Deerling and Sawsbuck

Excuse me for a moment.  I need to do the cutesy baby-talk thing.

Aw, who’s a cute little deer?  You are!  Yes you are!  Yeshyouare!

You saw nothing; you heard nothing.

Today I’m looking at the Pokémon incarnations of Bambi and his dad: Deerling and Sawsbuck.  Deerling are shy, retreating creatures, much like real deer, but because they’re Grass Pokémon they’re even better at blending into their environments, thanks to their mossy fur.  Surprisingly robust and adaptive, Deerling are the subject of a great deal of research in Unova because of an unusual property they possess, chosen to emphasise one of the new mechanics of Black and White: seasonality.  The Pokémon games have had a concept of day and night since Gold and Silver but only now has Game Freak added in the four seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, which the games cycle through over the course of four months.  A few Pokémon vary in rarity and in range with the seasons – Cubchoo, for instance, can be found further south in Winter than at other times – but only one or two disappear entirely at certain times of year (from memory, I think Druddigon hibernate in Winter, but that’s about it).  There are also a few areas where snow drifts build up in winter and allow you to climb to places that are inaccessible in the other seasons.  Mostly, however, the changes are cosmetic – as they are with Deerling and Sawsbuck.  As Grass Pokémon, these deer behave in some ways like plants, and as such they change their appearance with the seasons: in Spring Sawsbuck are covered with buds and flowers and in Summer they grow bushy foliage, which turns orange in Autumn and then falls away in Winter.  Deerling aren’t quite so elaborately ornamented but their fur’s colour and scent changes over the months to match the plants around them, camouflaging them to protect them from all but the most tenacious predators.  Besides this curious property, there’s not much to them; in other respects they’re much like real deer.  They are, as I said, in Black and White just to highlight the games’ new seasonal cycle.  Having said that, they’re not exactly badly done – one might compare, for instance, Ruby and Sapphire’s Castform, whose concept was “a Pokémon that changes form with the weather” and who came out as... well, a Pokémon that changes form with the weather.  Without their gimmick Deerling and Sawsbuck would be pretty bland, but they’d still exist, which is more than can be said for Castform.

Since there’s relatively little to say about Sawsbuck I may as well spend some time talking about the seasons.  Like the day/night mechanic first used in Gold and Silver, the seasons don’t really have a tremendous impact on gameplay; in fact their effect is probably even less pronounced.  Many Pokémon in Gold and Silver are strictly nocturnal, such as Spinarak; some, like Ledyba, appear only in the early hours of the morning.  In the case of night and day, however, if a Pokémon is unavailable at a particular time you won’t have to wait more than a few hours before you can come back and catch it.  If you found yourself wanting to catch a Pokémon that only appeared in Summer, on the other hand, you could find yourself having to wait months – this, presumably, is why only one Pokémon ever disappears completely (Druddigon) and even then only for one season; too much of that would be absurdly frustrating.  One might expect seasons to have an effect on the growth of certain types of berry, but this is not the case since cultivating berries is now the exclusive province of the online Dream World.  If this is so, you could fairly ask, what exactly is the point of the season mechanic?  No more or less, I could fairly answer, than an immersive detail.  They don’t do a lot in concrete terms, no, and like so much else in Pokémon I think the idea could have been taken further.  However, as a simple aesthetic touch that makes the world feel a bit more real, I think they have definite merit.

Unlike the seasons, Sawsbuck has some very interesting mechanical features.  Unusually for a Grass Pokémon, Sawsbuck is a fast, powerful physical attacker, and he has access to a variety of ways of making himself even faster or more powerful – most obviously, Agility and Swords Dance respectively (either of which Sawsbuck can give to another Pokémon instead using Baton Pass, if you like).  For a passive ability, Sawsbuck gets either Sap Sipper or Chlorophyll.  Chlorophyll, which makes a Pokémon twice as fast in bright sunlight, would make Sawsbuck pretty dangerous on a sun team, especially combined with Swords Dance.  It’s something a lot of Grass Pokémon can use, but Sawsbuck is definitely a strong example.  The other ability, Sap Sipper, isn’t as overtly powerful but it’s far more unusual – it grants immunity to Grass attacks, and causes Sawsbuck’s physical attacks to get stronger every time a Grass attack hits him.  Obviously no-one’s actually going to use Grass attacks on Sawsbuck deliberately, so you need to switch him in when you think a Grass attack is coming in order to get the boost, but if you can manage it your opponent will be in an awkward position indeed.  Now, all of this is wonderful, but at some point Sawsbuck is going to need to actually stab something, so let’s see what he has in that department.  Sawsbuck is in fact a dual-type – Grass/Normal – which is something of a mixed blessing.  Grass and Normal are both poor offensive types, and as a defensive combination they don’t really work very well together either – however, by being a Normal-type, Sawsbuck has managed to trick Game Freak into violating their usual maxim that Grass-Types Don’t Get Nice Things.  He has a powerful Bug-type attack in Megahorn, a powerful Fighting-type attack in Jump Kick, and even a powerful Electric-type attack in Wild Charge – plus, of course, his Normal and Grass attacks, including a nifty signature move, Horn Leech, a physical Grass-type attack that drains health from its target to heal Sawsbuck (effectively a physical equivalent to Giga Drain).  He even gets access to Earthquake via Nature Power, an odd technique that changes into different attacks depending on the terrain (in Black and White, it always counts as Earthquake in link battles, which is where it really matters).  It’s easy to underestimate Sawsbuck because, again, Grass/Normal is really pretty bad, and his stats, while good, aren’t stellar, but he’s probably one of the more dangerous Grass Pokémon out there.

In summary, while I’m not completely satisfied with Deerling and Sawsbuck on a conceptual level – I think the design revolves around their gimmick a little too much – they haven’t committed sins of anywhere near the magnitude I’ve seen in the past.  Moreover, Sawsbuck is quite strong as Grass-types go, and certainly unique in a number of ways.  They’re a good effort, not brilliant Pokémon but a good effort nonetheless.

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist!