a move that boosts up the power of fire moves and one should consider Heat Wave, Fire Blast or Flamethrower  with Heat Wave being your best option in my opinion but Fire Blast coming with a Higher Power but lower PP and Flamethrower coming with a better chance to burn etc.  Solar Beam should also be equipped. After Sunny Day it is a one turn move with 120 base power that hits all of Magmortars Weaknesses super effectively, with a base speed of 84.. I suggest putting some EV’s in speed and it will on average be the faster between those water rock or ground types. Psychic would be a great move for some further coverage against some Meta-dominating types and in Showdown where it can Dynamax psychic terrain grants some additional benefits. Spec it out like a semi-fast special sweeper and you will definitely bring some pain.

Darmanitan is easily one of the most unique fire types out there, based on A Daruma doll with some ape like features and an ability to turn into a statue that gains the psychic type as well as massive defensive an special attacking capabilities make it a super versatile monster. However it’s alternate ability makes it a powerhouse that can one shot so many things. There is just something to this pokémon that is incredibly appealing to me. It has this charisma. Whenever I see that Pokémon I go like! Yes that is a Pokémon I wanna use! It looks awesome. Even when a Daruma Doll pokémon is a weird thing to insert in a region based on America. In fact that is what made it even more appealing. Darmanitan and Darumaka stood out from Black and White to me.. and Darmanitan is probably my favorite Gen V Pokémon, though I really like Scrafty as well.. oh and Krookodile! It just feels so unique to me, those bushy eyebrows, those eyes, that sharp grin it is absolutely amazing. Visually except for Ho-Oh who already made a prior list maybe the most appealing fire type for me! So there is already a lot of love there! Yet i can’t even fully tell why.

Pokédex wise it’s more temperate stuff, but I can’t be bothered doing all the calculations again so let me just say it’s colder than Magmortars self melting fireballs and hotter than Magmar. While in it’s Apish  form it is said to have a power level.. equal to its temperature with a maximum 2500. While Power Level is never used in Pokémon.. 2500  equals abouts Two Raditz and a normal form Master Roshi. I know those sound weak but I bet they could punch the crap out of a shit ton of wildlife! While it’s unsure if this power level is anything remotely close to the one we see in Dragon Ball Z is unknown BUT it is given context in the pokedex.. as Darmantian can obliterate a Dump Truck with one single punch, which makes me thing the Two Raditz is fair comparison. Also I know PETA tried to make us feel bad for the Pokémon in this world but no one ever stood still at the dump trucks! I noticed how many dump trucks get destroyed by pokémon, is that why we never really see a lot of cars in the anime or in the games! Regardless all in all Mew chose a pretty shitty hiding place  back in Vermilion city! Perhaps it really wanted to get found and since it is the biological ancestor of all pokémon it made sure so many pokemon could find it and play with it? Hmmmm theories!

In combat Darmanitan can be a beast. While many people prefer to run the mixed Zen Mode set, the one where Darmanitan turns into a statue (which is other pokedex lore but they just say it turns hard and sharpens it’s mind so meh)  I prefer the Sheer Force version. Which boosts power of attacks by 30% but negates any secondary effect like a burn chance etc. Flare Blitz, Earthquake, Rock Slide and Hammer Arm  as moves give it a coverage against virtually everything, a life orb will make sure it hits so hard it just destroys everything in its path. It doesn’t take a lot of hits.. but to be honest that would not be fair.  With Dynamax being a thing letting this one grow and  use a few Max fighting moves to increase it’s already huge 140 base so now it arguably is even better, with the Dynamax Fire move putting up the sun to power your Flare Blitzes as well this can really be a sheer force to be reckoned with.

Cyndaquil is my favorite fire starter ever, without a shadow of about, I like torchic as well but Blaziken I found a bit.. undefinable or something I do not know! Cyndaquil is my favorite starter from my favorite Gen from my possibly favorite Region. Of  course it’s also the only one who is weak to Whitney’s Miltank so I cursed the living daylights of it as well  Though that was mostly the Miltank! Gold is the game I replayed the most times..except for Kanto based Rom Hacks maybe.. and while I ran Totodile twice and Chikorita once.. Cyndaquil I have chosen for a grand total of at least 5 times.  A feat only surpassed by a single starter and it’s not a fire type. I head a lot of Cyndaquils, bearing a lot of names and all of them I loved very much! The nick nameless one (I think it was the first but not fully sure)  was one I particularly held dear because it was the first pokémon I ever taught the move Return, which deals damage based on affection and through the power of our friendship we are a very strong pairing. I shall never  forget the good times I had with this mon and what it did for me!
Thank you for making my childhood and my adventures in Johto awesome.

Now lore wise this Pokémon has no Sun and Moon nor Ultra Sun and Moon Pokédex entries so it should be known that there are no real super dark descriptions on how it blows up innocent kids or something for the heck of it or how it’s burn victims scream in pain only livable for life if they are hoisted in a robotic suit that makes them sound like James Earl Jones. Instead it’s Pokédex entries are a testament of Typhlosion’s  power and it’s tantrum. The heat one of these fire starters emits is directly related to it’s rage!  At the peak of it’s rage it is so hot that anything it touches..or touches it.. immolates. Science shows that humans who allegedly self immolated have burned at a temperature of 1930 degrees Celsius or 2200 degrees Kelvin (Which translates to about 3500 degrees Fahrenheit).
Given that I think it is safe to assume that a Water Killed Crocodile or a Rock with arms probably have higher immolation temperatures it is safe to say this beasty is a big hot head.
It is so hot that it can create a shroud of heat. Heat Shimmers that are so intense it can actually hide behind it, from which it launches it’s secret technique! By rubbing it’s blazing  fur together it can create an explosive that are so powerful it can reduce everything to firey nothingness. So this means something has to be heated so much it gets undone on a molecular level. This basically only incurs in the sun. So even if we lowball Typhlosions explosion by using the suns outer layers it already can reach up to 5500 degrees Centigrade, 5770 degrees Kelvin and 10.000 degrees Fahrenheit, with the inner workings of the sun going up way higher going into the millions.  So pretty powerful either way.

Typhlosion is a mixed attacker, with it’s special attack at 109 base and it’s physical attack at 84.  While certainly not the best stats this does keep your opponent guessing. This creature is best when it comes equipped with a choice-item which is an items that boosts a stat (attack, special attack or speed for band, specs or scarf respectively) Physical sets usually run Earthquake (the most used move in this game ever) Fire Punch and Shadow Claw. Special sets use Eruption (which deals damage equal to your hp left.. so rather than boosting your attacking stat boosting your speed seems rather nifty, unless your opponent has a slow team. Flamethrower and Extra Sensory, the fourth move in both cases is a a case of covery and usually based on what type of team you run. Ice is usually a good shout out against Dragon Types. Typhlosion is one of those “it’s okay” in everything  type Pokémon so that does means it does not like to swap into opponents moves. Since a choice item locks you into a single move this requires your team to have a special and physical wall to exploit effectively. With Eruption it can hit hard and fast early game and take out a lot that doesn’t resist it but after it takes a hit when locked into Eruption it needs to be swapped out. If it faces something that resists the move it is locked in.. you need to swap it out.  This also means you will be very vulnerable to entry hazards like stealth rocks and spikes. So asides from having something that can tank damage you will want a Rapid Spinner or a defogger to remove hazards. So Choice item users really become the center of your team. As a result I do think Typhlosion is a little more advanced to use than some other entries.. but It keeps your opponents guessing and you should know by now how I feel about Mind games! My number1 pick for fire types is this  dedicated good boy!

So who is your favourite Fire Type?! Do you usually start out with Fire Types? I am a dedicated Grass starter myself.. I rarely start with fire types! How many of you will answer Charizard?! We will find out! Next week there we will take a break from this list to celebrate my blogs anniversary but the week after that we will be back with the water type! Now all this writing made me want to play with some fire!

Pokémon Top 5: My Favourite Steel Types

Rock gets beaten by steel! While Ice and Rock are arguably the worst typings in the game, Fairy , Steel and Dragon are commonly seen as the best . Mostly Fairy and Steel, where an  argument made for steel to be the absolute winner. So this must be an amazing list of pokémon right?! Well.. I don’t really like the steel type! It’s my least favorite type in the entire game..with some margin. So for the first time I had a hard time selecting Pokémon I actually like.

Now same rules as all my others lists apply but this one has one additional rule, but before we get there let’s discuss what we already know. Pokémon that were on a list before already can not be on this list before. Otherwise Magnemite and Lucario would be on this list.

I identify them by the type I most identify them with. Lucario I don’t find that steel like, and Magnezone’s evolution line was introduced in Gen I as a pure electric type.. hence I came to see it as electric. There is a pokémon on this list though that would have made the Rock Type list, if I did not see it more as a steel type as well so it can work both ways. If A pokémon doesn’t feel like a steel type to me at all it will not make this list either. Example and otherwise number 1 for this list Mawile! I love the Pokémon and I have used it as a steel type before.. I just don’t feel it is. Reading it’s lore I can get it but ask a random person to look at it’s picture and say what typing is that.. I bet you almost no one would ever call it a steel type. Jirachi for me is the same.

Another rule is that there is only one entry per evolution line, while i am free to pick my favorite of a line.. if the pokémon at one point becomes not fun for me to use or I find it ugly or stupid in terms of lore or whatever I have to deduct points. While I love Bulbasaur more than Venusaur I do not mind the big boy either.  Cufant however is an adorable cute elephant pokémon that really makes me go n’awww! I love how cute it is for a steel type and the typing really needed a cutie!  However it’s evolution and even worse it’s gigantamax are just square blocks of green metal with the trunk being a digging tool. It isn’t all that bad but a big missed opportunity to warm me up to the type a bit.

Temporary forms do not count as separate entries so was a pure rock type that only upon mega became steel it would not be allowed. However the steel type has no qualifiers as for that! It does have one extra rule though that no other type had before! I have to exclude pokémon I haven’t played a lot with yet. Perseker for example  is a pokémon I can really get behind, however I have no real grasp of its abilities or moves.. as opposed to Copperajah who is used by some major characters in the game. I have also dabbled with it in Pokémon Showdown.. Perserker however is a big unknown to me and I know it has gotten some love in the community and it does appeal to me.. so at best I can give it a mention.

The first time I nominate a basic pokémon while it possesses a stage 2 evolution, but not the last time. Aron and me go way back!  Way back when I was a kid that tried to fit in at school and never really did!  Pokémon no longer was hype and after Gen 2 it became a only for geeks kinda thing. So under pressure I did not buy the game. One day though trough my dad mentioning it..before I remembered I could emulate! I wasn’t allowed to buy Pokémon Ruby in stores because I should play more grown up games or do things with my friends in person so I wasn’t allowed to own an official version. On a day a school kid made me trip into lockers than threw his sandwhich meat on me I got at home feeling sad and misunderstood when I found a rom of Sapphire.. I could play the game…. but it was illegal. I decided that my mental health was more important to me then the legality issue and since I would have bought it if I could I figured let’s do this. I picked up a Torchick as my starter and decided not to capture anything else before the second gym.. and there I found Aron. Which I named Hummel. It was the first steel type I liked it was so cute!  It was pretty good and when it evolved at level 32 that was it.. Okay I still like Hummel.. but then it evolved again and it was actually really good!  Yay Hummel!

Lorewise it is pretty interesting as well..Aron to me is like a tiny steel dog, not bigger than the size of a poodle being about 40 centimeters tall  which is like 1 foot 4 or something and not that much longer. However it weighs about 60 kilograms and with the right ability even double. Double these weights is you measure in pounds and you know this is one heavy metal poodle.  Aron’s body is made by Iron and it sustains itself by eating metals and extracting stuff from it to grow/maintain its body! Aron is not very able to recognize what it eats though so at times it causes trouble for everyone by eating train tracks or tackling dump trucks , which it is able to take down.. before eating those as well. I like my pokémon clumsy or clunky and this sort of thing is my jam when it  comes to pokémon lore. Unfortunately my beloved steel baby has not been getting lore in Sun and Moon or we would have learned something about the horrible accidents it causes when eating cars or train tracks.. then again it does keep my baby innocent.

