VikingBoyBilly asks:

If you were tasked to think of one idea to make Eevee completely overpowered and broken without evolving, what would you come up with?

…well, without thinking too hard about why we’re doing this, I’d probably give her an ability that sort of combines Conversion 2 with Protean – Eevee, the ultimate adapter, automatically shifts her type to gain resistance or (if possible) immunity to all incoming attacks.  That’s immunity to 8/18 types and resistance to everything else.  Slap an Eviolite on that and it’ll survive damn near anything, up to and including Primal Kyogre’s Origin Pulse.  Of course, I don’t exactly know what you’d do with Eevee at that point other than maybe Baton Pass some Curses, but you said “one idea” so that’ll have to do.

Pokémon Generations: Episode 4

Maybe Origins encouraged me to set my expectations for this series too high.  After all, a four to five minute short doesn’t exactly lend itself to novel and nuanced interpretations of beloved but two-dimensional characters.  It seems quite plausible that I’m being overly critical here.

On the other hand “overly critical” is pretty much my schtick so let’s do more of it.

Continue reading “Pokémon Generations: Episode 4” →

Anonymous asks:

would you want a wolf Pokemon and should it evolve at night only? How would you make a wolf Pokemon?

Well, it would make a sort of sense to have one in the generation calling its games “Sun” and “Moon,” wouldn’t it?  Given the general symbolism of wolves as lunar animals in European folklore, anyway.  Then again, I think the themes that would be my go-to ideas for a wolf Pokémon have been ‘done’ elsewhere – like, Zoroark already kinda works as a ‘werewolf’ Pokémon despite being a fox and not a wolf because of its powers of darkness and ability to appear as a human, and Mightyena already deals with the teamwork theme that would be inspired by wolves’ pack hunting skills, despite being a hyena and not a wolf.  That’s not to say you couldn’t still do one, just that I’d probably try to go with something a lot more offbeat, like these guys.  I’m not sure off the top of my head what I would go with.

VikingBoyBilly asks:

Thoughts on the first presidential debate?

Billy, didn’t your mother ever tell you not to get your political commentary from obscure Pokémon blogs?

I do find US federal politics tremendously amusing, actually.  For all its faults, this country knows how to put on a show; I wish New Zealand could sustain this level of spectacle and drama for months at a time.  I did a running commentary for my friends on Facebook, which I shall reproduce below:

Continue reading “VikingBoyBilly asks:” →

Anonymous asks:

So I found a wild Vileplume in my house in Pokemon GO and decided to name it Chris :).

This pleases me.  Let it be known that, when Pokémon are named after me (especially Grass Pokémon, and especially ones in the Vileplume line), my spiritual power increases, bringing me closer to eventual domination of the earth.  Go now, my minions, and continue to do my dark bidding.

Anonymous asks:

How do you feel about the idea of Game Freak making more dramatic changes to rebalance weaker Pokemon? For example, switching Flareon’s Special Attack with HP or Speed, and giving it access to Earthquake? I know they don’t do this, but should they?

I don’t think it’s unreasonable.  I mean, I’ve sort of given up caring about game balance in Pokémon, because – in my opinion, at least – Mega Rayquaza pretty much puts it beyond doubt that Game Freak certainly doesn’t care, and doesn’t regard a balanced competitive metagame as a significant goal of what they’re doing.  More importantly, I suspect that, given the sheer number of Pokémon we have now (or, good heavens, the number we will have by the end of the year – have they announced a number?  No, don’t tell me, I don’t even want to know), even a more aggressive balancing strategy like what you’re suggesting would probably not be sufficient.  There aren’t all that many viable roles a Pokémon can fill on a team (special/physical sweeper, Rapid Spin support, tank, pivot, wall, etc), and when you have 700+ of the damn things, it’s sort of inevitable that some will outstrip others at pretty much everything.  On top of that, some Pokémon that are bad on their own somehow become good when partnered with certain others through the strange alchemy of team-building.  So in short, I don’t think it’s a bad idea, I certainly don’t think it would hurt, and some of the really unfortunate Pokémon like Wigglytuff or Ariados could do with just having some big numbers slapped on them, but I’m also not convinced it would actually solve anything in the long term.

Anonymous asks:

Would Regigigas be more usable if instead of Slow Start, it began with very low Attack and Speed, and very high Defense and Special Defense- but every turn, the offensive stats go up +1 and defensive go down -1?

I feel like the answer is probably “no,” because I think with a set-up like that you run into the Darmanitan problem, where you have one Pokémon with two radically different strategies and it’s impossible to commit your moveset and EV spread entirely to one or the other.  Also, part of the problem with Slow Start is that the clock resets when you switch out, and in a game between two human players it’s actually not all that easy to guarantee that Regigigas will be able to stay in play without being killed for long enough to turn off his ability – this way of doing Slow Start has the same difficulty.  You can’t really play defensive because you get weaker the longer you stay in, and you can’t really play offensive because it takes you so damn long to set up.

Anonymous asks:

Which other legendaries do you think are likely to get Primal forms?

Well, at the moment, none.  I mean, I always avoid spoilers in the lead-up to new Pokémon games, so maybe I’m out of the loop on something that’s been revealed for Sun and Moon, but so far I feel like we’ve been given every reason to think that primal reversion is something specific to Groudon and Kyogre.