Axew, Fraxure and Haxorus

Time to bring out the big guns.  Dragon Pokémon have always had a reputation for being among the roughest, toughest, most ornery Pokémon around, and my subjects today are no exception.  Axew, Fraxure and Haxorus are territorial Pokémon that fight with pairs of massive tusks shaped like the blades of a double-axe, which grow harder, sharper and more powerful as they evolve, chopping through first wood, then rock, then steel.  Oddly enough, Axew’s tusks quickly regenerate when broken, but Fraxure’s will not (presumably Haxorus’ won’t either, but since the Pokédex is silent on that question it’s entirely possible that there’s never been a recorded instance of a Haxorus’ tusk breaking in the first place).  I doubt that’s a mistake; even I give Game Freak more credit than that, but I’m not sure what, if anything, it’s supposed to imply; maybe Axew have greater vitality because of their youth?  I like the physical aspects of Axew, Fraxure and Haxorus’ design because they’re far more naturalistic than most Dragon Pokémon; they bear more of a resemblance to dinosaurs than the standard European dragons whose influence we see in Dragonite, Flygon, and especially Salamence (Garchomp is somewhere in between, but he does still fly... and he’s also part shark).  In keeping with this, they’re less ‘mythical’ in their presentation than many other Dragon-types; they’re not unique in that respect but I feel it’s emphasised with them, perhaps deliberately.  Although the defining character trait of the axe jaw family is that they’re very territorial and quarrel constantly, Haxorus are actually gentle Pokémon as long as they aren’t threatened or challenged, not unlike many real animals.  They’re ‘dragons,’ but you can see them as part of an ecosystem to an extent that’s difficult for most other Dragon-types.  Still, I’m somewhat ambivalent about their flavour.  What’s there is good, and their artwork is nicely done, and having an axe for a face is bizarre but creative, but the Pokédex for the most part spends too much time talking about how awesome their tusks are to tell us much else about them, and so they’re not filled out as much as I would like.  Good, but not brilliant.

The other thing that’s different about Haxorus is her element.  Haxorus is a Dragon Pokémon – just a Dragon Pokémon, which isn’t really unusual in itself, but the thing is, there’s never been a fully-evolved Dragon Pokémon before that didn’t have a second element as well: Dragonite, Altaria and Salamence are Flying-types, Kingdra’s a Water-type, and Garchomp and Flygon are Ground-types.  That’s not really interesting but it’s a niche that needed to be filled, one way or another (there’s another straight Dragon-type in Black and White – Druddigon – but Druddigon is... well, I’ll get to Druddigon in another few weeks).  On its own or in combination, Dragon is a wonderful type for both attack and defence.  Dragon Pokémon resist Fire, Water, Grass and Electric moves and are weak only to Ice and Dragon moves – Dragon Pokémon are strongest against each other.  Dragon attacks aren’t super-effective against any other types, which is far from inspiring, but there’s also only one element that resists Dragon attacks (Steel).  What’s more, the strongest Dragon attacks are crazily powerful.  In Diamond/Pearl, Salamence’s Draco Meteor was the Pokéverse’s equivalent to a tactical nuke and was known for reducing almost anything that doesn’t resist it to a smoking crater.  Haxorus has a poor special attack stat, so Draco Meteor isn’t a realistic option for her, but her physical attack stat is nothing short of phenomenal.  If Draco Meteor is like a tactical nuke, Haxorus’ Outrage is like waking up after a night of indulging in adult beverages and having South Carolina dropped on your head.  What’s more, Haxorus can learn Swords Dance, and if she gets a free moment to use that, something is almost certainly going to be beaten to a thin red paste.  Most things that actually resist Outrage take fairly severe damage from Earthquake; what’s more, Haxorus’ passive ability, Mold Breaker, allows her attacks to ignore the abilities of other Pokémon – most notably, Pokémon with Levitate aren’t immune to her Earthquakes, which bring Bronzong crashing to the ground.  That still leaves a slot open for X-Scissor or something; what Haxorus really wants is a Fire attack to deal with Steel-types that aren’t weak to Earthquake, but what she’s got is perfectly acceptable.

Haxorus is obscenely powerful; only seven Pokémon are stronger, five of which are legendary.  She’s hasn’t completely taken over the game, however, and isn’t going to.  Not being able to learn Fire Punch or something is probably part of it (Skarmory in particular, whose immunity to Earthquake comes from his Flying element rather than an ability and thus isn’t denied by Mold Breaker, is pretty much a brick wall to Haxorus), but what’s more significant is her speed.  Haxorus isn’t by any means slow, but she’s just a little bit slower than Garchomp, Salamence, Flygon, Latios, Latias and Hydreigon, six of the other eight major Dragon Pokémon, and since, as I mentioned, Dragon-types are weak to their own attacks, no Dragon Pokémon wants be outrun by another for fear of taking an Outrage or Draco Meteor to the face.  Furthermore, she has the weakest defences of any fully-evolved Dragon-type aside from maybe Flygon, so she’s much more prone to being worn down than the others are.  Her comparatively lower speed makes Dragon Dance an attractive technique because she’ll get faster as she gets stronger, but since she’ll also be gaining physical power at a slower rate than if she were using Swords Dance, she’s less likely to demolish her targets completely with a single hit and therefore more vulnerable to retribution.  If you feel spending a turn dancing is a bit of a drag, getting Haxorus to hold a Choice Scarf will make her faster from the get-go, potentially letting her surprise and destroy the other Dragon Pokémon that would normally expect her to run from them (alternatively, a Choice Band will make her physical attacks stronger – because if you don’t want to destroy a small planetary body with every punch, why are you even using Haxorus?).  Any Pokémon can use one of these things, but Haxorus’ stat distribution and reasonable offensive movepool make her more suited than most.  Holding a Choice item, however, comes at a price: it locks a Pokémon into the first attack it uses until it next switches out, robbing you of your versatility.  For all her power, Haxorus can’t succeed without a little finesse.  Whatever you make of her, she’s going to be vulnerable to something, and significantly more so than her elders.  If you can pull it off, though, the sheer absurdity of Haxorus’ Outrage is worth it.

I’m vague on Haxorus; she’s clearly strong enough to deserve being spared, but she’s not strong for particularly different reasons than the existing Dragon Pokémon: Dragon and Ground attacks go well together, Outrage and Dragon Dance are awesome, and Dragon-types are traditionally blessed with tremendous physical strength.  If nothing else, though, her sheer strength and pure typing do distinguish her somewhat.  Axew and Fraxure, while not especially deep in terms of concept, are at least cute and cool respectively, aesthetically different from most previous Dragon Pokémon.  They’re not ideal Pokémon, but for the most part, I’m okay with them.

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist!

Rufflet and Braviary

Oh look.  Another bird Pokémon.  Whoo.  I am ecstatic.  Can you tell?

Luckily for him, Braviary is a huge badass eagle Pokémon that knocks the stuffing out of Pokémon like Fearow and Pidgeot.  Even more luckily for him, that’s not all he is.  The single feather on Rufflet’s head, and Braviary’s feather ‘headdress,’ seem to be intended to call to mind the headgear of Native American warriors of the central United States, like the Comanche and Cheyenne.  As such, their personality is centred around a warrior outlook; they fight each other often for practice, but protect each other ferociously when attacked.  Battle scars are a mark of prestige with them and they never back down from fear of a strong opponent.  Braviary is incredibly strong and can lift small cars in flight (no, I’m sure it’s not possible but who cares?) and Rufflet can... crush berries with his claws?  Am I missing something here?  The Pokédex reports that as though it should sound impressive, but... what?  Despite this non sequitur I think Rufflet and Braviary are a lot of fun.  Compare them to some of the old generic Normal/Flying bird Pokémon: Pidgeot has supersonic flight, wind powers, brilliant eyesight and famously beautiful plumage (relatively obvious concepts for a bird of prey), Fearow can pretty much fly forever and reach ridiculous altitudes (again, sort of boring), Dodrio has three heads that try to kill each other, which is crazy awesome, and Farfetch’d (...poor, poor Farfetch’d...) is a near-extinct wild duck who uses a leek as a sword and quite honestly is probably the coolest of the lot, if only he could actually do anything.  In terms of design, I don’t think Braviary is leagues ahead of these but he’s definitely one of the more interesting Pokémon of the group.  I can’t help but think that Game Freak got his element wrong, though.  The aesthetic imitation of a class of human warrior, the obsession with combat, the focus on courage, the conception of honour...  honestly, if those aren’t characteristics of a Fighting-type Pokémon I don’t know what is, but Rufflet and Braviary, like all the other Pokémon I just mentioned, are Normal/Flying-type Pokémon.  Fighting/Flying is a combination that doesn’t exist yet and I’m not certain why the designers didn’t pick that instead, unless they were specifically aiming to create another Normal/Flying-type.  Actually, now that I think of it, that’s probably exactly what they had in mind.  Gods, I hate them.

If Braviary’s going to distinguish himself on mechanical grounds, there is one thing he has to do.  He leaves Pidgeot, Fearow, Dodrio and Swellow in the dust, sure, but they’re not important.  What matters is whether or not Braviary can be stronger than – or, far better, completely different to – Staraptor.  Staraptor is basically Fearow revamped for Diamond and Pearl; his defences are terrible (though still marginally better than Fearow’s) but he’s fast, he hits hard, he has a wonderful ability (Intimidate: when you send out Staraptor, he frightens his opponent to weaken its physical attacks) and, most importantly, where most of the bird Pokémon are stuck with just their Normal- and Flying-type attacks with few other options, Staraptor has a powerful Fighting-type attack, Close Combat, which he can use to demolish the Rock and Steel Pokémon that can safely ignore Swellow, Dodrio and Pidgeot completely (in Black and White Fearow can smack them with a Ground-type attack, Drill Run, which gives him a much-needed edge over his cousins, but Staraptor’s Close Combat is still better).  The addition of a useful ability and a strong Fighting attack made Staraptor unique and special; it let him rise above the perpetual obscurity of his predecessors and actually do some damage.  So, what does Braviary have that makes him special?

...a strong Fighting attack.

Braviary’s main selling points are as follows.  He’s tougher than all the others by a long way (Staraptor can take physical attacks just as well after Intimidate, but is painfully vulnerable to energy attacks).  His physical attack score is excellent, slightly higher than Staraptor’s.  Most importantly, he learns Superpower, which is as strong as Staraptor’s Close Combat but carries with it disadvantages that make it less useful.  Specifically, Close Combat weakens your defences against both physical and special attacks after you use it (Staraptor doesn’t really care because he’s all-offense anyway and fast enough to pull it off) while Superpower weakens your physical defence and your own physical attacks, making Braviary significantly less useful and more or less forcing him to switch out after using it once – both attacks are so crazily powerful that it’s often worth it but Superpower is generally a poorer option, and either would be problematic for a tougher Pokémon like Braviary because they compromise his ability to take hits.  The high stats are really just gravy; in particular, Braviary is missing some important features that would make him a good tank (Normal/Flying is defensively poor, and since Roost isn’t a TM anymore Braviary has no way to heal himself), so his high defences don’t help him nearly as much as his relative lack of speed hurts him (he’s slower than all the other Normal/Flying Pokémon except for Farfetch’d and Noctowl).  It’s access to Superpower that sets Braviary apart, and unfortunately it sets him apart in the same way as Close Combat sets Staraptor apart, just not quite as well.  Braviary’s ability, Sheer Force, should set him apart because it’s wonderful: it lets him ‘trade in’ a move’s side effect, if it has one (such as the chance that Thunderbolt will paralyse its target), for extra damage.  The trouble is, Game Freak have been extraordinarily mean to most of the Pokémon that have Sheer Force naturally; Braviary, like Druddigon, Darmanitan and Conkeldurr, has very few worthwhile attacks that it actually applies to.  The only one worth using is Rock Slide, which is admittedly quite helpful for extra super-effective hits on Fire, Ice and Flying Pokémon, but just isn’t strong enough to be a spectacular advantage.  The other thing that should make Braviary uniquely capable but doesn’t is Bulk Up, a move that increases its user’s physical attack and defence at the same time.  It’s a great set-up move for a tank-style Pokémon but, as I mentioned, Braviary has been denied the things that would make him good at that style of play; without either a lot of resistances or a source of healing, his defences just aren’t that strong.

I will admit I’m somewhat prejudiced against Rufflet and Braviary just for being Normal/Flying dual-types.  They’re the tenth family of Pokémon to fall into the category (the eleventh if you count Pidove, Tranquill and Unfezant... which I don’t) and that alone is enough to annoy me.  Their flavour is cool, I admit, but not outstanding, and they’re definitely not weak, but they seem to have been designed in just such a way as to draw attention to the things Staraptor does better.  So, if I’m so clever, how would I make them work?  Well, the answer is emphatically not “give them Close Combat over Superpower and make them faster”; I have no interest in cloning Staraptor.  I would hone down Braviary’s attack stat a little bit (he doesn’t need to have more raw power than Staraptor to be good) boost his special defence and maybe his physical defence, give the poor thing Roost so he can heal himself, for heaven’s sake, and change his type to Fighting/Flying, adjusting the attacks he learns accordingly (might need to invent some new Fighting attacks that would be thematically appropriate for a bird Pokémon, but why not?).  I literally came up with that stuff as I was writing this entry, it doesn’t require his design to be rethought at all and it expresses that design, if anything, better than what he’s got now.  It’s really not that hard!

I hereby deny this Pokémon’s right to exist!  Let it be deep-fried and sent in a bucket to the Pokémon Fan Club chairman!

Ducklett and Swanna

Two more bird Pokémon enter the fray, these ones based on the humble duck and regal swan.  Are they interesting?  Probably not?  Are they powerful?  I doubt it.  Do I like them?  Heck no, but let’s look at them anyway.