In the competitive scene Aron is a Little Cup Pokémon, one of the very first featured on here.. with the exception of Cubone being in there as well. Little cup is format where you duke it out with unevolved pokémon (that still can evolve)  with the exception of a handful of them for balancing reasons. There is also a catchable at level 5 rule but I am not sure how that work because  you can get later stuff as well. It excludes some evolving legendaries and such I am sure. Regardless Aron has two major uses in battle. You can use it to set up hazards like stealth rock and sand storm or it can be used as a physical sweeper. The physical sweeper set can be super fun since Aron has some serious power in that department when it comes to little cup. Using It’s ability Rock Head, Head Smash becomes an amazing move that allows it to trash anything weak to rock or even neutral to rock! Earthquake  is that move that you always put on a any ground type unless you do double battles and you add Iron Head for Same type attack bonus moves and flinch chances.  Aerial Ace for Weakness covery as Little cup fighting type pokémon prefer to set up using Belly Drum or Sword Dance and you got a solid set and a very useful and lovely Aron. Top it with A Choice Band a voila! A steel wrecking ball that is super cute!

I am one of those girls that really takes a shine to a pokémon when it gets hate. I want to show the little creatures that someone cares for them even if the world is being mean and cruel to them, and so I adopted a Klefki from a friend which was calling it stupid. I asked them to rename it Sesame for me before they send it over. Sesame and I quickly became great friends. I did not run fairy type moves on it as I had my sylveon! No Sesame was there to save my other guys! I really like it’s cry and it has some pink elements! I imagined Sesame was like Ash Charmander.. with its original trainer leaving it out to die.. not caring for it at all. It became a sort of thing for me to adopt people’s Klefki after that.  Due to the excellent friend system Pokémon X and Y had as well as some communities. I became a Klefki Mamma and it was fun..it did not help me with the game as I mostly kept an almost full  box of Klefki which I had to play with in Amie so they would at least get some love..but it was a fun side activity. Sesame eventually got replaced right before the pokémon league so I could focus a bit more on offence but it was the pokémon that made me like using defensive strategies.

Lorewise I am also very charmed by this pokémon too because it has gotten of of the silliest pokédex entries among this list. Klefki is a ring pokémon that uses the “horn” on it’s head to suck the ions out of metals. For no reason whatsoever it adores keys. It likes them so much that giving it one.. is like giving it the greatest gift in the world. It will be super happy, and while you can still use said key it will do everything it its might to keep those keys safe. Never will you have to worry anymore when you go inside a rollercoaster,  that you would lose the key, never will you lose a key anymore because it will never ever lose one!  You just ask it to lock something up for you or if it can help you open it and tadaa! Such a  pure an innocent little thing. It’s beyond beautiful. But that is not even the silly part what I love about it so much.. in Pokémon shield it was revealed that this pokémon likes keys SO much that it’s head had to look like a key as well! In other words it likes something so much, it became that in a way.. talk about mind over matter! I see a symbol of hope in it that people can be what they want to be if it truly makes them happy!

Klefki in competitive was pretty amazing for a while. Mostly as a Hazard of Barrier setter, but a particularly fun set I like to use is a Prankster set with Thunder Wave, Foul Play Torment and Flash Canon. It makes Klefi into a pesky little sweeper. Foul Play allows you to use your opponents physical stats instead of Klefki’s for damage calculation, Torment prevents opponents from using the same attack two times in a row and Thunder Wave paralyze your opponent and halves their speed.  This can result in a little mind game on when to swap out when to t-wave, when to foul play and so on that can make this set of keys give you a lot of battle field momentum. This is exactly my kind of pokémon! People get annoyed if they are being destroyed by a set of keys! Since Foul Play is a dark type move and not a lot of typings are resistant to that.. it really is fun to see Sesame and it’s friends take revenge on those who cast them aside! Mwhuahahaha!

Time for the legendary entry on this list.. and yes it is a legendary and no I do not care it is also called a mythical. While it never really became a part of my journey this pokémon really is a bit of a spirit animal for me.. well not really a spirit animal as it is more of a homunculus pokemon somewhat ..but still .. it reminds me a bit from the owl Clash of the Titans (1981 version) that was a great animal companion and Magearna is no different. The combination of Metal and Princess as well as parts mechanical pokeball make it a cute addition to the line up, and one of the cuter artificial pokemon out there, along with Ditto and Porygon….hmm Artificial pokemon sure come in pink often enough! Guess people really know what is the best colour in the pokemon world.

Lorewise this pokemon is a bit of an odd one you see it’s body is not the pokemon, that little round sphere in the center is the pokemon and not even that, this monster is basically what is inside that sphere. It is best comparable to a Kinder Egg, its not the chocolat, its not the yellow container it’s the toy that is inside..oh and its also banned in some places. Magearna is one of the few pokemon that fully understands human speech, while it may seem like all pokemon can this is not actually true, I guess Ash super specific instructions were just a lucky shot. Mageaena can not just comprehend language though, it can also understand peoples emotions, train of thought and can  even feel their pain, so it is always willing to help! The monster was made as a gift for a princess who lived about 500 years ago, over time her colour faded away and we get the metally grey pokemon we see today.

As with all legendaries this pokemon is not really usable in any form of battle.. Where pure in game legendaries are usually based around one or two incredible stats, the event distributed legendaries, also known as mysticals  always get a more even stat distribution. Magearna’s highest stat is it’s special attack which with 130 is nothing to cry about but compared to the Mewtwo’s and Arceus’s and it’s other peers out there it isn’t really to much to write home about. However it shines through because of it’s typing Fairy Steel is an incredible typing that allows many defensive bonuses.  First of all it negates ALL the fairy type weaknesses. Fairies are weak to poison, which steel type is immune to so cant damage this soul at all, it’s weak to steel..and steel resists steel so that hits neutral now. Metal has three weaknesses, fighting, ground and fire. The fighting weakness gets resisted due to it’s fairy typing so it has only 2 weaknesses , 9 resistances and 2 immunities. That is some good typing.  Almost as good as Water Ground! As a result Magearna is very beginner friendly. It’s signature move Fleur Cannon is like a counterpart of the Draco Meteor move, high power but lowers its own stat after use.  The ability Soul Heart negates this drop a bit however.. so i’d say pick up a robot and soul today!

A crowd favorite along Lucario I am sure but only my penultimate steel type! Metagross is a Pseudo Legendary that is known as the signature pokémon of Champion Steven Stone. One of the trickier champions to beat. (Lance was such a weak champion) The pokémon looks amazing has a great moveset and it evolves early enough to use endgame (level 45) but late enough so it really does feel rewarding. However there is one flaw that keeps Metagross from the number one spot here. Beldum’s Catch Rate of 3. This means that a Beldum (or any of it’s evolutions) have a 1.6% chance to stay in their pokéballs if you throw it at a pokémon with no status condition and green health. This catch rate.. is shared with Mewtwo… this means that a Beldum is as hard to catch as a MEWTWO! So imagine chibi pinkie playing her game, encountering this weird fist shaped pokemon with an eye… that just doesnt want to stay in it’s friggin pokébal! I did not know it was a pseudo back then! I wasn’t even allowed to play this game so I played it in secret! I was like.. well fudge this pokémon! I am out! It took me until Omega Ruby until I got myself a Beldum.. A shiny one from an event! I loved it! I named it ..Hi Ho..because it was silver.

Hi Ho would grow up from a little stubby fist like, missile looking thing to a four legged tank/super computer with one of the most badass mega evolutions out there, ever. Metagross is formed by the fusion of two Metang, (the stage 1 form of the pokémon) while it’s mega evolution is A Metagross, A Metang and Two Beldum forming together. So in other words this is the combiner robot of the pokémon world. It has four separate brains which allow it to analyse things faster and  better than a super computer does. Meanwhile it is still incredibly strong as well. It has the strength to pin an enemy on the wall with it claws after which it will begin devouring them alive. It will also use it’s big brain to win the fights it is in, analyzing it’s optimal moves. Making this a fearsome foe. When it Mega evolves it gets even smarter and leaves behind any decency it might have had before, now dictated by cruel cold logic. Any means of victory is now allowed and thus its fighting style becomes so gruesome most people can only avert their eyes and wait for it’s battle to be over. If it senses it can not win a fight it will impale an enemy’s limb with itself and then self detonate. Ouch

Metagross is fairly universally run as physical sweeper, and with a base attack power of 135 that isn’t too surprising. It doesn’t get much better than that.  The moves you’ll want to put on this monster is Earthquake, Agility, Zen Headbutt and Meteor Mash.  Agility and Zen Headbutt can be adapted if your team  specifically requires anything else, like calm mind if you need it to tank out a few hits for reasons or Grass Knot if your team is weak to ground but over all Zen Headbutt, and Agility will allow you to sweep if Meteor Mash gets one or two attack boosts. Meteor Mash is almost it’s signature move, only learned by Jirachi, Clefairy, and Lucario otherwise, a 90 base power physical attack that can boost up your attack stat.  Agility once or twice can take care of it’s meh speed and as an item a life orb can give you more damage output.  It’s not to uncommon to run aforementioned explosion either to kill something completely dead if Metagross is about to die! It is one of those pokémon that pressures your opponent into making the right call.. mess up once or twice and this pokémon has all the cards it needs to wipe your entire opponents team of the board.

This sword and shield pokémon was obviously introduced in X and Y.. huh that seems weird now huh! However this pokémon quickly became my favorite steel type. I have never really liked wall Pokémon much .. for the simple reason that I never found a wall that was better than Chansey. While Chansey’s physical defence isn’t great I’d use something like Shuckle. A pink egg and a worm in a rock.. those clearly are the superior tanks. I always like to mess with people when playing pokémon.  I don’t play with the pro’s so people never expect that Dugtrio is one of the fastest Pokémon ever.. they do not expect Chansey can  take a Draco Meteor like nothing has even happened, no one suspects Shuckle to survive a normal gem explosion..but they sure do! When people make mistakes people play poorly.  Aegislash is one of those guess what’s coming next pokémon I love so much because it is both a sword and a shield! It’s either a sword resting in a shield or a sword wielding a shield.. guestimate what it does wrong and you will be sorry! Also I really like object pokémon apparently!

Aegislash begin their live as Honedge. Honedge become pokémon when a person on the battlefield dies. Their soul becomes entangled with the blade that kills them and and the sort gains a blue  cloth that it can use to attach itself to those who dare touch the hilt. It will then begin to drain their life force completely. It evolves when it fed on enough life force, usually draining several people completely and it becomes two blades, who communicate with telepathy to form deadly attacking patterns that slice their foes to ribbons. After evolving it they become attendants of kings in history. Their past has allowed them to judge those who possess leadership qualities, hanging around those who it deems destined to be king.  However it does not do this from an altruistic stance it possesses over might spectral powers that allows it to manipulate people and pokémon alike and they use these kings to create a kingdom of their liking. One kingdom was particularly mentioned with a powerful king wielding an Aegislash creating an amazing kingdom, eventually however the sword drained all his life away and the kingdom since quickly fell. Aren’t ghost pokedex entries the best?

Like Metagross , Aegislash has a fairly widely accepted build. That being it’s signature move King’s Shield, which is a form of Protect (a semi perfect shield move)  that negates all damage and lowers your opponent’s special attack. It should know Swords Dance to heighten it’s already high attack, and Shadow Sneak and Night Slash or Sacred Sword as it’s attacking moves. Shadow Sneak is a move that always goes first and is boosted by the same type attack bonus and Night Slash or Sacred Sword you slap on there depending on what type of team your opponents run for maximum damage. What makes this pokemon so fun to use though is its ability, Stance Change. With this it can go from defensive mode into offensive mode and vice versa. In defensive mode it’s defensive values are 150 and in blade mode it’s offensive stats are 150. With all it’s other stats being only 50 though it’s a one trick pony… well it’s a one trick pony twice to be exact. However this does keep pressure on your opponent, if you sent it in against a physical attacker, the fun begins! Since its secondary stats are super weak it is a pokémon that does require you to know who is physical and who is not so it is a bit on the more advanced side of things. Yet it is through all of it’s quirks that and the brain game that this pokemon is so fun to play!

