My (currently planned) Pokémon Sun and Moon team

A game series like Pokémon, in which there are over 700 individual characters to choose from when pulling a team together, really lends itself to choosing favorites.  Everyone who has ever played a Pokémon game undoubtedly has a favorite monster, be it for their competitive viability, the strength of the character building and lore around them or simply the nostalgia factor.

Personally, my absolute favorite Pokémon of all time is the Hoenn native Psychic-type Gardevoir for a combination of all three. A powerful and feared hyper voice using Mega Evolution with a newly adopted Fairy-typing, a wonderful design alongside descriptors about emotional closeness with the its trainer and a consistent reminder of my childhood days visiting my Grandparent’s house in Florida, playing Pokémon Sapphire and catching a Ralts on Route 102 that would stick with me for the entire journey.  I always taught my Gardevoir the move Shock Wave in those days.  Not entirely sure why, but I did.

While I don’t know exactly how many Pokémon will be added to the National Pokédex in Generation 7 (As I’m still avoiding the data mining spoilers), I’m going to assume that the total number of  monsters will probably top 800 by the time we’ve counted through all of them, from Rowlet to the mysterious Crystalline Prism creature we were shown not too long ago and beyond.  That adds a lot of new favorite Pokémon for both series veterans and newcomers to choose from.

In that same vein, I’ve seen many people putting together videos and lists of what Pokémon they’ll be using during their initial journey through the Alola Region.  I did the same kind of forward thinking when X and Y were on the horizon, and I’ve honestly been doing the same thing while Pokémon have been unveiled over the last couple of months, so I figure why not talk about them here?

I actually do team building quite often, both for casual gameplay runs and for competitive team planning, something I started to do a lot more in Alpha Sapphire.  Typically, I try to follow some personal rules when doing so for either kind of play:

1. All members of the team will typically be entirely different typings, no overlap whatsoever is preferred for the sake of variety and diversification of moves/abilities.
   1. On occasion, teams may deviate from this rule if the typing diversity in a region isn’t phenomenal when using dual-typings or if there are some Pokémon I can’t avoid using that happen to be the same type.
   2. Usually the exceptions to this rule will only apply once.  Mono-type teams tend to be avoided at all costs unless the team is being built specifically for a competition with that rule in place.
2. The make-up of my teams tend to vary based on region.  So, more often than not a play through of Black and White will have a Unova team consisting entirely of Generation 5 Pokémon, a play through of Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald or the remakes will have a Hoenn team consisting entirely of Generation 3 Pokémon and so on.
   1. Rare exceptions do exist for this rule as well, such as in X and Y where I considered Mega Evolutions to be Generation 6 Pokémon.  Thus, Mawile was on my initial team despite originating from Hoenn.
3. Movesets, abilities and items used on each team member are usually decided on with single battles in mind, both for casual play and competitive building.  There are a few Pokémon I’ve built competitively that specifically exist to team up with another, however.
4. While Pokémon can usually be either male or female (besides those with no gender or only one gender option), I tend to specifically pick a gender for a Pokémon that feels right to me and stick with it.  Thus, some I might refer to as he or she depending on how I personally picture that monster.
5. No legendaries.  As much as I love legendary Pokémon in their own rights, I’m not a fan of mixing them into my team compositions.  Never really have been, it always seemed kind of cheap to me.  Sorry Lunala.

These rules are more my own attempts to make my life harder on myself, honestly.  Just choosing any Pokémon willy-nilly would be too easy, so it’s more fun to set up rules for myself as a way of encouraging more critical thought as far as building things ahead of time goes.

With that said, and without further adieu, I introduce the six Pokémon that will be accompanying me during my first adventure in Pokémon Moon.  Under this read more, naturally.  Could be some spoiler-y stuff for people avoiding any and all information, and  this post is already taking up a lot of space.

New Sun and Moon Information + More GO Ramblings

As of today, I officially started my second Summer college course.  Between the workload that’s going to come with it and the workload I already have for my first course, I’ll probably be nice and busy through mid-August.

But not as busy as the Pokémon Company is with showing off more new Pokémon, am I right?

…

Well lousy transition aside, there were in fact two new Pokémon leaked from CoroCoro magazine today, so it’s about time to talk about them, wouldn’t you say?

Mimikkyu, the Disguise Pokémon

Kiteruguma

Images Courtesy of Serebii.net

Here we have Mimikkyu and Kiteruguma, both seeming to be only the Japanese names but considering Togedemaru didn’t change from the Japanese to the English translations, who knows.

Mimikkyu is a Ghost/Fairy-type, and according to the description that came along with their reveals: “Mimikkyu hates sunlight, preferring dark places. It is rumoured that the cloth covering its body is a strategy to avoid the sun. Don’t try to remove the cloth it is said that those that do become afflicted with an illness. Mimikkyu’s costume is based on Pikachu merch that was popular 20 years ago. It wants to be loved by people like Pikachu is.”  It will have a new ability called Disguise with a currently unknown effect.

I’m not going to bury the lead or anything here, Mimikkyu is easily my favorite of the two released here, and perhaps one of my favorite Pokémon unveiled for Sun and Moon thus far.  Not only is it super adorable just from it’s description/lore/backstory/whatever alone, it’s got an interesting typing to play around with and overall it’s just… I love it, okay?  It kind of reminds me of Woodstock from the Peanuts comic strip with a sheet over its head if the sheet just so happened to be decorated in the style of a witch-varient of Pikachu from Puella Magi Madoka Magica.  The whole children’s drawing style to the face really screams that to me.

Meanwhile, Kiteruguma is a Normal/Fighting-type, and according to the description that came along with their reveals: “People in Alola are scared of Kiteruguma to the point of having warning signs about it. It is really strong and can break anything in two. It likes to hug its trainers but is strong. Raising one puts your life in danger.”  It will have the abilities Klutz and a new addition called Fluffy with a currently unknown effect.

While I don’t like this big bear quite as much as it’s revealed counterpart, it does have a certain charm to it.  I suppose.  Sure raising it is a danger because it nonchalantly snaps entire trees in half and that sort of thing, but it’s got a cute pink and black color scheme right?  So it’s gotta be something.  To be fair, one of my favorite Megas, Mega Lopunny, does have a Normal/Fighting-typing, and it’s pretty amazing in my opinion.  Whether the typing will work quite as well with a new Pokémon that doesn’t have scrappy is still in question, however.

That’s about that, not too much was talked about for these guys considering it was only a fresh leak from the August issue that let us know what we currently know.  I’m assuming we’ll hear more about them as time goes on.  I do have some more to talk about regarding my continued experience with Pokémon GO, but I’ll leave that under the read more for anyone that’s curious about it.  Otherwise, let me know what you think about these new Pokémon below!