Part of me assumes that Ducklett and Swanna are supposed to reference the fairy tale of the ugly duckling, the repulsive-looking baby bird who was shunned by his peers and the rest of the animal kingdom, suffered untold hardships in a cruel world he was not made to live in, grew strong from adversity by learning the true meaning of friendship, and died alone in the middle of a swamp, upside down with his head jammed into a hollow log filled with soft peat.  Or something like that.  I’m a little hazy on the finer details.  Anyway, I originally assumed that’s what Ducklett and Swanna are about, but I’m no longer sure that can be it because Ducklett really isn’t ugly.  She’s not flat-out adorable but she’s reasonably cute.  If that is what Game Freak were aiming for with this design then they picked a strange way to go about it. Quite aside from that... they’re actually done it before, and it worked, not with a literal duckling and swan but with Feebas, who evolves into Milotic specifically when she becomes beautiful enough (a mechanic from Ruby and Sapphire that’s been kind of dropped since then; it’s best not to ask).  That worked extremely well and as a result Milotic has always been a very popular Pokémon.  Add to that the fact that the whole process of Pokémon evolution turns the entire premise of the game into an ugly duckling story of sorts, and I’m not sure why I should care when a literal ugly duckling turns up on my doorstep.  With all that in mind, it’s probably a good thing that I’m no longer convinced Game Freak even had the ugly duckling in mind at all.  Unfortunately, I don’t think they had anything else in mind either.  Ducklett is a duck and does duck things, and that’s all there is to it.  Psyduck and Farfetch’d were much more interesting; Ducklett is just a duck.  Swanna, likewise, is a swan and does swan things, and again, that’s all there is to it.  For a little added bizarreness to complete the feeling of a poorly-thought-out design, the Pokédex emphasises the power of the blows Swanna can deliver with her beak... but, you guessed it, Swanna doesn’t actually learn any attacks that use her beak (no Drill Peck, no Drill Run, heck, not even Peck or Fury Attack, and she only gets Pluck from a TM).  Am I really asking too much by expecting a Pokémon to be more or less competent at the things it claims to be good at?

Just when you thought I was almost done complaining, it turns out Swanna can’t really fight either.  Being a water bird, Swanna’s element is Water/Flying, which in most respects is pretty darn solid – five resistances and an immunity to only two weaknesses is nothing to sniff at, even if one of those is a double-weakness to Electric attacks.  The thing about Water/Flying, though (from a mechanical perspective, at least) is that there have been three other Pokémon with this type combination in the past... and the first one was Gyarados.  Mantine was an interesting idea but was never going to work, and Pelipper was a terrible idea that was never even going to survive, but Gyarados is quite an act to follow.  What’s more, Swanna, unlike Pelipper and Mantine, is an aggressive Pokémon and is thus in a very real sense competing with Gyarados, of all things, for a position on a team.  She’s quite fast, but unfortunately falls just short of the point at which her speed would be a real asset (speed is the only stat in Pokémon that’s all-or-nothing; you’re either faster than your opponent or you aren’t, so a little goes a long way... or, in this case, fails to).  Her defences are worth barely a glance, and her attack and special attack scores, while they would be reasonably good on a Pokémon that isn’t reliant on its ability to cause direct damage, are frankly inexcusable on one that wants to be a sweeper.  What’s more, her passive abilities are both bottom-of-the-barrel material (and frightfully dull on a bird Pokémon to boot): Keen Eye makes her immune to anything that would reduce her accuracy, and Big Pecks makes her immune to anything that would reduce her defence (in-game, against the AI, these are at best situational; against other people they’re next to useless because those tactics very rarely make appearances).  This is... not an inspiring chassis.  It reminds me of Fearow, which... well, I’ve seen worse, but it’s grim.  Swanna’s movepool may yet be her saving grace – I’m not optimistic but I need something to fall back on – so let’s take a look at that.

The good news is that Water attacks and Flying attacks are a fairly powerful combination that’s not easy to resist, and what’s more this is something Swanna has over Gyarados since Gyarados doesn’t actually learn any Flying attacks (okay, there's Bounce, but Bounce is silly).  Swanna, on the other hand, gets a choice of two fantastically powerful Flying attacks: a physical one, Brave Bird, and a special one, Hurricane.  Swanna can theoretically use either of the two equally well (or rather, equally poorly) but I wouldn’t recommend an all-physical moveset because... well, because she doesn’t have enough physical attacks to put together an all-physical moveset (most importantly, she doesn’t learn Waterfall).  Hurricane is normally unreliable, missing its mark 30% of the time, but the nice thing about Hurricane is that it becomes unerringly accurate in heavy rain, which will also make Swanna’s Surf more powerful.  I don’t think I’d recommend putting Rain Dance on Swanna herself because she’s just too brittle to spend time casting it, but if you include her on a rain team, she’ll have reliable access to two very powerful attacks, which might almost make up for the fact that her base special attack stat is depressingly lacklustre.  Once you’ve got Surf and Hurricane, add Ice Beam and round it out with... um... hmm.  Okay, Swanna doesn’t actually learn any other appropriate special attacks but you could use Brave Bird just in case you run into Blissey or something.  Surf, Hurricane and Ice Beam should actually work pretty well on most opponents; just make sure it’s raining and Swanna should be able to do... well, not a lot of damage, exactly, but a reasonable amount.  As for not doing damage... well, Game Freak gave Swanna access to a whole bunch of moves that make me think they intended her, at least at some point, to be a defensive Pokémon – Aqua Ring, Roost, Featherdance, Lucky Chant – but most of those are fairly silly and Swanna’s defences are terrible anyway.  Other than that there’s nothing to be said; Brave Bird and Hurricane are gems but the rest of her movepool is horribly shallow.

These Pokémon are really boring.  Their concept is boring, the execution of that concept is boring, their powers are boring, they’re just BORING!  I am done paying attention to them.

I hereby deny this Pokémon’s right to exist!  Let it be shot down in migration by Canadians with harpoon-guns!

Minccino and Cinccino

Today’s Pokémon are Game Freak’s most recent addition to the “cute fuzzy Normal-type” pool: Minccino and Cinccino, the chinchilla Pokémon.  Now, I’ve expressed irritation in the past that there were already quite enough of these, and summarily executed Audino on those grounds since, let’s face it, she’s Chansey 2.0.  Minccino’s odds are, to put it mildly, not looking good.

Upon closer inspection, however, a lot of the things that bug me about Audino don’t really apply to Minccino.  Audino was another pink, vaguely-humanoid, fairy-looking thing along the lines of Wigglytuff, Chansey and Clefable.   Minccino and Cinccino aren’t conspicuously similar to the earlier Pokémon in the way that Audino is; really the only major commonality is that they’re cute.  They’re more naturalistic, more like the animals they’re based on, which is something of a trend in the more recent generations of Pokémon.  I’m not sure whether I like it or not.  Here, however, it does succeed in creating quite a different flavour, so this time I’m happy.  Likewise, they have their own shtick, which is important for a Pokémon to have (Audino tried, but in the end her super-sensitive hearing was just channelled into making her a doctor Pokémon like Chansey).  Minccino and Cinccino’s shtick is that they’re neat-freaks.  Minccino keep themselves scrupulously clean at all times, brush excess dirt off of each other with their fluffy tails as a greeting and constantly sweep up debris in the areas where they live.  Cinccino never have to worry about staying clean at all because their luxuriant white fur is coated with oils that repel dirt and dust, and dissipate energy attacks to protect them.  Believe it or not, they aren’t actually the first neat-freak Pokémon; they share their obsession with cleanliness with Swablu, a tiny bird Pokémon from Ruby and Sapphire.  This time, I’m willing to let that go, mainly because Swablu stops being a neat-freak when she evolves into Altaria and becomes a Dragon Pokémon, with all that that entails.  Minccino’s actually like Swablu in another way as well.  Unlike the fairy Pokémon I was talking about earlier, who pretty much stick to “cute” as they evolve – Clefairy to Clefable, Jigglypuff to Wigglytuff, Chansey to Blissey – both Minccino and Swablu drop “cute,” at least partially, and pick up something more like “elegant” or “graceful.”  We see something similar with, for instance, Vulpix and Ninetales (actually, now that I mention it, in purely artistic terms Cinccino has a very similar aesthetic to Ninetales – but the similarity ends there, of course; Ninetales’ fiercely cunning and unrelentingly vengeful personality couldn’t be more different to Cinccino’s).

Cinccino doesn’t seem like a Pokémon that would have much uniqueness in battle: she’s a Normal-type, so her primary attacks don’t do super-effective damage to anything and she has no resistances and a single immunity (namely, Ghost attacks), her defence stats are bad, her special attack stat is equally bad and her physical attack stat is good but nothing to write home about, although her speed is excellent.  Indeed she would be entirely unremarkable if not for an unusual ability, Technician, and the kind of moves necessary to exploit it.  A Technician Pokémon does 50% more damage with all moves that normally have a low “base power” (specifically, below 60 – for comparison, Thundershock is 35, Thunderbolt is 95 and Thunder is 120, which is pretty close to the upper limit for anything practical; most attacks that are any stronger have dangerous side-effects).  Persian, Hitmontop, Ambipom and Scizor make use of this ability to deal more damage with moves that have useful side effects (notably, moves that always hit first, regardless of the speed of the Pokémon involved – Scizor’s Bullet Punch is notorious in competitive circles).  Cinccino exploits it in a different way, however, by abusing the way it interacts with multi-strike moves like Doubleslap.  Although most of these moves (including all of those introduced in the original games) are too weak to bother with, some can actually do a reasonable amount of damage with a bit of luck – but because this damage is spread out over 2-5 hits, the attack is still eligible for a boost from Technician.  Ambipom makes use of this with his signature move, Double Hit, but Ambipom’s niche is really support, despite his high damage potential.  Cinccino, on the other hand, seems to have been designed with this very tactic in mind.  She also gets a signature move, Tail Slap, which – without Technician – does little damage if it hits only twice and massive damage if it hits five times.  After applying the boost from Technician, Tail Slap does decent damage even if you only hit twice; five hits will give almost anything pause for thought.  Unlike Ambipom, Cinccino has two more attacks with the same properties: Bullet Seed and Rock Blast, giving her a bit of variety so she can hurt more different Pokémon.  Her other ability, Cute Charm, is extremely silly; it sometimes Attracts Pokémon of the opposite gender that physically strike her, so that they occasionally lose a turn as they stare at her glorious fur, but it’s too unreliable to be worth anything.  Her hidden ability, Skill Link, is moot anyway because it hasn’t been released for her yet, but achieves a similar result to Technician with less power and greater reliability by guaranteeing that all her multi-hit moves will hit five times.  The choice is really a matter of personal preference.

I’m not entirely certain what else one is supposed to do with Cinccino, to be honest.  I don’t think she really has the defences for a dedicated support set, but assuming you use Tail Slap, Rock Blast and Bullet Seed (and you should probably use at least two) that still leaves you with one move slot left, which you could very well fill with Light Screen, to protect your team from special attacks, Thunder Wave, to spread paralysis, or Encore, to keep a Pokémon repeating a move and potentially force it to switch out.  Cinccino’s probably better off just hitting things, though.  Tickle is interesting; it lowers the target’s physical attack and defence, and since Cinccino’s pretty fast, she may just be able to get in first and keep an opponent from doing as much damage to her as it normally would – and after taking the defence penalty, Cinccino’s boosted Tail Slap is going to look even scarier.  That, of course, assumes she can survive even a weakened hit, and her defences really are very bad.  Knock Off disarms a Pokémon of its item, which is useful, but I can think of better Pokémon for the job than Cinccino.  Sing... Sing is dumb.  Sleep is a powerful affliction, but Sing is just too unreliable for my tastes, and Cinccino really can’t afford to take a hit if it misses.  These are all options, but I think she’s better off just cramming more attacks in – she gets Aqua Tail, which scores a lot of useful neutral hits, and Wake-Up Slap, a Fighting attack which is normally too weak to be worth using but with Technician is decent and lets her damage many Steel-types, who would otherwise resist everything Cinccino can throw at them.  Finally, U-Turn is eternally useful because it lets you switch out after it hits – and if your opponent decides to switch on the same turn, this means that you get to see what they’re switching to before you pick your own next Pokémon.  It’s just a little too strong for Technician to apply, but we can’t have everything.  No matter what you teach her, though, if you want to use her effectively you’ve pretty much got to use some variation of [Tail Slap – Rock Blast – Bullet Seed – Other].  There’s not much potential for surprise with Cinccino.

I can see points for and against Cinccino.  She’s different from the archetypal “cute” Pokémon of the past, but still not tremendously interesting.  Minccino’s art, frankly, is boring, but I think Cinccino is quite nice.  She’s definitely got a powerful trick up her sleeve, but it’s also her only trick; when you see Cinccino you know what’s coming because there’s not a whole lot else she can do.  She’s not quite in a straitjacket as far as her movepool is concerned, though; she has some options.  On balance... I think I’m going to let her live.  She’s just good enough for me.

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist!

Alomomola

All right, guys; today’s Pokémon is Alomomola, the evolved form of Luvdisc, the heart-fish Pokémon from Ruby and Sapphire, and-

Sorry, what?

...what do you mean she’s not the evolved form of Luvdisc?

No, look; she obviously is.  They’re similar colours and shapes, they both have a heart motif, they’re the same type, they’re both fish, they-

All right.  Whatever.  I’ll go fire up the old Pokémadex; back in five.

...

...okay, fine.  Today’s Pokémon is Alomomola, who, to practically everyone’s disappointment and against all logic, is not the evolved form of Luvdisc.  You can see why everyone thought she was, of course, when she was revealed some months before the release of Black and White.  Quite aside from the readily apparent physical similarities, the simple fact is that Luvdisc needed an evolution.  Once in a while, you see, Game Freak produces a Pokémon so blitheringly incompetent that one begins to wonder whether the designers even understood the game system into which they intended to toss the poor thing, and Luvdisc is one such Pokémon.  For perspective, I don’t think there’s anything in Black and White – at all – that even compares to how bad Luvdisc is, not even Watchog.  He can’t take hits, he has almost no useful support techniques, and he doesn’t really do any damage in the traditional sense of the word.  He’s naturally fast, and he learns Agility, so if nothing else he’s very good at running away.  Evolving Luvdisc into anything at all, no matter how terrible, would probably still make people laugh at him less because he’s pretty much the bottom end of the bell curve.  Unsurprisingly, when Alomomola appeared in a preview video of Black and White, everyone became very excited that Game Freak had seen the light and decided to give Luvdisc some love, fuelling speculation about which other Pokémon might get new evolutions: Dunsparce?  Lumineon?  Xatu?  Sableye?  Dare we hope: Farfetch’d?  The eventual answer, of course, was “none of them,” since Black and White seem to take the position that we don’t need any of the old Pokémon because the new ones are so much more awesome and you should all go out and catch a bunch of them right away.  Now, just to be clear, I’m not saying that the designers were intentionally trolling their fan base when they put Alomomola in the pre-release material.  I’m just heavily implying it.

Still, I suppose there is always the possibility that they genuinely didn’t realise how much they were trolling their players, so even though part of me wants to shoot Alomomola in the face right now for wasting everyone’s time, I guess I should judge her on her own merits.  Alomomola’s a weird-looking Pokémon based on a weird-looking fish: the ocean sunfish, a huge fish found in tropical oceans that spends most of its time lying on its side at the surface of the water sunbathing, lays about a zillion eggs at a time, and often gets hit by boats because it’s too lazy to move out of the way (luckily for the sunfish, it’s so large and bulky that the boat normally loses).  I remember complaining, when I talked about Basculin, that considering they have twenty-five thousand species of fish to choose from, they picked a really boring one to work with when they made him.  Well, this is more like it; the sunfish is a pretty interesting creature to start from.  Surprisingly Game Freak haven’t really done anything with the sunbathing behaviour that is their most distinctive characteristic; the Pokédex mentions that Alomomola spend most of their lives drifting around the sea, but that’s it.  Instead the focus of the design is healing (so she’s like Chansey, only she’s a fish?  Great.)  Alomomola are covered in a film of mucus with healing properties; whenever they encounter wounded Pokémon as they drift across the ocean, they envelope them in this mucus and carry them back to the shore, just because they’re really nice.  I’m actually okay with having another dedicated healer Pokémon, believe it or not, because Alomomola goes about it differently, but I wish it hadn’t eclipsed the features of the sunfish itself in the design since its base is what I really like about it.  Her art is also a little boring; I honestly think a real sunfish looks weirder, more alien, more interesting than Alomomola does, which is never a good sign.  I do like Alomomola, I really do, but I think she’s a little flat (well, okay, sunfish are literally flat but that’s not what I mean).

Mechanically, Alomomola is a fairly typical “bulky water” – a tough, slow Water Pokémon.  There are a lot of these.  In fact, there are a lot of Water Pokémon, full stop; it’s the most common element.  So, does Alomomola prove that if we’re going to have one more, it may as well be her?  She’s not bad at what she does, actually; she can take physical attacks extremely well and while energy attacks will hurt her a lot, she won’t go down without a fight (and like all Water-types, she has few defensive weaknesses).  What’s more, she can use Calm Mind to patch up her weaker special defence and make her own special attacks stronger at the same time (word of warning: her special attack score is dismal and it’ll take a while for her to build up enough power to do meaningful damage), or throw up a Light Screen to guard your whole team against energy attacks, or just bounce your opponents’ Thunderbolts right back at them with Mirror Coat, laugh in their faces and go back to sleep.  She misses out on Recover, but Wish is just as good; the healing it provides is delayed by one turn, but if you use that turn to switch, Alomomola will heal the next Pokémon you send out instead of herself – and if she desperately needs to heal, she can always use Protect to stall for a turn.  Alternatively, if you want to use her in a rain team, her Hydration trait allows her to wake up immediately after healing herself with Rest during heavy rain.  In short, Alomomola has wonderful defence and support options.  Her problem is that her offense is virtually nonexistent.  As I mentioned, her special attacks are extremely weak, which is a shame because that’s where most of her offensive movepool is (in brief: Surf, Ice Beam, Shadow Ball and Psychic).  Her physical attacks have more punch (not much, but more), but she only really learns Water- and Normal-type ones.  Lack of direct damage isn’t the whole of the issue, though – the real problem is that Alomomola can’t do much to inconvenience her opponents outside of direct damage either (she can’t threaten paralysis or sleep, she can’t lay down Spikes, she can’t Baton Pass to give her Calm Minds to something more dangerous, she isn’t even much good at leaflet campaigns).  With almost no disruptive techniques, Alomomola might be able to help her team a lot, but she won’t be able to hurt the other team at all, and that makes her a target for Pokémon looking for a free turn or two to set themselves up for a major attack.  I will emphasise again that Alomomola is a wonderful supporter, but truly succeeding as a defensive Pokémon almost requires that you be able to threaten your opponents with something, not necessarily direct damage, but something – and there are many Pokémon that she can’t harm at all.

Alomomola’s... forgettable, there’s no other word for it.  She shouldn’t be; by all rights she should be a really awesome Pokémon with interesting flavour and abilities but unfortunately she’s not.  She’s not a bad Pokémon either; she has no major design flaws and she is very good at what she does; it’s just a shame she’s a bit of a sitting duck while she does it.  There really are so many Water-types now, though, that I have to think pretty hard about whether I want to let any more in, and Alomomola, much as I do like her, simply isn’t special.

I hereby deny this Pokémon’s right to exist!  Let it be smoked and served as a delicacy in a small Indonesian village!

Elgyem and Beheeyem

Today’s Pokémon comes straight from Roswell, New Mexico, where they don’t know what to do with him either.  Meet Elgyem, the... well, the LGM (Little Green Man) Pokémon.

Elgyem’s problem is that he’s the second “cute alien” Pokémon – the first, of course, being Clefairy.  The good news for him is that, in aesthetic terms at least, Clefairy puts a lot of emphasis on “cute” while Elgyem puts more emphasis on “alien,” and also has psychic powers.  Still, they’re both Pokémon that supposedly arrived from space, are probably more intelligent than most other species, and may have some kind of secret agenda.  Based on what we’ve seen in the TV show, Clefairy and Clefable are concealing surprisingly advanced technological aptitude and may well have come to Earth in the first place under their own power; one assumes Elgyem have similar abilities since their origin story references Roswell – they’re supposed to have appeared in the desert roughly 50 years ago and no-knows where from.  This is fun but I’m not sure there’s anything to be done with it that couldn’t have been done with Clefairy.  I will say in Elgyem’s favour however that I think his design is, artistically speaking, very well put together; he’s cute but still manages to pull off feeling mysterious, and he’s colourful without being gaudy.  Unfortunately I can’t say the same for Elgyem’s evolved form, Beheeyem... I’m left confused as to what the aim of this design was; I would assume he’s meant to be sinister but he just comes across as awkward.  Maybe it’s the way that the more angular shape of his head makes it look like a silly hat, or maybe it’s the way his eyes join up in the middle so they look like goggles (I think Beheeyem is meant to have weird eyes since I understand his name is supposed to be a play on BEM – Bug-Eyed Monster – but I don’t think much of the way it’s been done), or maybe it’s the way those “buttons” on his front give his body the appearance of a waistcoat.  In short, he looks “dressed up.”  Overall he gives such a bizarre (and not in a good way) impression that I almost wish Elgyem hadn’t evolved at all.  To be fair, a point in Beheeyem’s favour is that his ability to alter memories is a good fit for his “alien conspiracy” backstory and certainly would contribute very nicely to his sinister air, if he actually had one.