Callum and the best Steel Type…that will kill him!

It was wonderful seeing so many steel types still have plushies! I would have been in trouble with how I handle my images otherwise! What is your Favourite Steel Type? Do you like this typing? Do you use it oftenly?! Can you guess which type is next? Let’s get those comments going! Now excuse me while I go feed my hair!

Pokémon Top 5: Favourite Ice Types

Hello my sweet island guests, get a fruity little drink! Today I’ve got the ice!
The Ice type  is commonly seen as one of the worst two typings in the entire game. While good against the Grass, Flying Dragon And last weeks ground type, it’s weaknesses to fire, steel rock and fighting make it quite a struggle to use these things. Their defences are usually very flimsy while many are built like tanks.. Today we look for a little ray of sunshine amongst the ice types. Let’s hope they don’t melt!

If you have been keeping tracks of these list by now you do know the rules. No pokémon from earlier lists and only one entry per evolution line which in this case is much less of a problem because there is only one good unevolved ice type pokémon and even then I do not mean it in the viable sense. The only good, non fully evolved ice type is of course Snom! He’s so adorable!He also feels like an ice type because of well his name.. and his colour! He’s precious we should all protect snom! A single pebble can kill him so he’s no list material but still!

The second rule I always wield is.. the pokémon has to feel to me like it’s typing and ooh boy.. does the ice type miss that mark a lot. Of the 53 ice types out there 9 do not feel like ice types at all to me. That would arguably be more if I count the cold water pokémon. Lapras however I do count among the list that do not feel like ice types to me. Perhaps because the anime branded it as native to tropical islands but yeah that doesn’t feel icey to be.. it’s gigantamax does. Then again I think it would be better as a water-sound type. I do not like Lapras though.. so it would not make the list regardless. Sneasel and Weavile also don’t really feel like Ice types to me! I love using them and I run them with ice moves but why is it an ice type?! I don’t really see it. Same goes for Jynx . 

A final shout out goes to Zen Mode Galarian Darmanitan. I really don’t like the design of it’s normal mode.. but when it goes into Zen Mode using its ability I love the design. The fire and ice typing is fun as well.. but SO much ice types have quad weaknesses and this on does as well.  Given that Zen Mode Galarian Darmanitan needs to be  below a certain amount of health to transform into his ice and fire state, it is a temporary form pokémon and thus not eligible for this list. Still a great design though. 

I am gonna get strung up for this by the Pokémon community but I LOVE Vanilluxe! The ice cream pokémon it looks so Happy! The idea of a snow cone pokémon  I find perfectly okay! People complain that it’s ice cream and say Gen I pokémon were better no stupid objects. We had a Pokéball  that evolved into an inverse Pokéball.  We had a stick in the ground that became three sticks in the ground and we had two magnets on an eyeball! The whole idea of Pokémon is seeing creatures you have never seen before. If you just want cats in varying colours go play that cat mobile game.  Vanilluxe is great!  It deserves love! It is probably THE pokémon that everyone would look at at say “Now THAT’s an ice type”  along with very few others.  Along with about half the full ice types.  My test for this would be.. imagine a black and white picture of the pokémon.  No colour.. could you still say it’s an ice type? Heck yeah I could!

Vanilluxe comes into existence when two Vanillish (it’s pre-evolution) partially melt in the sun! When they go out to play at night together they freeze up together and now are one entity! This gives them the ability to cause powerful blizzards that can freeze just about everyone. However this ice-cream is also a bit of a hot head! It gets angry a lot and when both heads get angry it will cover the land in a huge snowstorm regardless if friends or foe are in there! It just throws a tantrum! An Ice type that is a hot head! I love it! Of course Pokémon Sun and Moon had to add some darkness to it’s pokémon entries by stating that both it’s head have separate brains that can agree and disagree with each other.. making it’s power alternate! It also was stated there that it can occur that one of the heads is lost! If that is so the other still can live in relative comfort! How said! You just got a forever friend and then it’s head is blown off and you live with just the body of your friend. Basically.. it’s just Dio then I guess

In combat Vanilluxe is not bad either! It has an okay base speed of 79 but it can learn the ability weak armor which easily allows you to crank that up! It also has some speed boosting moves. Ice body and Snow Warning as an ability can come in clutch as well. It’s attack being at 95 which is also fairly high makes it that it’s Explosion move can also hurt like heck! It’s defences are quite okay as well! Not great but not trash either so it could possible take a hit and if it’s too damaged you just blow it up and take your opponent with you.  It gets powerful ice moves such as blizzard and ice beam but it also learn Flash Cannon a nice steel type special move to give it some weakness-covery against rock! It gets the move Sheer Cold as well which can knock your opponent out in a single hit. .if luck is on your side!  It was a great addition to my  princess tea party team in Galar (An Apple Pie, With some Whipped Cream, A scoop of Ice and Some hot tea, all with a fairy princess and her magical unicorn)! 

A pokémon that is both an ice type and a fairy type. That looks super pretty and is inspired on the nine tailed fox? Of course that would make the list! This pokémon is probably the most pretty Alolan form across the line!  I wish I could have made this my favorite but unfortunately it has two major flaws. It’s stats aren’t all that great with everything but speed hovering at around 75, only being specially defensive. It is quad weak to steel type moves though.  It’s great for killing dragons though! Also have I told you it looks pretty?! This definitely is the prettiest pokémon on the list.. heck I think it might be one of the prettiest pokémon ever! What it lacks up for in battle aptitude it  makes up for in style.  Many times over! During my fairy only type run in Alola,  Shirona  was my Alolan Ninetales and while I noticed she lacked the ability to hit hard.. she made my team look pretty and helped me deal with a bunch of peky types! Sometimes style does go over substance.

This design is reflected in the  pokédex lore it has been given. Due to it’s looks it has been revered as a deity before it was identified as a regional version of Ninetales. This has to do with the fact that in the mountains these majestic pokémon dwells there lives a deity. When seeing a snowy beautiful pokémon like this of course it was given divine qualities. This also is in part because Alolan Ninetales will guide lost hikers back to the foot of the mountain. However it does not do this out of kindness it does this because it wants the hikers gone from it’s mountain to protect the deity! Other deities seem to visit the areas they live in as well making it even more important that they are left alone. Those who damage the nature in the areas they live in.. do not get the kind treatment to safety. It will never forgive anyone who scars it’s mountain.  So there you go! This is a pokémon that is above humans it rather plays with deities! That’s top 5 worthy!

In battle Alolan Ninetales does not have a lot of oomph! It’s attack stats are just to poor. It usually is made to be into a supportive wall setter. Equipped with the ability Snow warning and the Light Clay Item, this pokémon can set a unique barrier that shields against both physical and special moves (it needs to be hailing for it to do so though.. hence the ability which sets up the snow/hail) This means you give it the move encore as well to prevent your opponent from setting up or force a switch if they set up weather to counter you.  Very important to carry that move then! Offensively there are two main types of pokémon that can set up the weather in your disfavor in general,  Grass types set up the sun while Water types set up the rain! (Rock and Fire types can set weather but you switch out against them anywya) By taking the move Freeze-Dry you have super effective special moves against both grass and water so that is a good shoutout to take as well. For a fourth move you should let it know Sheer Cold. Random One Hit Knock Outs can be good since when the shields are up, Ninetales becomes a tad throwaway.

A penguin that has a block of ice on it’s head that is also a head already sounds like a perfect pokémon for me! So adorable and derpy!  This is the type of design I love! I am fairly alone in that because some people seem to hate this pokémon despite of how cute it looks!  When it is hit by a physical move the ice cube shatters and it becomes penguin with a super tiny head that has turned all blue from the cold! I love it so much! In the Crown Thundra DLC trailer we have seen recently we see an Eiscue in the water.. it’s floating there because it’s head is just a big ice block! It looks so fun! Squeee! I just imagine the little feet trampling at all their might underneath the water to get anywhere but it just doesn’t work! So it has to let the current take it where it wants to go! If you read any of my lists before you know I really appreciate clunk in Pokémon.

Since this is a Gen VIII pokémon we do not have a lot of pokédex entries yet ..but what we have is super cute! It does indeed mention that it likes to drift in the ocean to keep its head super cold! It likes the big head it seems! When it breaks it reveals a slightly worried expression that has enamoured many people in the pokémon world and I totally get that! I love that face I just want to squeeze it in it’s tiny cheeks and tell it’s a good boy and I will help it get it’s favorite head back! Yes I will! Mamma will put a block of ice on your head! When it is drifting about the ocean it uses it’s little hair that grows out of the ice block as a fishing rod.  When it’s in it’s small faced form the single hair reacts to it’s thoughts. The hair is in straight connection to the brain so  when something is on it’s mind the hair emits a cold aura. I just want to put a little ribbon in there! 

In battle Eiscue can be amazing! It learns Belly Drum.. and combining that with a hp recovery berry, and it’s ice face ability this pokémon is rather amazing. Belly Drum boosts it’s physical attack stat from a base 80 attack to a base 320 attack. If it moves into its tiny face form by being hit physically it’s speed stat becomes 130 too. Which means it hits fast  and REALLY REALLY hard. If you combine it with a Dynamax it can even set up the hail and get it’s square head back to be bulky in defence over speedy! The only problem.. it doesn’t really matter it has bulky defence as the head shatters if it’s hit with a physical move and the head shattering negates any damage! So … in the ice head form it has a lot of wasted stat points, which is a shame and prevents it from being higher up this list. Liquidation avalanche and facade are good physical moves to run on this good boy!  The ability Ice face is kinda tricky to understand and I do not have the room to go into detail.. so google if you need.. but if used properly this penguin can kick some ass.

A very close to number one second this time around in the form of the Gen 3 pokémon Walrein. While I have used one on my team in my first playthrough of Pokémon Sapphire, I really warmed up to the pokémon trough my playthrough of Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness. There is something about seeing a Walrus in 3d with animations that makes it more charming. I also really needed it on my team as it destroys Salamence which I saw often in that game.  Designwise it’s about as much as you can do with a Walrus I guess. While I do not like that all water pokémon are blue, or most of them at least,  the blue on this one along with the white really does well to sell the cold qualities it possesses. It looks kind of dopey which I do like.. it doesn’t feel as ugly and mean as some other stage 2 pokémon. It keeps that beloved pet vibe more than say Tyranitar or Exploud for example. 

It’s pokedex entries do not state to much interesting facts about this pokemon, other than that it is very fat! There have been 12 pokedex entries of Walrein  to date and 11 mention it’s thick layer of blubber. The only one that doesn’t mentions that when a Walrein is the leader of a herd it will battle anything that invades it’s territory and it will continue to fight to keep it’s herd safe regardless if that means it’s own death. It can even lose it tusks in these battles.  All the other pokédex entries state that it is protected by it’s large amounts of blubber. The blubber shields it from both the cold and enemy attacks. The real impressive feat however is that it can break 10 tons of iceberg with a single attack with its tusk! Now that is an effective ice cube maker!  I bet it would be neat to use at parties! Crushed ice for everyone!

In battle it’s quite okay! It’s hindered by the poor stat average most ice types have.. with only a very high hp count and the other stats being okay! However.. due to its ability Thick Fat it is so bulky it makes up for that weakness. It can just tank! It will not die easily!  As for movesets.. that is a bit tricky! I ran my most beloved Walrein, Hoomphrey on a coliseum game, which means 2 v 2 battles. Moves like Surf and Blizzard are great shout outs for that.  It’s special attack is capped at 95 which is really quite alright certainly given it’s high hp, so special moves are your bread and butter. I personally run it with rest for a full recovery and sleep talk. But Snore is also a okay move to put on this pokémon. There are plenty ways to play but I do really prefer to break this one out in 2v2 battles. In 1v1 I kinda see how it does not deal as much damage as it could. Still it’s  also nice PvE playthroughs as it learns a nice amount of HM’s and is able to use them in combat rather effectively. A great allrounder that I wish would have gotten just a little more punch.

Even now I feel like .. should this be here? Does it feel enough like an ice type?! Heck there was  time I didn’t even know it was an ice type! It was only when I started playing competitive battles with my friends that i discovered skill link, kings rock Cloyster using ice type attacks with stab.. murdered EVERYTHING. I always liked Cloyster quite a bit as it had one of the most interesting designs in Gen 1 for me. I loved that black pearly little head in that spikey shell. Of course in Gen 1 this was a rather terrible pokemon. A good looking but terrible pocket monster. It lacked some good moves, it lacked anime support. Shellder being involved in Slowpokes evolution and having such an iconic but annoying cry in the anime made me aware of this pokémon .. rather than the pokemon itself . However since the invention of the ability skill link and the move Shell Smash.. killer oyster is exactly my battle style! The kings rock item makes it so much better even!  I really love it!  I have since used that spec in a playthrough with my main guy Hurl-Pearl. 

For some reason this pokemon seems rather hated in the pokémon-world.. well or at least they think there is a pearl inside and they want to reach it.  As it is stated that once a Cloyster closes its shell no one can open it.. not even someone with superior strength. It is also stated that not even bombs can open it! Mentioning no one managed to get inside to take a look at it’s interior .. It can “swim” by swallowing up water and shooting it out the back…. that sounds kind of dubious and kinda clunky but well it’s a shell  so I am sure it doesn’t poop out water or anything… “it uses this same system to to shoot its spikes a it’s opponent”.. Uhm wait.. it shoots spikes out of it’s ass?! That’s kinda cool! Do shells even have asses though?! It has a hole in the back that expel excess material at least. Sounds like an ass! The spikes on its body are its main method of attacking. They are so hard that old tribes used the spikes that Cloyster lost.. by shooting them away as their weapons.  The spikes are even so hard that even missiles can’t break them! Why are humans shooting missiles at cloyster and why do they try to blow them up! You meanies!

In combat this by far is one of my favorite pokemon to use ever! Skill Link, as an ability makes your pokémon always hit the maximum amount of times a move can hit.  Icicle Spear and Rock blast are both offensive moves that hit up to five times and the coverage amongst them is quite solid. Shell Smash will boost your speed Attack and Special Attack in trade for your Special Defence and Defence.. but with a White Herb that first skill down step is negated.  Or like me you could give it a Kings Rock! Which grants an attack a 10% chance ability to flinch. However due to skill link you now have five 10% chances.  That makes the chance of flinching pretty high! A flinch means a pokémon can not move that turn. So this pokémon can deal massive damage with a huge chance to stun your pokémon! I know there are better builds like the herb..but Kings Rock is just so funny!! Hurl-Pearl and me.. we are Nakama! I think this pokemon is very nICE!

What is your favorite ice type? I am predicting a lot of Articuno answers here, but proof me wrong?! Do you use the ice type a lot?! Let me know! Next week we will discuss the other “weakest” type, the rock type! Which Pokémon do you think will be on there?! Since Rock Types are super effective against the ice type..some ice pokémon are already coming up with a counter! See you next time!

Pokémon Top 5: Favourite Ground Type Pokémon

Island Guests! It has happened! I have a top five of typed Pokémon for you where Iridium Eye probably knows like 80% of these Pokémon! That’s like super special! That also reveals to you there is probably not a lot of Pokémon of later generations on this list! They really started the series strong with this type!  So prepare for my eight out of 18 typing lists. With the only typing that is super effective against the electric type ! The ground type!

Like Always we will follow the rules of only one pokémon per evolution line and no duplicates of previous lists to reduce redundancy. This leaves Krookodile out who already made it to my dark type list. If a pokémon’s evolution is something I strongly dislike it’s previous evolution can be given a demerit for evolving into something I dislike. Drilbur is one of these cases. It’s evolution just looks so incohesive and meshed together to me that I actually really dislike  using it. Since Drilbur on it’s owe will not be that useful in playthroughs nor does it have any other way to use it.. it gets no further than a mention here.

Pokémon also have to feel like a Ground type to me to qualify for this list. Oddly enough the Ground type is rather weak in this department. Nincada, Gligar, Gliscor, Gastrodon and of course fan favorite Flygon are all pokémon that I quite like but would not associate with the ground type just by looking at it.  Gastrodon is a sea slug, Gligar and Gliscor are flying scorpions and Nincada is just a bug… from the faintest distance I still see why they belong to that type but then there’s Flygon. A flying green dragon that gets the ground type bestowed up to him because he evolves from a Sand Trap Pokémon. I get why the first evolution gets it but there should not be ANY flying Ground types  besides for Landorus. It just doesn’t feel right to me. I guess It’s nice to have a Dragon that is not a Dragon Flying type, unlike so many before it.. but they have the same weakness. Nothing shouts to me that this is an earthquake user other than that it gets STAB boosts.. so it will not make the list.

By that same sort of standard there is yet another honourable mention i wish to mention and that is Quagsire. Which is a great Pokémon that I deeply love for how derpy and joyful it looks but teaching it ground moves is SUCH a hassle. It learns 2 in it’s natural moveset and one of them is totally worthless as it has low base power and uses it’s rather bad special-attack stats to deal damage. The second it learns at level 52, which in Gold and Silver basically is end game. It’s so hard to run this with a decent ground  type move unless you breed that you basically will be using this as a pure water type that switches out it’s electric weakness with a double weakness to grass (and Freeze Dry) that it is just a very defensive Water Typing that can feel like a ground type… but on average not so much.

Cubone has the “honour” being being the very first ground type on this list whom I have never really (actively) used during a playthrough of the main games , yet I still love the  heck out of. It doesn’t have great stats and Marowak is a bit lackluster in its ground shape. Yet Cubone made it on my list for another reasons. Cubone for example is one of the most significant lore driven pokémon of the earlier games. The whole story of Lavender Town?! Where it’s mother gets killed by team Rocket and it wears the skull of its mother as her final protection. It is so sad and it left an early impact on me! We always saw it depicted crying and in a way it is one of the very few things that have ever appeared to something I thought I would never have. Motherly instincts.  I just wanted to take care of it , hug it and tell it everything was going to be alright! It’s the exact emotion you have to feel about the pokémon as well so it really landed.  To this day it’s design is one of the most unique looking pokémon out there and I adore it.  It feels cute and cold at the same time.. cold as in..distant. Which.. again is rather as intended. 

I really enjoy Alolan Marowak as an evolution as well! It was the Alolan form I was the most excited about and felt the most clever of them all. It stayed with me! A fire dancing ghost.. worked so well. Yet Cubone and Pikachu have never changed their basic forms (Yes Pikachu is still a basic form not Pichu.. as to gain that little tyke you need some incense) which shows how great it’s design is. It made me laugh and cry .. but mostly cry.  I am not a big fan of the Let’s Go Games but their rendition of the Cubone story was so beautifully animated. How Trace accompanies it.. how Cubone sees it’s mother one more time and tries to embrace her right as she ascends to heaven.. it showed very clearly..pokémon can truly die. Pokémon have families to.. and some pokémon deserve to be taken care of , even if they aren’t always the strongest. Had Trace not taken the little Tyke I would have done so myself but it was a nice reminder that Pokémon .. isn’t always about using the strongest like Agatha says.. it’s about using the pokémon you love.  Unfortunately I have always been really unlikely when it comes to finding one and I usually only add it to my team in the actual gameplay phase.

The real reason why I have this added to my list though is because it was the pokémon I reincarnate as in the first Mystery Dungeon game. I knew the story a tiny bit and playing through the game as a Cubone made so much sense given the story and the main character that gets turned into a pokémon by a mysterious force, then finally finds some friends in their brave little adventure club! While the game surely is not easy to run as a Cubone.. I had a blast being this little monster and seeing it’s epic journey .. growing into one of the coolest club around .. taking on other squads and solving mysterious was just so great and unique. If I ever get around to playing Pokémon Mystery Dungeon DX I am sure I want to be a Cubone again. It will ALWAYS be the mon for these type of games. In a way I really felt I could relate to Cubone. To odd for the real world but bound to friends by this mysterious thing called pokémon.. a sentiment that could have easily made it my number 1..but this week I decided to follow a bit of a different route. Because there is sentiment throughout!

This is the only pokémon on this list that does not belong to gen I. It is my favorite Pokémon typing combination being Ground and Water.. but it beats out Swampert as my favorite because I really like the way it evolves. Swampert I prefer to leave as a Mudkip.. so cute! Mudkip of course doesn’t have the ground typing yet or that would actually be on this list. Seismitoad also has such a cool name. It’s an earthquake making frog, that uses it croaks to establish it! How cool is that?! It looks pretty darn cool as well. I love it’s design and evolution line so much. This walks the perfect line between clunky and cool to me. It feels sluggish and derpy yet also something that can hit you hard and without mercy. I like frog Pokémon in general and we have a surprisingly nice variety on them as well. Most are water types of course, but we have fighting, poison , dark and ground types to boost the roster.. one frog can even change types! Woop! This Ground one is a very good addition as a warted toad. 

Seismitoad is popular with the elderly (in universe) .. while I am not that old… it’s  appeal its not lost on me. It’s warts constantly vibrate constantly which the old folks love to use for massages. I would love a massage from a big frog pet! Even if it’s vibrating Warts. It can also harness these vibrations to throw powerful punches that can turn rocks to dust or even create earthquakes. Not that’s some multi functional warts.  I wonder how I can get vibrating warts! Think about  how relaxed I would be!  ..  Maybe they can swell up really bad and they would be pink too! Seems like a win! Just kidding , of course I would not want any warts as big as this pokémon but it’s design is among the most  toad like of the whole series.. It has this uniqueness that I really love. Most other frogs are a bit streamlined. This feels like the pokémon of a Witch.. not sure why but I also really love the colouring.. it’s just a blue with a lighter blue.. but the red eyes.. the dark rings and the deep blue base tone really makes it something I love to see.

With the abilities Poison Touch and Water Absorb this Pokémon already is  though to deal with.. but it’s main Bread and Butter is the Swift Swim Ability. Due to the way that Dynamax Works setting up rain is now easier than before and if you run it on a rain team it can deal massive damage. Ground Types usually are slow but this one with a base speed of 74 is already fairly okay speed wise but can easily become blisteringly fast.  That 74 is it’s lowest stat as well. Which means that this pokémon is quite okay in everything. It’s not great at anything but you can customise it in anyway you like. It keeps your opponent  guessing. Assuming it is Swift Swim while it is actually Water Absorb.. can hurt.  Since you can run it with both special and physical set it is capable of catching your opponent of  off guard. Earthquake and Surf are great multi-target moves  Best on a rain team, this combines great with Drizzle Pokémon like Pelipper for maximum damage.  A boosting combination that  that is a landslide of earth and water that will wash your enemies away.

This is it guys and girls, the first pokémon that ever existed. Rhydon was the first pokémon to ever be programmed into the game. A fact that many people did not even know. Of course that already makes this Pokémon special to me! It’s one of my favorite pokémon designs ever to boot. Sure it got its evolution later  on that also is pretty great..but this look was something so special. I am normally not a fan of grey pokémon and the ground type is far from my favorite, yet this Pokémon .. was so stunning ever since I saw it come to live in 3d in Pokémon Stadium. The version in that game.. at least one of them.. that knew Surf. It was truly amazing. It was the first time I knew looks could be deceiving. The way it was depicted in the anime! Pikachu using the horn to conduct electricity to it, the whole proud face and the tough skin.. I would love a little statue of this pokémon! It’s so magnificent! Words fail me to describe why..but whenever I see it.. I just go.. that’s a good looking pokémon. It might even be my absolute favorite design wise….and it’s grey! Sylveon of course is amazing as well but that’s pink I was bound to like that.

