Best. Event. Ever

Actually that's not quite true. The following are the best events ever in order:
1) Arceus
2) Darkrai
3) Shiny Rayquaza

But this is also an excellent event. It is a UK only event, so I'm sorry if it doesn't cover you, but keep reading, it gets funny I promise . The event comes in three parts:
1) August 30-September 12   Shiny Dialga
2) September 13-September 26 Shiny Palkia
3) September 27-October 12 Shiny Giratina
These pokemon will be given away in Game, which works for me because it's one of the few shops I can get to in the Highlands.

Now I must admit that I expressed my excitement about getting three of my favourite pokemon in shiny form before seeing them. The first shiny pokemon I ever caught was a Liepard. It goes from purple to...purple. You'd never know it was shiny. Dialga is only a bit better. It goes from blue to turquoise. Turquoise is a shade of blue. It is one of my favourite colours, and Dialga looks great in it, but again it's hard to tell it's shiny. This irritates me, but not as much as Palkia. There is one major problem I have with Palkia, which is nothing to do with typing, movepool, stats, or ability, which I love, love, love and can't complain about.No, my problem with Palkia can be summed up in three words: GIANT PURPLE PENIS! I know, you can't unsee it now. It even has testicles. How did this pass the testing phases? Some other pokemon, like Castform, bear a passing resemblance to genitalia, but this I just can't with. What is the one thing that would make Palkia look more phallic? Painting it pink. Congratulations Gamefreak, you now have a legendary pokemon with the worst design ever. I am sarcastically clapping, which is an impressive feat while typing. Giratina's not half bad, having a recognisable colour change and looking pretty good. But as a set I'm gonna stick with my usual normal forms. Best event ever. This sucks.

See what I mean?

Burn, Baby, Burn

OK, this is a new bi-weekly feature (because I've done the maths and that lets me do a fairy-type post three days after the new games come out (because the day after is my birthday and this stuff takes me two days even when I'm not busy) and an ice-type post the day before Christmas), where for want of a better way of putting things I take the types apart to see how they work. Since it is as hot as hell here in the UK and my xz and zx keys have melted together, the only type I could possibly start with is fire.
Fire, in battle, is one of the most clear-cut pokemon, with clear stat trends, clear strengths and weaknesses and clear strategies to use with them. See, fire is nearly unmatched in one thing: hitting hard. It can hit four types for super-effective damage (even if the only totally useful one is steel and possibly ice) and only dragon can outdo it for  average special attack stats when fully evolved. But dragon doesn't count, because half of all fully-evolved dragon types are legendaries. Half! 50% 1 in 2! 9 of the 18! Exzpress it how you choose. It's too many and it skews the stats. So strike that, fire types have the best special attack stats of any type. Combine that with a nice range of moves, over 60% having 80 base power or higher, an immunity to pesky burns, and moderate to good speed, with several sitting in the 100-110 region (although I will admit the fastest fire type is Infernape with 108 base speed, and 44 pokemon have at least one faster forme, but 108 is not half bad, outspeeding loads of great pokemon such as Hydreigon, Scizxor, Garchomp and of course Mew and Celebi) fire types often make perfect special sweepers. Basically, with fire types, you want to hit hard and get the hell out of there, because very few of them can take a hit with generally awful defenses and 3 nasty weaknesses, and it suddenly occured to me when writing this post that the biggest thing the fire type needs is a variation on Volt Tackle/U-Turn, which means even when you can't get an OHKO (which you need a lot of with fire types) your pokemon doesn't crumple like burnt paper. So yeah, except in a few very special cases, this is the fire type's only decent use, and I don't recommend using the special cases until you're sure of it (he said, patronisingly). But if you know how to use fire types, they can be a huge asset. And come on, how fun is it to burn stuff?

Additional thoughts on Oorrotto

It's just occured to me that when I said here I was wrong here, that's not necessarily true. I mean, there's now obviously no connection to sound, which means my strange blogger musings on the sound type are going back to bed...for now, but the rest might still be as I suggested. See, I zoned in on the possible name Aulotte, and connected it to French nursery rhyme Alouette. Actually that's more likely than ever, with Oorrotto confirmed as the Japanese name and it looking like an evil tree. I mean, what is an evil tree? I think one that captures birds and harms them is about as good as you're getting on that.And much as I think the bird being plucked alive is too gruesome even as a pokedex entry in pokemon, dark and ghost pokemon are often said to trap or capture weaker pokemon or even people and somehow hurt them. So yeah, I'm thinking it might well be Aulotte, a pokemon that captures birds in its leaves and....well that's Gamefreak's job. I love it. Watch out, Fletchling.

Same pokemon, different news

First of all, one piece of good news, for some reason my blogger has been f***ed for the last 10 days or so, and although I figured out about 4 days ago how to actually use it it's been hard, annoying and time-consuming, so now that it seems back to normal I can do more.
OK, so they've carried on spoonfeeding us little bits and pieces about Honedge and Oorrotto. I'm gonna do Honedge first because it will take no time at all. Honedge's ability, or maybe one of them, will be No Guard. That makes total sense given that it's a sword freed from its sheath, but how good it is will depend thoroughly on Honedge's movepool. One thing I know is that Heatran was already a massive threat to it, and it getting its signature move Magma Storm at perfect accuracy, as well as Fire Blast, is SCARY. I don't think i like it at all, and it may have ruined what coulda been a great pokemon. Shame.
Now as right as I was about Xerneas and Yvetal I couldn't have been more wrong about Oorrotto. Partly because the name I got was wrong. Orotto-Oorrotto changes things, as does the fact that this is the Japanese name when I thought it was the English,  but whatever. I can give you some facts now. Because of certain legal restrictions, I can't provide you with pictures but I'll describe it as best I can:
It's an evil-looking tree-trunk with arms and roots that function as spidery legs. There are strips of bark torn from  the trunk and arms, it has one eye and three branches. The only pieces of greenery on the trunk are "cuffs" on the arms, which have branches as hands, and one clump which makes up "hair."  There is no doubt in my mind that this will be grass/dark type, but I'll wait until the official announcement to tell you why that's such horrible typing. We have nothing else really, so I'll leave you to get on with your life.

Some thanks I never expected to have to make, and some I hoped to

So my blog's viewership has just hit a bit of a milestone, and I felt like I should tidy up the thanks I wanted to make

Thanks to my sister, who kept pushing me into writing and then publicised the results
Thanks to the website whose entire formatting I legally ripped off for one of my posts
Thanks to the people doing the same stuff as me on Youtube, you inspire me
Thanks to the friends I see on Thursdays who give me ideas and help with development, especially Ross and Frances, although I do wish Ross would read the damn blog.
Thanks to the Palauan website whose function I have yet to figure out but which has apparently helped me significantly with viewers.  (seriously)
Thanks to the pokemon players in central and eastern Europe, especially Russia and Serbia, who have made up a surprisingly large chunk of my readership (Russia beats the USA into second place)
Thanks to my high-school English teachers, who are gonna hate me for using their first names, but who all got me started writing, especially Anna Bogucki.
Thanks to the people who I've bored to death using them as a sounding board.
Thanks, obviously, to all those involved in making the Pokemon games
And thanks to anyone else who I've forgotten to thank, including all the regular viewers.

And I should thank some of my favourite pokemon, so here goes: Rayquayza, Reshiram, Dialga, Meloetta, Keldeo, Latios, Drapion, Volcarona, Tyranitar, Hydreigon, Gallade and Gliscor, and my favourite good/bad doggy Houndoom.