Beheeyem’s move options are a bit generic for a Psychic Pokémon.  Like most Psychic-types he has many support techniques like Light Screen, Reflect and Thunder Wave, and learns a few strong special attacks that are common choices for Psychic Pokémon (Shadow Ball, Thunderbolt, Energy Ball – and, of course, Psychic).  His stat distribution is somewhat more interesting.  He’s not a traditional sweeper/glass cannon Psychic-type like Alakazam or a latter-day tank-style one like Bronzong; he’s more like an artillery piece – neither fast nor tough (he’s not especially weak defensively but you shouldn’t rely on him to take hits) but very powerful, making him  a little more like Exeggutor.  This fighting style is problematic for a lot of Pokémon, such as Camerupt, because being slow forces you to take a lot of hits in order to get off your own attacks but Beheeyem knows a way to make it work: Trick Room.  I’ve probably mentioned Trick Room before but in case anyone’s not familiar with it: Trick Room creates a zone of distorted space in which, effectively, slow is fast and fast is slow – slow Pokémon like Beheeyem move first in battle, for five turns.  In that time, Beheeyem can blast away with powerful special attacks to his heart’s content.

Unfortunately for Beheeyem, Black and White also introduced Reuniclus (I’ll probably talk about him within the next couple of weeks), whose specialty is doing exactly the same thing and being much better at it.  In fact, the vast majority of Pokémon that learn Trick Room are Psychic-types, so it’s not even easy for Beheeyem to stand out as a supporter by setting it up for the rest of your team; Pokémon like Slowbro, Musharna and Gothitelle have a major defensive edge on Beheeyem and their other support options are just as good.

Beheeyem’s only claims not to be a totally generic Psychic-type are his abilities (two of them, anyway – Synchronize is typical and not especially useful).  Beheeyem with the Telepathy ability automatically dodge any attacks coming from allies, which gives them something of a niche in double battles, where a lot of powerful attacks (most notably Surf and Earthquake) hit both opponents at once at the cost of also hitting the user’s partner.  Unfortunately this is useless in a single battle and even in a double battle Beheeyem’s best strategy is probably going to be setting up Trick Room, so he’s still going to be in Reuniclus’ shadow.  The other ability is Analytic, Beheeyem’s “hidden ability” (so, as so often, you can’t actually get a Beheeyem with this trait yet since Elgyem don’t appear in the Dream World), which increases the power of all his attacks by 30% when he moves after his opponent.  Not “when he’s slower,” “when he moves after,” so you can’t use this in conjunction with Trick Room, sadly, which would actually be interesting.  It’ll give his attacks one hell of a kick but Beheeyem honestly doesn’t have the defences or the resistances to survive consistently going second, making this interesting but of dubious utility.

I’m really very disappointed with Beheeyem.  Elgyem is a very nicely-done Pokémon that shares common ground with existing “space” Pokémon like Clefairy and Deoxys but manages to have his own distinct feel.  His evolved form then wrecks that with a stilted artistic design and an uninteresting, often ineffective skill set.  I have little else to say about Elgyem and Beheeyem; they’re just more Psychic Pokémon, and honestly we had enough already – there are quite a lot of them.

I hereby deny this Pokémon’s right to exist!  Let it be deported at once and shipped back to whatever depressing planet it came from!

Tirtouga and Carracosta

I need to be up-front with you about this one.  I really like Tirtouga and Carracosta.  These turtle Pokémon are two of the fossil species of Black and White (the other two are Archen and Archeops, whom I talked about ages ago and allowed to live – perhaps a little generously) and the latest in a long line of prehistoric Pokémon resurrected by the miracle of SCIENCE.  I think the artistic designs for Tirtouga and Carracosta are superb; Tirtouga is cute but also clearly strong enough to take care of himself, and Carracosta practically dares you to try attacking him.  Both channel the “ancient” quality fossil Pokémon are supposed to possess exceptionally well.  As well as having typical sea turtle qualities, like being able to safely dive to tremendous depths, they seem to be part-way through evolution into terrestrial turtles and can hunt prey on land as well.  They’re also absurdly strong – Carracosta can chew up steel beams and punch through the hulls of large ships with a smack from his fin.  In short, Tirtouga and Carracosta are awesome.  This, however, is the point at which I must reluctantly remember that I’m supposed to be trimming the fat by eliminating unnecessary Pokémon and ask myself: did we need more turtle Pokémon?

You all know Squirtle, Wartortle and Blastoise, of course; heck, their position as the original Water starters has ensured that a lot of people who never played Pokémon at all know them.  They’re not the only turtle/tortoise Pokémon, though – and actually, Game Freak have done some interesting things with the idea in the past.  Water was the obvious choice of element for a turtle, but Torkoal from Ruby and Sapphire went in the opposite direction: he’s Fire-type that lives in the mountains and digs for coal to burn in his internal furnace.  Turtwig, Grotle and Torterra, the Grass-type starters of Diamond and Pearl, support saplings, bushes and eventually entire trees on their backs, drawing inspiration from the “world turtle” of Hindu mythology (or, alternatively, of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series).  Tirtouga and Carracosta are really only notable in that they’re the first Pokémon to be based on sea turtles rather than tortoises – Squirtle and friends may be Water-types but they’re clearly better adapted to life on land than Tirtouga.  The interesting point this raises, though, is that Carracosta is probably the ancestor of at least Blastoise, if not all of these Pokémon, in just the same way as Archeops is explicitly said to be the ancestor of all bird Pokémon.  Because of that, their concepts, despite not being anything outstanding in themselves, could at least go somewhere if Game Freak were so inclined.  Sadly, we know they’re not, which is a great pity because I would like to know more about the relationship between Carracosta and Archeops and their descendants – something that doesn’t come through much in the designs of all the previous fossil Pokémon, since they seem to come from lineages that have either died out completely or changed beyond recognition.  If Pokémon were being run differently, there would be a lot of potential in developing that relationship, but that’s never likely to be realised.

In much the same way as Carracosta has to deal with being the latest in a long line of fossil Pokémon and the latest of four turtle Pokémon, he’s also stuck with being the fifth Pokémon of his type combination: Water/Rock (it’s also worth bringing up that two of the previous Water/Rock dual-types, Omastar and Kabutops, were fossil Pokémon as well, and another, Relicanth, was based on the coelacanth, a so-called “living fossil”).  The good news is that of those four, Corsola was a lot of fun but also depressingly bad, Omastar and Relicanth were usable but nothing special, and Kabutops was strong but operated rather differently to Carracosta.  He’s basically a big physical tank, whose ability to take physical hits is sadly hampered by Rock/Water’s multiple common weaknesses (and a horrid double-weakness to Grass).  In that respect he’s much like Relicanth; Relicanth is a good sight tougher and faster (but still slow), but has significantly weaker offensive capabilities and a narrower movepool: his main selling-point is Head Smash, a fantastically powerful Rock attack that causes terrible recoil damage – recoil damage that is negated entirely by his Rock Head trait.  Carracosta’s passive skills are less useful; Solid Rock reduces damage from super-effective attacks by 25% (helpful but not amazing) while Sturdy ensures that, if he’s at full health, he will always survive any attack with at least one hit point left (generally a powerful ability, but outside of Grass attacks there’s really relatively little that can one-shot Carracosta anyway).  There are three standout techniques, though, that allow Carracosta to take full advantage of his superior offensive power.  Curse simultaneously boosts his already excellent attack and defence at the cost of his speed, which was never anything to boast of anyway, and makes for a good combination with Aqua Jet, the Water-type equivalent to Quick Attack, which Carracosta can use to strike first when he really needs to.  The third thing Carracosta has that Relicanth doesn’t is Shell Smash.  If you’ve read my entry on Crustle, or ever seen this move in action, you already know that it’s extremely dangerous.  In brief, it allows a Pokémon to change gears completely, from a slow, defensive tank to a fast, devastating sweeper.  Not only that, its bonuses apply to both physical and energy damage, allowing Carracosta to exploit his less obvious advantage over Relicanth: a decent special attack score.  You probably still want physical attacks to be the focus of any moveset for Carracosta but the ability to mix things up with Surf, Ice Beam or Focus Blast makes him much more unpredictable and therefore harder to defend against than he otherwise would be.  Carracosta’s not a totally game-changing Pokémon but he can do terrible, terrible things to an unprepared team if you’re clever about it.

So, here’s the million-dollar question: do I let Tirtouga and Carracosta live or not?  I love their flavour, but although it’s well-done it’s not especially unique.  They’re clearly powerful, but I’m reasonably sure that if Game Freak had really wanted to they could have made Relicanth just as strong by giving him some new moves to play with.  What I’m saying is, if they had been introduced years ago when there were fewer Pokémon around to begin with, I would have unequivocally welcomed Tirtouga and Carracosta with open arms, but today I have to wonder whether they’re really necessary...

Screw it.  They’re awesome.  I like Relicanth too but I’d rather have Carracosta any day.

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist!

Bouffalant

I think it started as an April Fools’ joke, to be honest.  One day, someone at Game Freak went down to the pit where they keep the creature design guys, lined them all up, and said to them, apparently with a straight face,

“Tauros, but with ridiculous hair.  Make it happen.”

When one of them emerged a week later with the stack of designs they were hoping to exchange for bread and water, this thing was in the pile. No-one remembered that it had been a joke because the guy who thought of it had been killed for a trivial offense the day before, so they decided to run with it, the creature design department got a dozen extra tofu bars and Bouffalant made it into the final game.

I may have embellished the details slightly but I’m pretty sure that’s approximately how it happened.

Honestly, though, Bouffalant really is Tauros, but with ridiculous hair.  Tauros is a large, powerful, angry wild bull that likes charging things.  Bouffalant is a large, powerful, angry wild bull (okay, bison, but that’s still a bovine; it counts) that likes charging things and has an afro three times the size of his own head.  The base concepts are identical.  The way Tauros has been made to stand out is that he has three tails which he uses like whips, lashing not other Pokémon but himself, to make himself angrier so he’ll attack that much harder.  Personally I think this is pretty badass.  The way Bouffalant has been made to stand out is his ridiculous hair.  What’s more, the design really takes his hair seriously; it’s part of his battle tactics.  Bouffalant’s afro acts as a gigantic shock absorber that allows him to charge his foes all the more recklessly.  I’m going to say this again, because it bears repeating.  Bouffalant has an enormous afro so it can cushion his head against the impact of a charge.  Just go with it.  Apparently Game Freak felt this was so important to the design that they made a signature move for him out of it, Head Charge (the Japanese name for this attack – and I’m not even joking – is a direct transliteration of the phrase “Afro Break”).  There are at least a dozen Pokémon with special abilities that practically beg to be made into signature moves that emphasise their uniqueness, and they made one out of Bouffalant’s hair?   I... just... why?  I shouldn’t be annoyed because this is the kind of cool toy I think a lot more Pokémon should get, but I am!  Why would you spend the effort on a comedic knock-off of Tauros?  More generally, if the concept had been shelved in the first place, which other Pokémon would have gotten more attention?  That is, frankly, what I think should have been done, because putting Tauros in Black and White instead and giving him a new power or two would have taken one tenth the time and effort of creating from scratch a Pokémon that turned out to be nothing new or special anyway.  These people badly need to sort out their priorities.

*sigh*

Let’s talk about the objective stuff; that’ll make me feel better.

So, Head Charge.  It’s a massively powerful Normal-type attack, similar to Double Edge in that it causes the user to take recoil damage.  The difference is that Double Edge’s recoil damage is 33% of the damage it deals to the target, while Head Charge’s is only 25% (because of the protective afro).  Whatever else I may think about Bouffalant, this attack is excellent and no-one should ever use him without it.  Together with Bouffalant’s prodigious physical strength, Head Charge ensures that he can cause heavy damage to anything that doesn’t resist Normal attacks.  The trouble is, Rock and Steel Pokémon do resist Normal attacks, and Ghost Pokémon are completely immune to them, but nothing in the game is weak to Normal attacks.  Obviously, Bouffalant is going to need some other attacks for variety.  Like all truly dedicated bruiser Pokémon, he can learn Earthquake, a good choice on just about anything and a solid answer to many Rock- and Steel-types.  Stone Edge generally works very well alongside Earthquake but is somewhat prone to going off-target, and I don’t think it’s strictly necessary since Bouffalant has so many options.  Megahorn gives you a strong Bug-type attack, its sheer power making up for the fact that Bug is a relatively weak offensive type, or alternatively, Payback provides a Dark attack with which to hammer Ghost-types.  One very nice thing Bouffalant gets is Wild Charge, a physical Electric attack – these are normally a little sub-par, and Wild Charge is no exception, being slightly less powerful than the energy-based Thunderbolt and causing recoil damage into the bargain, but in Bouffalant’s case the recoil damage is actually a good thing because one of his abilities, Reckless, beefs up the damage output of all attacks with recoil damage (and Bouffalant can take recoil damage pretty well; he’s very resilient all-around).  With this factored in, Wild Charge (and Head Charge too) are frighteningly powerful.  The alternative to Reckless is Sap Sipper, which grants immunity to Grass attacks and actually makes Grass attacks strengthen Bouffalant even more – the trick is, it won’t be all that easy to find Grass attacks to switch him into since their comparative uselessness makes them fairly rare, so Reckless is probably better (still good if you’re really scared of, say, Whimsicott though).  Bouffalant can also send his attack score sky-high by learning Swords Dance, which I would normally be pretty excited about, but the way Bouffalant handles in battle just isn’t suited to that kind of tactic; he’s strong and he’s tough, but by Arceus he’s slow.  Swords Dance might let him smash one Pokémon or scare it off, but if your opponent then sends out a faster Pokémon with a strong Fighting attack, there’s not much choice but to switch Bouffalant out, and then you’re back to square one.  You’re better off just hitting things, which is really all Bouffalant can do – aside from Swords Dance, he’s a point-and-stab Pokémon, no bells and no whistles, but he is decent at it.

Despite being a straight Normal-type with a high physical attack score, Bouffalant actually works very differently to Tauros, whose main selling-point is that he’s wonderfully fast.  That’s not going to make me forgive him, though; all it means is that in practical terms he’s a bit more like Snorlax.  It’s still a terrible design that is distinguished from an existing one solely by an unbelievably stupid gimmick.  In short, I stand by my original account of how Bouffalant came into being; I’m not sure how else it could have happened.

I hereby deny this Pokémon’s right to exist!  Let it be locked up in a shearing shed forevermore!

Yamask and Cofagrigus

I’ve probably mentioned before that I quite like slightly darker takes on Pokémon, primarily because I think the setting and many of the creatures have a lot of potential for that kind of plot (witness, for instance, some of the spinoff games like Colosseum on the GameCube).  A startling number of Pokémon already have some surprisingly dark designs and flavour text; even in the original games Cubone wore the skulls of their dead parents as helmets, which is pretty strong for a kids’ game when you think about it.  The Pokédex also reports a couple of disturbing urban legends – like a Hypno abducting a child, and a boy with telekinetic abilities waking up one morning mysteriously transformed into a Kadabra.  Gyarados, meanwhile, is famed for levelling cities and Mewtwo is, if anything, more destructive still.  Ghost Pokémon, of course, take the cake; for instance, Ruby and Sapphire’s Shedinja, a mysterious Pokémon that seems to possess the shell shed by Nincada when it evolves into Ninjask, supposedly steals the soul of anyone who looks into the crack in its back.  I could go on about this for days, you understand, but what I mean to do here is give you a little context for when I start talking about today’s Pokémon, the Ghost-types Yamask and Cofagrigus, because Yamask’s design... in some ways is not nearly as troubling as some of what we’ve seen in the past, but in other ways is so much worse.

Game Freak have been very evasive in the past about what Ghost Pokémon actually are.  All I’m sure of is that many, perhaps most, of them aren’t really ghosts at all but do possess supernatural powers related to death and the dead.  However, in the case of Yamask, a Pokémon found in ancient ruins and burial sites, they’ve been very up-front with us.  They’re ghosts, all right; these Pokémon were once people.  Yamask’s mask is a stylised representation of the face it had when it was alive.  Sometimes, the Pokédex says, it looks at its mask and cries, because it can remember its former life.  So... these are the spirits of people, who have somehow been transformed into these ghostly shadows and have been wandering through the ruins of their destroyed civilization for centuries weeping for the lives they remember leading... and we’re going to stuff them into tiny balls and train them to fight for our amusement.

Fellow trainers, we are horrible, horrible people.

Still a cool back-story though.

By all accounts, Yamask get their own back when they evolve into Cofagrigus (this is one of the most dramatic evolutions I’ve seen in a while, but I think the continuation of the Egyptian aesthetic just about holds it together).  Basically they turn into massive golden sarcophagi that eat people and mummify them, employing a tactic common in real animals – that of pretending to be something appetising or otherwise attractive to lure prey – except that their prey is grave robbers.  Cofagrigus feed on gold and incorporate it into their bodies, creating the distinctive golden armour that both tricks looters into drawing close and protects them from all but the strongest physical attacks.  One of my pet peeves with the Pokémon world is that all archaeologists are looters and treasure hunters, so personally I am absolutely delighted at the prospect of many of them being eaten by angry sentient coffins and turned into zombie minions.  It’s a fun concept that adds to the air of mystery around the ancient civilizations of the Pokémon universe; I just wish we’d gotten to see it developed further.

As I said, Cofagrigus are extremely tough Pokémon.  The low hit point total hurts, but his excellent special defence and absurd physical defence help to compensate.  Likewise, the Ghost element has resistances that aren’t particularly helpful and a painful weakness to Dark attacks (which will come up often thanks to the number of people that like to use Pursuit and Sucker Punch) but is strongly benefited by its immunities to Normal and Fighting attacks.  The main problem Cofagrigus has is inability to heal; most Ghost types can at least fake it with Pain Split (this doesn’t heal exactly; instead it splits the remaining health of the user and the target evenly between them), but Cofagrigus can’t and has to rely on Rest, which is by no means unworkable but tends to complicate things.  The good news is that Cofagrigus can boost his special attack and special defence simultaneously with Calm Mind, already has crazy-good physical defence, and is reasonably adept with energy attacks to begin with.  This is probably his best option, I think – slowly chewing his way through the opposition with powerful special attacks and defences that will rapidly become all but untouchable, occasionally taking a nap to heal up.  Sadly, he doesn’t have a strong offensive movepool – besides Shadow Ball, which is something of a given, all he’s really got are Energy Ball and Psychic, which both come from pretty lacklustre offensive types, so he’ll need to use Calm Mind quite a few times to be sure of blowing through all the resistances he’ll meet.  Cofagrigus can also spread burns around with Will’o’Wisp to steadily damage foes and neuter their physical attacks, which is always useful, especially as he doesn’t have enough hit points to fully exploit his wonderful defence score.  The only other really attractive options I can see here are Trick Room (something you want to build a team around – basically, sets up a distorted space where slower is faster) and Disable, which has been steadily improving since it was introduced in Red and Blue and is now 100% accurate; given Cofagrigus’ immunities and good defences it’s entirely possible you’ll encounter Pokémon now and then with only one move capable of severely hurting him, in which case Disabling that move will really throw a spanner in the works (Gengar is better at this, though).

Mechanically speaking Cofagrigus does rather step on the toes of Dusclops and his evolution Dusknoir, from Ruby/Sapphire and Diamond/Pearl respectively – two heavily defence-focussed pure Ghost-types with significantly wider movepools than Cofagrigus (what’s more, other than Calm Mind there’s nothing in particular Cofagrigus does much better than they do).  Luckily, our sinister sarcophagus does have one thing they can’t take: a unique ability (for those who haven’t been with us for a while, abilities are the passive skills all Pokémon have that were introduced in Ruby and Sapphire).  His ability is Mummy, which has no effect of its own but copies itself onto any Pokémon that touches Cofagrigus, overwriting that Pokémon’s own ability in the process.  For most opponents this will be more an annoyance than anything else but a few specific Pokémon will find it absolutely crippling – Azumarill, for instance, will have her attack score cut in half if she loses Huge Power and will no longer be able to meaningfully harm Cofagrigus, while Gliscor and Breloom, who normally regenerate while poisoned and so typically carry an item called a Toxic Orb to poison themselves, will suddenly start taking severe poison damage when they lose Poison Heal.  These are, again, fairly specific cases – they represent a niche use for Cofagrigus, valuable not because it’s extremely powerful but more because no one else can do it without wasting a move slot on Gastro Acid or whatever.

Cofagrigus has problems.  He should be able to make a pretty decent tank or wall, but just doesn’t have enough tools to make use of his natural endowments. If nothing else, it would’ve been really nice if he’d been given Pain Split or something.  Still, it’s not impossible to make something of Cofagrigus, and Mummy makes him an absolute nightmare for Breloom, Gliscor, Hariyama, Conkeldurr, Heracross, Azumarill, Scizor, and a few others.  What’s more, Yamask is frankly just too much fun not to keep, with a fun – if disturbing – concept that makes me interested to see more.

I hereby affirm this Pokémon’s right to exist!