With an armor that can withstand temperatures up to 3600 degrees fahrenheit it can swim in Lava.. or hide in it as well!  As soon as it left it’s quadruped phase of Rhyhorn it became intelligent and also the ability to punch holes into rocks by  simply jabbing it with it’s horn. When he uses the horn as a drill he can turn even uncut diamonds into dust. Suck on that Shiva! He’s a rock type ..which is super effective against ice types.. so it kinda makes sense.. though ground types lose to ice .. so it would be a 50/50 on Shiva vs Rhydon. That’s a Final Fantasy reference by the way.  The fact that it can swim in lava is a bit of an underestimation. Lava is around 1250 degrees Centigrade at its hottest.. that weird Fahrenheit thing .. means it it can withstand 1900 ish degrees centigrade.  The less confusing temperature standard. Basically this means that this Rhino could even swim into melted platinum! The only metal on Earth that would kill it in its molten form would be Osmium ..which melts at 2700 degrees centigrade. Makes sense Rhydon is quad resistant to the fire type then!

Rhydon is still quite usable in battle! It hits with a whopping 130! Base stat in attack and it’s Defence is 120. This kinda makes it a more favorable option in combat than it’s fully evolved counterpart! Who buffs the attack up to 140 and defence also goes up a notch but no longer can use Eviolite! Since Rhydon usually functions as a hazard Setter and you combine it with moves like Sword Dance, Stone Edge, Earthquake and aforementioned Stealth Rocks.. the non evolved version is actually the bulkier option of the two. This means in pvp battles it is nice as a pokémon to swap in with and take a hit as well. It’s lighting Rod ability even makes it quite nice for double battles.  With a 130 base stat in attack you also do not have to worry this pokémon is lackluster in terms of gameplay playthroughs. I can even learn surf and strength which are the two HM’s that are quite usable in battle for older generations. It gets elemental punches as well including Ice Punch. That and it’s Stab Rock moves basically make it super good against Dragon Type elite four members, because of so many dragons being quad weak to ice.. and plenty of them being flying types so also being weak to rock! In general this pokémon is really good against the elite 4. At least against the majority of them.

I was thinking of classifying this among my favorite rock types..when I realised it would not make the top of that list! So it’s actually safe to put on here! Because it is among my favorite ground types… I do not know why I favor the weaker typings in general. Fairy being a major exception. Golem is another one of those pokémon whose design I really really love. It’s that thing Indiana Jones always runs away from.. but this time it has a face! Yet another pokémon I cam to adore trough Pokémon Stadium.. and spoiler, number 1 will have that as well.  My first time meeting this pokémon however was quite an experience. I was always bullied in school  because due to my motor issues and muscle trouble I walked weird. I never had many friends.. yet Golem is a thing that got me a friend.. or sort of at least.. I was just going to middle school. Thirteen years of age and I had zero friends. To pass the time I brought my gameboy to school! It wasn’t really allowed.. but I’d find a quiet corner to crawl away and since going to the cafeteria usually meant people started throwing food to me .. and the school had to clean it up.. it was sorta allowed. One day one of the bullies snuck up to me and looked nervous.

He asked me if I played Pokémon and if I would trade his graveler with him so it could evolve it was the last pokémon needed but his little brother kept his first one and would not trade it back.I did not know about trade evolutions yet so in trade I got all 4 as he explained to me. When that Golem was send over I thought it looked so cool and I bonded with my bully! The fact that he also snuck a gameboy to school did not even occur to me .. but he saw me do it .. so should be fine.  We talked about pokémon for an entire recess.. he could let a part of him out he could not show in front of the other kids.  Every now and again .. he would return if something happened in the tv series that was cool. Because of that kid I also had the courage to go to a pokémon competition hosted on tv to meet other fans.. my first geeky community thing. He of course became an ass again as soon as he lost interest in the game after but he never really bullied again.. like he laughed as others threw tacks at me.. he  was there when people stole my lunch..but he never  was active against me anymore.. all because of a Golem!

In combat the pokemon is about the opposite of Rhydon.. Physical defences and physical offence are swapped. The rest is  about the same.  Yet since this boulder does not benefit from an Eviolite.. it is the lesser choice to use in battle. I tend to run it with Rollout , explosion and earthquake .. more as a flavor team member as too seriously use it in combat. Also dig on it is quite fun because how it looked in Pokémon Stadium! Also since Gen I did not have abilities and held items yet.. Golem was a bit better in those games.  Golem’s main ability is Sturdy.. which is a good ability for it two have since it has two quad weaknesses so usually I run it with a normal gem and explosion  as a revenge killer. That’s fun and though I would of course never use it like that in a Nuzlocke because I would not  want it do die..  it is always fun to know if an opponent can do nothing to stop a normal gem boosted explosion.. as long as they don’t have a ghost type or Protect on a certain set. Using this creature is much more of a gamble but that is what makes it fun. Essentially if you do not misplay it can get rid.. or close to get rid of anything you do not want to deal with by sacrificing itself.. such a good friend! 

Hail to the king baby! While I could easily see this as a Poison Type it is because of it’s counterpart Nidoqueen that I actually both identify them more with the Ground type. She doesn’t get that much good poison moves.. in fact.. I originally planned her to take this spot and give the King the top spot in the poison list.. but Nidoqueen kinda sucks! Well not really she is okay at everything but it feels like the wrong stats have been averaged. She lacks a great offensive stat and makes it up with a bit more bulk.. but her defence isn’t that good anyway. Her special attacks a borderline bad. I love both these designs though .. but I do favor Nidoking’s more Kaiju-esque.. vibrant purple design over Nidoqueens sleaker one.  Nidoqueen if defencive where Nidoking is offensive.. yet Nidoqueen’s bulk can get her less far than King can do with his offence. I still really love them both though! They shaped pokémon! Big time!

In the lore department Nidoqueen is kinda bland She’s just hard.. that’s like rephrased seven different times or so and bam that’s all we know about Nidoqueen. she protects the nest, she has hard scales with phrasing differing just a mild bit every time.  Nidoking has at least some cool stuff like destroying radio towers, horns hard enough to break diamonds… I guess in the Pokémon Universe Jojo’s part four would be REALLY short.  Anyway it also destroys telephone poles. Now there is an entry that did not hold up all that well.. well that or there are A LOT more Nidokings than we think there are in real life. I bet some conspiracy guys would love to get their hands on a Nidoking right about now!  5 Great balls required to capture it. All in all though there isn’t all that much special about this pokémon.

Then why do I love it so much?! I do not know which seems a theme about these ground types. I love using earth power on Nidoking even if Earthquake is more effective. I love random trivia about the pokémon! For example did you know that Nidoqueen is the undefined Egg Group.. that means she can’t breed! The first gendered Pokémon.. the two species that started a trend for gold and silver and all the games onward to become the breeding game we all know and love. .and one part is sterile! This also again.. makes Nidoking factually better.. as it that can be IV bred. Also their secret ability “Sheer Force” is  their best ability.. you can get that by breeding.. so …..there is problem for one of them.. still these two pokémon are icons in the pokémon world.. they reshaped the pokémon world for generations to come.. yet they can not “play”with each other. It’s so wonderfully odd. Nidoking looks better though, learns better moves, is easier to use in combat and bascily does everything a little bit better. The fact that what they do isn’t anything special makes just all the more credible that I actually love this Pokémon! Sometimes there is no reason.. but I just have some heavy Nido in the kokoro.

What is your favourite Ground Type? Did you know Rhydon was the first pokémon?! Did you play Pokémon Stadium as a kid?! Let me know! Let’s hope next week it will be nice and hot outside, because I got another top 10 list waiting for you to cool you off as we discuss the Ice Type.
Now I have to Dig into some more writing for my DnD games so I will be off! See you next time.

Pokémon Top 5: Favorite Electric Types

The electric type in Pokémon is a bit of a weird one. Super effective against only the water and flying type, and weak only to ground. As a result it is one of my least used typings. Since I mostly start with a grass starter I tend to start with a grass and rock/ground core rendering this typing a rather ineffective addition to my team. Yet there are so many great electric pokémon. So today let’s look at the ones that are SO special they won a spot on my team anyway in this week’s top 5.

The same rules like always would apply to Pokémon… but.. I have a problem here. Hardly any of the rules are applicable here! Normally I’d say only one entry per evolutionary line where if the evolution and its necessity is factored in should I dislike where forms go. Yet every single electric type has amazing evolutions. There isn’t a single one I’d disapprove off. The only one that kinda meets this brief is Yamper. I adore Yamper and do not feel very strongly about Boltund. It’s a good dog but I liked the clunkiness of the first form a lot more.. like the whole “loaf” feeling it has going. Boltund is only a type of dog I prefer slightly less.. but hey since I need honorable mentions it counts.

Pokémon that featured on other lists do not count either,since I love Galvantula so much and it was on my bug list, it will not feature on this one. Otherwise it would most likely be in the number two spot yet again. The honorable mention goes to it’s pre-evolution Joltik whom I love dearly as well.. technically it could make the list because it’s not Galvantula..but since I have the one entry per evo line rule as well it still felt wrong. Still it is so adorable so it deserves more shoutouts than I can give it!

In every other list I managed to mention a pokémon that did not feel like it’s typing to me.. the electric type doesn’t have that to me! All of them feel tied to their given element. The Psychic type gave me trouble with this as well but with these ones.. I am convinced I could even show the biggest pokémon non believers a picture of a pokémon and ask what type it is and you’d all guess correctly.  Luckily I also made a rule that disallows  temporary forms because of how situational it is .. which gives me my final honorable mention Pop Star Pikachu.  Just because it is because.. It’s Pikachu in pink.. This one would be disallowed either way because….

The Pikachu line in Pokémon has always been a bit lackluster except for the whole mascotte thing of course. Kantonian Raichu wasn’t all that good. While normally I say that an entry in the anime is beneficial this applies to me for everything but the Pikachu line.. and to a lesser extend Greninja and even Charizard. All the Pokemon Ash made hype.. kind of let you down in the games. The final evolutions less than Pikachu ..but if you saw Ash first.. they still feel lacking in oomph compared to how they are build up. Raichu was always one of those for me.. We see Pikachu do such epics things and ours.. fizzle.. as if we are playing with a bootleg. However this all changed when Alolan Raichu came along.

While it stats do not change , it addresses the generic looks of the original Raichu and they give it an additional typing in the form of the Psychic type. Electric Psychic is a great offensive typing!  It is super effective against flying, water, poison and fighting which actually makes it great to use next to Rowlet or Popplio, who both have a weakness to poison and Litten which has a weakness to water.  Regardless of the starter you choose this is a great accompaniment to them all. In Kanto, Normal Raichu doesn’t help you much when you pick Squirtle and if you start with Bulbasaur going with Geodude would be a better way to cover your flying weakness.  But let’s back up a bit and talk a bit more about the looks. Original Raichu was originally meant to be a midway station between Pikachu and Gorochu and in a way you feel that. Alolan Raichu has much more finality to it’s design. The surfing on it’s tail with electromagnetism, the tanned look, keeping Pikachu’s cuteness. I really adore it’s looks.

Statwise this Pokémon still feels like a relatively weak end station. It’s main offensive stat is only 95 which is okay enough but something you can easily find a better answer for. For reference the area between 70 base stat and 100 is deemed okay and above 100 a stat is great. So 95 is good enough. However here is where it’s new typing comes into play. Since Generation VII Raichu can learn Calm Mind.. the best set up move for special attackers. It raises special defence and special attack. Prior to this Raichu had no proper setup for offence, only evasion so even if it made it hard for an opponent to hit it could never really hit back hard either. It’s move pool has also vastly expanded. Same Type attack bonus boosted psychic hits harder and more reliable than most electric moves and using the ability surge surfer it’s speeds can reach insane levels so even in its core moveset it already deals a lot more with it’s own weaknesses.  It can set up defensive screen which half damage, it can set up terrain and it can set itself up to hit hard.  While it’s still frail it reviced a lot of weaknesses with the originals and when you look so adorable when dealing a fair amount of damage as well as be Hau’s best buddy! You are doing something right!

I was trying to decide whether to put the final evolution of the magnemite line in the Steel Type top five or the electric top five. In retrospect I should have put it in the other one as I like a lot less of those.. but since in Gen I the line was still pure electric I always see it as that first. Magnezone is on this list because it lets me combine two of my least used typings in a pretty amazing pokémon that is very weak to ground type moves though. Magnezone came to me via a trade in Gen V, it was a very random trade but there it was. A magnet Ufo that to me.. had some cop vibes/patroller in it as well. I did not know that Magneton could evolve. It was named Kilowatt. The original trainer was LeLouche all of people.. I never figured he would be into pokémon! Kind of makes sense though with all the tactical battling.

While I never really was appealed by balls and magnets sticking together they already looked very gleefull in Pokémon Snap when you fed them apples.. I always remembered those happy eyes. I imagined this Ufo like thing do the same thing and I was immediately sold. A magnetic Ufo who doesn’t want that?!  These pokémon are so Magnetic they attract each other and then become unable to move! That sounds clunky! I like that as well! Implications that this pokémon has alien contacts were made in Sun and Moon.. when all pokédex entries were particularly ominous and it added to it’s mystery. While made by man scientist kept trying to evolve it again.. could it be that in the future this will be the first pokémon we see get a stage 3?  <Pinkie Explains: A first form is called a basic.. the second form a stage 1 evolution.. if that evolves it’s stage 2>  Will it call something from out of space like a new legendary tied to it?! Kind of like Carbink and Diancie? Mysteries keep surrounding this pokémon, along with the unique and fun design I think Kilowatt is a keeper.. Had I not sold that game for convention money back in the day.

In combat having using steel and electric moves are basically it’s entire bread and butter. It also gets hyper beam which then can do big damage with the Analytic ability. Since Magnezone is a fairly slow Ufo with a base speed of 60 so the ability is quite usable as well.It will outspeed ground types.. but unless you equip it with a Balloon you’ll want to swap out when those come out and threaten your space ship anyway. It’s special attack being at 130 as a base value is amazing and really makes this a floating attilery thing. It’s best when paired with big damage moves such as Zap Cannon, Flash Cannon and Hyper Beam, I either run it with Magnet Rise ..which makes it immune to ground type moves with a Life Orb as held item or I put it on a Balloon and give it Signal Beam  as well for some extra type coverage and possible confusion. The first set is usually better though. It also makes sense that it floats on it’s own abilities..being a Ufo at all.. why would a Ufo be on a balloon? That is just silly.

What’s up with my favorites  and quad ground weaknesses. This is yet another that could look at a patch of soil and die in agony! Yet poison electric is such a cool typing. I really like the poison typing as well. Much like my Pokémon flying list though.. this would have been an ideal candidate for the sound type! Which funnily.. I would make weak to ground types.  This pokémon is all about playing air guitar.. or Keyboard as some version of this pokémon would.  Toxtricity has two forms, the Low Key form and the Amped form. This is on Toxel’s (its basic stage)  nature. If it has an energetic nature like Rash or Bashful  it will become Amped and if it has a more tranquil spirited nature.. for example Modest or Mild. That is SUCH a great idea. Letting a pokémon evolution look differently based on their character. Amazing!  I really love the colours of the Amped form myself.. but the Low Key version is pretty neat itself. Competitive it’s mostly Low Key though since the Modest Nature fits it the best. That’s a bit a let down in that system for me. 

Lorewise there isn’t that much known about the pokémon yet except that is quite arrogant and it plays air guitar or Electric organ to generate up to 15.000 volts on electricity. It’s poisonous nature is never really mentioned anywhere..but I think it comes from being a punker.  Or from being purple! In the world of pokémon the colour of your skin quite oftenly depicts your typing. I wonder if Lucario gets bullied for being blue but not being a water type?! The design however looks so friggin amazing, this is one of the coolest designed electric types out there. Tying it’s theme to the electric guitar was a briljant stroke that we untill now have only seen in a trainer type. I can just imagine  it singing the Sex Pistols version of I did it my way while frying it’s opponents with its electric waves or tossing some goop their way! This is a rebel and for once I like that.

In combat you mostly would like to rock out with a Low Key… Mild Toxtricity. It’s defences aren’t good at all and you really want to capitalize on it’s special attack of 117 without compromising it’s speed and preferably not it’s attack either since that being close to a 100 at 98 can allow you to run it as a mixed attacker.  It should be decked out with the ability Punk Rock which boosts sound type moves by 30% offensively while reducing damage taken by 50% defensively. This one definitely needs it’s own signature move Overdrive to be good, but if you equip it with Boomburst it might even be scarier. The last one has a base power of 140 so boosted by 30% that is one of the most powerful moves in the game. Though still not coming close to a fully boosted Fisheous Rend.  As a third move and fourth move I’d run it with Toxic and Venoshock, but that is mostly when I have other toxic users or stallers as well.  There are other options as well like some physical attacks like Gunk Shot.. or Throat Chop to give it something to defend against the psychic type. As an item you definitely want to give it some Throat Spray. As a side node why are some many electric type pokémon names so hard to spell?!

Ah the moment I begin writing this entry I realised how big of a whole I have dug myself. I normally blab on movesets and designs and Rotom.. has six forms, six typings and six designs. This is going to be a tricky one. Technically this one even has nine forms, if we count the pokédex, phone and drone form as well. It’s also the weakest pokémon on the list of today..but I can’t help but to love Rotom. It’s such an amazing concept. Basically he is the poltergeist that make your electric devices go bump in the night. It’s very mischievous as well. It loves to ruin your day. If it possesses the microwave it gleefully burns your favorite clothes, if it possess your fan it giggles why blowing away important documents and if it’s a freezer it will freeze your bath  water or give you a very cold shower. When it possesses a lawnmower it will destroy all your flowers and when it possesses the washing machine.. well you probably have a good idea what happens then! Let’s hope you don’t have any wooden floor.

The concept of a ghost pokémon animating things is great of course and since it is a ghost electric type animating devices makes so much sense! The fact that it loses its ghost typing and replaces that with the element it possesses even more so. If you have the ability to swap devices this pokémon can be incredibly versatile, although a bit of a hassle to set up. Will you run it as a lawn mower for the water type gym or will you run it as a  fridge to defeat that guy who has some strong ground types? The sky is the limit.  Having access to water-fire-grass-flying-ice OR ghost typing as a secondary STAB is an unparalleled feat for a pokémon. I know temporary forms do not make the list but these are semi permanent and I count this pokémon in its entirety so it’s all good! If your game does not have an area to swap rotom tools you’ll just have to work with the one traded to you. I like the idea of customisable pokémon and it doesn’t get much more customisable than this.

In the competitive scene Rotom Wash is the most popular form to use. Water Electric is a great typing and since Rotom has the ability levitate it doesn’t have all that many weaknesses. Rotom is mostly used as a trickster. Use Will O Wisp to burn your opponent and lower their attack stat. It’s a bit in that “float like a butterfly sting like a bee” segment of things. I like Rotom Wash the most myself as well.. the square design with that pipe as some form of weird tale is adorable. It can be a bit more offensive due to learning scald. You can get those burns while attacking, yet each Rotom is fun to use in it’s own way. I had a blast when trying Rotom Freeze uit for the first time. Rotom Mow i’d say is the most tricky form to use but if played well it can be hard for your opponent to deal with as well. Rotom Fan i’ve seen a lot in Showdown battles and now that Dynamax Air moves boost speed it has quickly become much better than it was before!  Maybe a full Rotom Playthrough would be fun.. it would be pretty balanced at least.

The first electric type I ever actively  used and my strongest pokémon in my favorite pokémon game. At least in main line Pokémon games! In Pokémon Stadium I used Pin Missile Jolteon to take down my sisters all Mewtwo team. I am not sure why that worked so well back then because I never was able to reproduce it. Ampharos though I can make good time and time again. I am using it again on my Pokémon Reborn playthrough..but that games runs so much more horrible now than it did before.. so much lag.. so now I only play it when someone is live streaming and I need some side content.  Still Ampharos is there for me. My first one did not have a name, I needed to remember the new pokemon names still. The second one was called Apple, I think, I used it during a Soul Silver playthrough I named things after fruit. I used one in my main team in Gale of Darkness XD  named Shaun and my custom shiny Ampharos in Reborn is called Choked Sheep (because it turned blue, and my nicknames are descriptions)

I also played the crap out of the pokémon in Pokémon Stadium 2. If I can get  the monster early on I will use it. Now it took me way longer than I am willing to admit to discover that this one has a pink shiny… oh no.. I admitted it!  So now that I know that it makes this pokémon even better though I only have a few pink ampharos (pokemon plural is the same as singular) on Pokémon Go due to community days. I never had a pink Amphi in a fun game though.  I am always drawn to it no matter what media it appears on almost as if it’s a beacon drawing me in.. what do you know! Pokémon Lore bride.. Ampharos only lore is that it can store electricity in it’s tale to shine very bright. So it functions as a lighthouse. This light is so bright that it can even be seen from space. It seems to hurt it’s own eyes though so it doesn’t really like using it.. the way it moves.. is also kinda clunky and it isn’t exactly elegantly shaped. I begin to see why I like this.

In Galar my troupe of sheep isn’t that special when it comes to stats.  It has a special attack stat of 110 which is great but it is on par with most the electric types here that take less work to evolve.Yet in this last generation my baby got robbed of its mega evolution. In its mega form my sweet hairless sheep had an amazing 165 base special attack and gain the dragon typing as well as a bunch of wool back as fancy luscious locks. It’s so good as a Mega, even though the hair kinda looks silly, that’s what made it so sexy to me! Not as in Bomchikawawa sexy but non sexual sexy! That is a thing! Mega Amphi is kinda like my Totoro! So I was robbed! I can’t even put it to words but this pokémon is so charming to me! If I only could make one pokémon real this would be a consideration. It would probably be Sylveon in the end.. but the whole flesh ribbon things is kind of off putting. I am not going to make a battle set because all my Amphi’s were different and I love them all and I feel one of them might cry if I favor the other and I just can’t bear to imagine that!  Given the fact that I consider the feelings of digital picture I resetted over twice, and that they are still with me in spirit tells something on how much I love this pokémon! A deserved number 1.

What is your favorite electric type?! Did you ever use one of these in your team?! Do you use the electric type a lot? Leave your thoughts in the comments and let’s start talking Pokémon! Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog if you want to make sure that you catch nexts weeks Earth Shattering top 5! That’s right! Bring your balloons cause there will be earthquakes! Now I have to go to the store because my Joltik drained all my batteries!


Pokémon Top 5: Favorite Flying Types

Konichiwelcome everyone to yet another amazing list of amazing little creatures called Pokémon. In the previous top 5 we discussed my favorite five bug types. Lets swoop from the sky as we are super effective against bug types.. with the flying type. This list was super easy to make unlike some others. While I love the flying typing, I don’t really like flying type pokémon all that much. I don’t hate them either.. I just feel very neutral about nearly all of them, those who remain make my list!

Rules and Honorable Mentions

We have been over these rules for a few times now but for any newcomer, here is my set of rules. I always use them to point out two honorable mentions as well. The key in this all is diversity. So a dual type will only make it on ONE  lists of it’s typings. Say I like Slowbro than it would be on either my water list or my psychic list, never on both. Since the flying type is primarily used as a secondary typing this applies to SOOOO much pokémon for me. Charizard will be in my top 5 fire types.. since I find it more a fire type than a flying type so it is disqualified here. Rowlet is one of my favorite starters ever.. but I count it more as a grass type since it is the grass starter.. so it will be featured on another list.

Normally I will go by their primary typing as their main type.. but if I think a pokémon is more akin to it’s secondary typing.. like Corviknight  it will not feature here either. The biggest honorable mention and yet another spoiler for a future top 5 is Ducklett. A Water flying type.. with a pink shiny! I love ducks, I love pokémon.. I love pink..it’s perfect!

Another rule would be that I can only use one entry per evolutionary line. While I am allowed to pick my favorite of a series, I will take their entire line into account. For example I really like Ledyba, but I really dislike Ledian.. since the line has no future it will get a demerit and Ledyba will not make it on this list. I want to showcase pokémon in multiple situations.. which is also why legendaries do not make it on this list very often.

The final rule is that the pokémon has to actually feel like it’s typing. The biggest offender in this for the flying type is Gyarados. While I love Gyarados I can NOT see him as a flying types. Sure he can fly in some games and he can conjure up storms and such but the flying type is not the AIR type. With the most iconic storm (early gen)  storm moves being twister…which is a dragon type move. Gyarados is NOT a flying type it is a Water Dragon.. not a water dark either .. a water dragon.. Game Freak can tell me all it wants.. but Water-Flying is just wrong.. so obviously it doesn’t go on the flying list.

Flying Type Number 5
Chatot

For whatever ungodly reason The Pokemon Company’s policy on flying types goes a little something like this? “Is it a bird? “  If your answer is yes that pokémon is a normal/flying type. In some cases I agree, like pidgey, spearow, hoothoot and Pidove.  They are very basic animals and that gets the normal type for it. Sure! However my beloved Chatot has the head of a music note, and the tail of a metronome. It’s super colourful and has this neck collar like those coats those testosterone boys and fake tan girls wear during winter. You know the one with a dead Zigzagoon in the neck area?! Nickleson?! Not sure.. I skipped that trend. Chatot is such a weird pokémon that did such a unique thing in the world of pokémon that because of it’s sheer quirkiness quickly conquered my heart.  It is also one of the pokémon that makes the strongest case to the sound type.. a typing I hope will someday come to the game.

Chatot’s design is based on music stuff crammed onto the body of a parakeet and the design does feel truly unique and really like a pokémon. It has terrible stats and according to it’s pokédex entry is a true pacifist. It has a tongue in its beak that the same as a human tongue, having the same level of control over it as well. Thus it can mimic human speech or other pokémon cries. Which it does to befriend the pokémon to make sure it doesn’t get attacked. However this action would become one of the strangest moves in the entire pokémon series. At least for Gen IV and V. In Diamond and Pearl , Platinum , Black , White and their sequals Chatot could mimic YOUR voice. It’s signature move Chatter allowed you to record your voice and based on it’s volume it would have a better chance to confuse. 

Of course this led a pokémon with only a 410 base stat total to be banned from pokémon competitions because people used it to make it should racist slurs and curse words in tournaments which is a big no no! Which lead  to Chatot being one of the weakest pokémon ever to be banned. Nowadays the move no longer has the ability to record your voice but just confuses 100% off the time.. A confusion that bypasses substitutes with a moveset that is completely catered to getting around those pesky plushies.

It has decent speed, and decent special attack and with some EV’s in those stats Chatot can become something your opponents have difficulty dealing with. I have only used it during some Romhack playthroughs but I was amazed at how good it was for Nuzlocke like situations where it can come in to confuse your enemies, set up some stat boosts during this and then keep on confusing it’s opponent. The set I enjoy playing most is with Chatter, Double Team, Work Up and Synchronoise with a healing berry. Usually with a spore or paralyse user on my team as well.

Flying Type Number 4
Noivern

In Kalos we could basically find a better version of Chatot in the form of Noivern. So this once more is a pokémon I think should get the sound typing rather than it’s Dragon Typing.  The Dragon Typing does make it very sturdy and gives it some good resistances it also becomes super frail to ice Offensively it has about the same stats as Chatot but Noivern gets a lot more speed and a lot more moves, so it is a better monster.. without the iconic move. Bat dragons are also kind of cooler than a Parakeet.. yet at the same time it is kind of edgy! I do like myself a bit of colour and cute.. but I really gotta admire this design regardless. It looks strong and fierce and like a flying type! It feels like it could be a Jojo Stand if it had some mechanical parts.

Noivern has a great roll in the X&Y anime or XY&Z I guess but  that always helps make a pokémon more coveted. We see so much of it’s personality and Noivern is great. One of my favorite Ash Pokémon ever. The Kalos Region was my favorite when it comes to Ash adventures and him having cool pokémon like these really helped. While the one Mister Ketchum owned seemed sweet enough it looks mean so let’s look at the pokédex entries.

Apparantly nothing can defeat it when fighting in the dark, it can use echolocation to find you.. these waves are so strong they can turn boulders to pebbles. These same waves can be use to weaken their opponents as it will use it’s fangs to finish it’s prey off! That’s more like it! However ONE pokédex entry makes it seem like a sweetheart yet again. While it is always being described as cruel and vicious giving one a nice ripe fruit of the flavor that it likes will make it instantly tame… nawwww who is a big hungry night sky killer!

Now in combat Noivern is a bit weird. By far it’s best ability is infiltrator. Which allows you to bypass substitutes. However it’s moveset is mostly soundbased.. which bypasses substitutes.  I mean I still run it with BoomBurst because it offers a nice guaranteed neutral move, Draco Meteor, Hurricane and Dark Pulse with Choice Specs as a item. When it’s available to me in playthroughs of Rom Hacks or Fan games I prefer to give it an assault vest so I can capitalize on the Dragon Type resisting just about everything except for Dragon Fairy and Ice. Dark Pulse can be replaced by Flamethrower so it can cover its main weakness, it WILL outspeed virtually all Ice Types but I found going with the dark pulse to be nicer so it can deal with psychic types or ghost types that outspeed it and deal neutral damage.

Flying Type Number 3
Ho-Oh

Ho-Oh is my favorite legendary bird and one of my favorite legendaries ever. There is just something about the way it was build up from the first episode to the anime before meeting it in Pokémon Gold at the top of Tin Tower. I am not sure why, but Moltres never really felt like a phoenix to me.. I love phoenixes, is that the corrupt plural? Phoenixci ? Just Phoenix?So I was happy to be given a proper one! Pokémon Gold is my favorite pokémon game so I am sure that helps as well. It doesn’t help it is the rainbow pokémon either! And just look at the design it is so much cooler than Lugia’s! Who wants a white fish bird when you can have a phoenix.

It loves other pokémon and brought back to life the three legendary dogs, it is said to bring about happiness to everyone who own one of it’s feathers. It is even said to live near a rainbow! It is so cute!  Fire and flying is an excellent defensive typing only being weak to water, electric and rock type moves. Resisting Steel , Fairy and Fighting type moves  it resists some of the most competitive typings being immune to ground which is yet another dominant typing. Another sign that this pokémon can play nice with a lot of people! It doesn’t seem to like rock types very much though, being 4x weak to them. His weakest stat his physical defence is also exploited by the fact that rock type moves usually are physical. I guess there is no brown in the rainbow! Does that also mean anime girls never throw up rocks? In that case I might be doing something wrong.

Ho-Oh as a legendary really benefits from the very healthy post game in pokémon Gold and Heartgold, there is still an entire region to run through so the legendary is actually useful for more than the pokémon league alone. Which makes it al lot more viable than other pokémon. The fact that it is a physical fire type also distinguishes it from its peers. Sacred Fire, Brave Bird, Recover, Zen Headbutt is a nice set to run on this beast, yet because it is physical it is also one of the best fly users. You can take the HM to zip around and still have it deal massage damage. It has superb special defence and it it’s special attack is also good enough so you can run it as a special attacker.

Flying Type Number 2
Togekiss

A slightly less amazing special tank of the sky is my penultimate favorite flying type. Togekiss. Togetic was a lame evolution of an adorable pokémon that just felt lackluster, keeping the pokémon off my team during my Gold playthrough. By the time I obtained a Heart Gold Cartridge .. things changed though because now the little bugger could evolve. Togekiss is the perfect little Egg-Angel a girl could wish for.. Maybe it’s more an Angelic-Egg than the other way around though. It’s design is rather unique and feels adorable trough all three steps, the fact that it evolves to friendship and shiny energy .. really make it a pokémon I really dig. The white red and blue composition with its abstract shape make it feel like a Mondrian painting. It has the lamest shiny though.. instead of white with a blue gloss it is white without a gloss more pure white. 

It’s one of the happiest Pokémon in terms of lore as well. Misty eventually leaving Togetic behind was one of the saddest moments I saw in the anime but reading Pokédex entries warms my heart again. So Togekiss is such an improvement.  The Jubilee Pokémon is the pacifist pokémon. It will never show itself to people seeking conflict. Yet when you respect other people and animals rights it will share it’s blessings with you. How cute! It will even bring you gifts if you are a sweet person. Think of all the gifts we good get just by being nice to each other! So not only is the design is sweet, this pokémon would actively make you a better pokémon. I am pretty sure that pokémon battling counts as conflict though so .. it gets a bit confusing from there! Since it is actually quite useful in battle and it needs battle to level up.

Like I said before Togekiss is quite tanky on the special defence side of things. Equipped with the abilities like  Serene Grace and Super Luck you can build some various sets build around landing critical hits or special effects. Mostly Serene Grace and Special Effects make this pokémon quite nice to use. Land Flinches more easily with, Getting a Burn to half your opponents physical attributes. It can become really good with moves like Ancient Power and Stored Power combined with Serene Grace as well. Moves like Wish to give it reliable recovery are always good on it as well. You can have a lot of fun with this Angelic Egg! Fairy Flying is a great offensive typing  and no slouch defensively either. It has a fair few weaknesses but it’s immunity to Ground and Dragon can get you a long way.

My Favorite Flying Type
Archeops

With distance Archeops is my favorite flying pokémon! I LOVE this pokémon. It is my favorite fossil Pokémon ever, it would be my favorite rock type but I chose to elect this as flying type rather than a rock type. While I get classifying dinosaurs as Rock types, the fact that all fossils except for the Gen VIII ones are all rock types makes me distinguish them by secondary type. Thus Archeops to me counts as a flying type. It is based on the first bird and is a mix between dinosaur and a bird and I love that design. It makes for such a good fossil pokémon. It is really funny to me as well.

So while this pokémon is the predecessor of all birds it isn’t a strong flyer. It can’t take off at will it needs a running head start, it can run up to 25 miles per hour and flies slower.  So .. down hill you might be able to catch up to it on a bike.. else on a simple scooter. However with a speed modifier of 110 this thing is quite fast in game. It’s best move is a flying type move which according to it’s lore is a weaker attribute of the pokemon. I like my clunky pokémon and this to me is the pinnacle of clunky . It’s fly animation also is so adorably choppy! It is the perfect way to amalgamate types like Rock and flying! It’s shiny is bad but that goes for most things on this list.  I like Ho-Oh’s and Chatot’s fine but the rest is meh. Archeops I really love for how it battles though.

Archeops is one of those negative ability pokémon people can make fun off. Along with Slaking, and Regigigas it has one of those as well. As a result it’s base stat total is a very respectable 570 though , but in Archeops case it’s stats get cut in half as soon as it gets under half HP. Before that moment it has an amazing 140 attack stacks and 112 special attack.  Which means this barely flying bird can hurt! It is usually run with the move acrobatics. A base 55 power move that grows a lot stronger if Archeops doesn’t hold an item. This essentially means that in normal playthroughs this thing is a monster! I had an Archen (the pre-evolution) named Flock in Black and White. Flock was named because it was a flying rock. I loved Flock so much that I actually bred it’s offspring to use in Pokémon Y.  It’s son Minairal became was the first level 100 pokémon I ever had. I just had so much fun using it naturally leveled up to level 100. Acrobatics, Rock Slide, Dragon Claw and Fly made this pokémon nearly the only one I used. If Minairal is so fun to level to max.. I bet it deserves my number 1 spot.

Yet another type has been charted! More pocket monsters received love! We are now only at 1/3th of the pokémon type list journey! Next week the Electric type will go up! Who is your favorite flying type?! Do you use this type a lot?
Tell me all about it in the comments! Until then! Fly you fools!

Pokémon Top 5: Favorite Psychic Types

My dear island guests , the Psychic type is super effective against the fighting type so using this technique it steps in the ring. The question which are my favorite fighting types are much harder than most other types. I do not dislike the type at all, nor is it my favorite type, yet almost all psychic types are good in some way or another. Where usually I have deep depths and high highs the psychic type is 7’s and 8’s throughout the board. I even kind of like Bruxish!

Rules and Honorable Mentions

Starting with this list I am instating a new rule. Any duel types that make it on one list can not make it on another. For example Medicham is my favorite fighting type but it would be a bit redundant to put it here. I will favorite it to the type I most associate it with.  This gives more pokémon a chance to shine. Other rules apply like normal like only one entry per evolution line.  While I am free to choose what form I want.. If I dislike later forms and have to evolve them to be able to play them.. those later forms will be held against them. So while I am quite fond of Woobat, Swoobats weird design kinda ruins it for me. The same would apply to Munna.. but I love Woobat just a bit more.

Another rule, a type has to “feel” part of it’s typing to me. If a Pokémon doesn’t feel like a psychic type to me or I don’t use it as one, it will not make this list. Luckily the Psychic type really has good atmosphere and there are virtually no pokémon I would exclude from the type this way. Only one I could think of is the pokémon Victini and even than I still could believe it. Though I’d make it pure fire type.  The final rule is that pokémon has to have it’s typing in its base form. So no Silvally , Arceus or Genesect with typing stuff equipped to them or Mega Evolutions that change typing. Zen Mode Darmanitan is a pokémon I really love that is excluded for this reason. 

Psychic Type Number 5: Mewtwo

Let’s begin with the favorite pick of just about everyone else. Mewtwo is THE icon when it comes to psychic type pokémon and for good reason.  He is the embodiment of the type.The poster boy of the psychic type.   He is the second most powerful pokémon ever and when we count his mega evolutions he even IS the strongest pokémon ever. Even outclassing Arceus.  His design is very menacing and well done, his portrayel in all sorts of media is sublime. He gets some great pokémon cards,  I like playing him in Smash, he is a decent villian in the sub version of the pokémon movies and his part in Detective Pikachu , I like him in Pokken. Mewtwo does deserve to be listed and favorited.

 So why is he my number 5 pick and not number 1?  Because he is to easy to love. Mewtwo gets so much attention we get that been there done that sensation He feels like the easy pick for its power and because that I like him less. It is the same reason I do not like Charizard all that much.. though much less prominent in this case. His spot in the top 5 in favor of Espeon and  Hatterene is saved because of the lore  and how connected Mewtwo is to the world of pokémon. Mewtwo is an important part of the pokémon world. The yang to Arceus yin in a way. Nature versus science,  a theme that is very important to pokémon. In a way he is more pokémon than anything else on this list or any other poké list for that matter.

In combat he is mostly disallowed because of his high stats, but we all know we run a set with psychic on it because of nostalgia. With the inclusion of Mega Mewtwo X however it now also can be ran as a physical set, trough moves like Psycho Cut, Foul Play and  Power Swap. The special set, usually ran along Mega Mewtwo Y comes with Psystrike  and Aura Sphere but I have seen with the nostalgic psychic from time to time as well. Regardless of what you put on your Mewtwo it will hurt like a truck..because it’s Mewtwo. You can’t really go wrong. Not the best pokémon to use if you want a challenge but one hell of a lucky find if you play randomised Nuzlockes because it will wreck hard. It still is the most powerful pokémon ever.

Psychic Type Number 4: Galarian Ponyta

Of course I had to include this rainbow unicorn. While of course it’s final evolution Galarian Rapidash is better, and I will be discussing that one for a viable battle set (because it can’t be run with eviolite or something)  galarian Ponyta is my favorite form of the two. It just feels so happy and cute and fluffy and I WANT one. Had I not spent the entire 24 hour livestream of Glimwood Tangle hoping for more.. and had galarian Rapidash had become a pegasus with a flying type instead of the fairy type.. this line would have taken my number one spot. Still.. a fluffy unicorn that has rainbow patterns when it is happy! That is amazing! If we Dutch believed in Santa that is what I would ask of him… we have this other old bloke who rides a white horse so he would probably steal it from me and never look back.. so I never got to.

When Pokémon and My Little Pony meet, you get this beautiful equine creature. It’s black horn is also super cute. Just seeing this little beast parade around your camp having fun while it is racing other pokémon just made me smile so hard. I loved tossing a ball to it, feeding it banana curry and of course waving a stick with a bell in front of it. This pokémon which I named Flufflepuff,  is still my favorite horse pokémon, and though I do prefer the shiny of the original fire variant of this pokémon it’s base design far surpasses that of its kantonian counterpart. If I could just customise it a bit and give it a cutie mark it would have been absolutely perfect.

Galarian Rapidash can be quite fun to play with during a playthrough through the Galar Region. It’s eyes are a bit to arrogant for me. Which prevent it from being higher on this list. What makes it fun to use is how diverse it’s moveset can be. It still learns a bunch of fire moves to cover the bugs it is weak against, it gets access to moves like High Horse Power for some earth type hits, it has psycho cut, which isn’t seen on a lot of other pokémon other than Malamar and Mewtwo as there are not a lot of physical fighting types out there.  While it’s stats aren’t too amazing with its strongest stat  being speed at 105 and attack at 100 it borders on being “average”. Yet that is what made this pokémon fun to me. There is a nice balance in its power and frailty which makes it interesting to use. It learns lots of elemental attacks and with the way Galar balanced T.M’s and T.R’s  It can be fun to kit out the unicorn with a custom set for each fight. A unicorn that won my won my heart, even if I am not all over the rainbow for it.

Psychic Type Number 3: Wobbuffet

Now this might polarise some people, Wobbuffet, that is such a useless pokémon!?  Honestly it really isn’t. I love the blue weird thing. From its intrinsic stiffness and weirdness, to it The weird lipstick thing on the females as a gender difference I find hilarious, and it is my favorite Team Rocket Pokémon. Just so awkward I love awkward things. It’s voice in the anime is something I am very endeared to and just the fact that it’s one of those.. what is that supposed to be pokémon adds to it’s mystique.. of which their actual is non it’s just Wobbuffet.  While I could easily give this spot to Alakazam that one is basically just slightly lesser Mewtwo while Wobbuffet is completely it’s own thing. I could have given this spot to Hypno.. who steals kids and made some big lore splashes but no.. I love this pokémon so much more.

Wobbuffet has no interesting Pokémon Lore, in fact it doesn’t really do anything…at all.. It just stands there. It’s pokédex entry says so. It just is there to endure other pokémon’s attacks. If it encounters another Wobbuffet it does even less as it stops eating to out endure the other of its kind.  So if you’d put a female Wobbie and a male one in the daycare centre with some incense in reality they would not breed for you to get a wynaut .. they’d die of starvation showing off to each other. The only weakness of Wobbuffet is it’s tail. When you attack that.. it does down.. but it will always try to take you down with you.. and this is why I love Wobbie so much as a Psychic type.

This pokémon is all about predictions. It can only learn Counter, Mirror Coat, Destiny Bond, Safeguard, Encore, Amnesia and Charm.. well that and Splash.. but we all know what happens if you use that move.  It’s stats are very bad but they do not matter. All that matters is it’s hp.  Counter will double any physical damage taken and send that towards your opponent, Mirror coat does the same but for Special damage and Destiny Bond will take a target down with it.. it goes down before it uses another move. If Wobbuffet is actually hit and you as it’s trainer predict correctly it basically means the opponent goes down. Encore which locks an opponent into their last used move can guarantee success in this. Obviously a Machamp will try to punch it so counter is a good option.. but you can only take so much hits so at one point you need to set up destiny bond. During gameplay plenty of pokemon are mixed sets.. so using Wobbie can just be so much fun.. that actually involve predicting the future! So it deserves this spot!

Psychic Type Number 2: Gardevoir

Yes this scored very highly since my first playthrough of Gen III and is a regular staple on my team. Ever since it has gotten the fairy subtype that has even increased how much that I love it.. now when I say that I love it.. I do not mean that in any physical or lustful kind of sense.. which apparently is a thing you need to clarify around this Pokemon. It is often waifu ed and lewded and though I will not kinkshame. I love it’s totally unique design  Even among the human like pokemon. Weirdly enough until Galar this Pokemon never belonged to the human like Egg group and only played with amorphous Pokemon.

Gardevoir is the near perfect pokémon, it looks unique , it looks psychic, it has great stats, awesome moves, gets love in all media  but ,with exception for the meme and lewding scene , not OVERLY much. It looks like it’s evolution is telling a story and over time it only has gotten better with the addition of split evolution Gallade. It’s cute a girly, even if it isn’t always a female pokémon and a testament of being yourself. I took one along on my Omega Ruby playtrough just because I knew Wally would have a Mega Gallade in the end. I wanted to give them an epic showdown naming it Virgo as I named my main theme after constellations and I had to capture a pokémon to fit that constellation.  She was my most memorable Gardevoir.

A well played Gardevoir with Trace can do amazing things but is rather situational so the synchronize  set usually more stable. Regardless of your ability though , Gardevoir hits hard. Mega Gardevoir hits harder With a special attack of 165  and a special defence of 135 it dwarfs even legendaries. While still a fair bit away from Mewtwo’s base stat total of 680, it hits harder (specially)  than Mewtwo and it takes more hits (specially) than Mewtwo.. for the role it’s going to be used as it’s simply amazing.  Equip it with Psychic , Moonblast, Shadow Ball and Hidden Power Fire (or Pixilate boosted Return)  and it can get around just about everything. In base form it’s one of the best looking pokémon in the entire game and while it’s mega evolution is a bit balloony for my taste I still enjoy it looks. When a pokémon kicks ass and looks good doing it.. you got a good one!

Psychic Type Number 1 : Mew

It’s Psychic, It’s Pink, It is adorable and playful. While I had trouble determining which pokémon would be on this list there was no doubt in my mind that Mew is my favorite psychic type. Have I mentioned it’s pink?!  Mew has gotten significantly less love than Mewtwo over these past few years but it has been made up for in spades with mystery.
Britain once voted the identity of the Stig from Top Gear as one of the greatest mysteries of the world.. but had Nintendo played their cards a bit closer to the chest I’d theorise “how to get Mew” in Pokémon Red and Blue could have made this list.

Everyone knows about that truck that his hidden on the water next to the SS Anne.  Temtem made a amazing reference to it by placing a island with a  truck somewhere on the map hinting a powerful Temtem might be hiding there. I caught a Missingno and somehow managed to trade it with strength and cut equipped in order to finally get Mew from underneath that truck (As rumors stated the pokémon using strength needed a level higher than 100) No Mew!  I got Pokémon Stadium and Pokémon Snap in the hopes to get it to my Game Boy game.. I caught Mew in Snap.. but I still did not know how to get it in my game. I wanted so bad because the movie made it seem so adorable and playful.. it became that toy people said you could not play with.

In lore Mew is basically the genetic ancestor of every non legendary pokémon. Basically the son of Arceus that got lonely and made some friends to play with.. the lake trio was involved in creating Mew (Uxie Azelf and Mespirit) but how can a pokémon that is basically the source of all other pokémon NOT be the best psychic type out there?  Every Pokémon is like part of it! Without it there would not be any starters to start your journey with.. without it  zero of the other pokémon on this list would exist.

In combat Mew is absolutely amazing. It learns  all learnable moves and it gets 100 stat points in everything. Which means there is no correct way to build Mew.. everything you do is fine. Physical Tank with Screens? Viable.. Speedy Special Sweeper with wide covery? Viable. Toxic Stall set?! Okay! .. It will never be your best option for either of these things but it will always keep your opponent guessing. In a way Mew is still the mystery it has always been. When your opponent brings a Mew  you never know what you are going to get. Unlike with a box of chocolates.. what’s in that should at least be on the back! While Mew’s mysteries live on we now know to things about Mew for sure. It is my favorite Psychic type by a large margin and he is not under the truck.. no .. the way to find Mew has since been found! An ancient secret has been unlocked… You can purchase a single Mew alongside a Pokéball controller for the price of 50 dollars!

What is your favorite Psychic type?! Like I said this one was hard.. there are just so many good ones , so please show the love for your favorites! All pokémon deserve it some love! Next week we will cover the bug type! See you then…and hopefully in the rest of my posts! Do not forget to subscribe!

XO
Pinkie