Candy-floss, perfumed birds, fighting pandas and revolving squids (or why I hate the fairy type)

To be honest, I'm thinking of British panel show Mock the Week. For those of you who don't know the show, you can skip to the next paragraph. But for those who do, can you imagine the sheer joy of seeing the team being presented with this for "If this is the answer, what is the question." Now, I'm usually quite quick-witted, with a comeback for everything, but all I've come up with is "Name 4 things you can get in Chinese duty-free." and the eternal answer to a seemingly stupid question: "Name four things."
But the answer to this question is actually "What is the basis for the four newest pokemon designs?"
So let's begin with one of the strangest pokemon they've ever come up with:

Spritzee-The Perfume pokemon
Height-0"08
Weight-1.1lbs
Type-Fairy
Ability-Healer

Holy crap that's ugly! I mean, this is why I thought I'd hate the fairy type. It's just so....pink. And puffy. And yet it still manages to be faintly unsettling. I think it's the huge red eyes. But I just have this...thing against pokemon that look like that, like Jigglypuff, like Glameow. I think it's male genitalia. Yes, I promise that is the last time I'll mention my junk. But seriously, I understand fully that in order to make the fairy type fit into the pokemon pantheon there need to be a fair few, and that the fairy type will be almost entirely made up of cutesy pokemon like this, but I will point out now that with Noivern included there are still only 30 dragons, the countering of which looks to be the fairy type's main purpose, and with Sylveon, Flabebe, Spritzee (sounds like a teenage girl's body spray by the way,) Swirlix, Xerneas, Jigglypuff, Wigglytuff, Marill, Azumarill and Gardevoir confirmed as fairy types, along with 34 other pokemon in the "fairy" egg group, the fairy type needs no further expansion. In fact, if we go with there being 44 fairy-types, based on average numbers of pokemon added per type per generation, there will be more fairy types than pokemon of the ghost, dragon, ice and steel types, which sucks because when dark and steel were introduced in Gen II there were just 6 of each, making them only more common than dragons and ghosts. And I'm not saying that pokemon should be a game for boys, but the majority of pokemon players are, in my opinion, male. And the fairy type allows girls to counter dragons. What do boys do? This entire game, to me, seems a little feminine, and I don't know anyone who's ever had a problem with the gender balance in previous games. So we're done with the fairy type and why I don't much care for it. The only other thing we have is its ability, Healer, which has precisely one use, when run by a tank in conjunction with sweepers in multi-way battles. I doubt this thing is a tank. And we know it will be able to use Aromatherapy, which I think I have used once, with a Roserade which I scrapped after two battles because it was a liability. It's safe to say I won't love it.

Swirlix-The Cotton Candy Pokemon

Height-1"04

Weight-7.7lbs

Type-Fairy

Ability-Sweet Veil

Kill me. This thing's uglier still, and clearly not for diabetics. I mean, the ice cream was bad enough but cotton candy "melts" in exposure to air, or could get eaten by trainers. Realistically, I've said what I need to about this when I was talking about Spritzee. All that's left to say is this. My beloved dragons are getting beaten by cotton candy. Seriously, the pure destructive force of nature that is Hydreigon is now going to be taken down by SPUN SUGAR! Whatever. Let's move on. Its ability is to be Sweet Veil, preventing the user's team from falling asleep in double and triple battles. I will never use that, and Healer works better in that tiny little niche it might have. Its announced move is Draining Kiss, a new fairy-type draining move. That could work. Next!

At this point I'm gonna stop and weep a little. For all the talk that a bag of trash (which I actually didn't mind) and an ice-cream cone (which I really did mind) meant Gen V had run out of ideas, these two pokemon are a perfume-spraying bird (which I assume works in a department store) and cotton candy. Ironically enough the fairy type has left me feeling a little disenchanted. I'm pretty close to being out on Pokemon X and Y. The next thing up had better be some kind of super-cool squid pokemon.

Inkay-The Revolving Pokemon

Height-1"04 (I think, I've just converted in my head)

Weight-7.7lbs

Type-Dark/psychic

Ability-Contrary/Suction Cups

Well, that was lucky. I like this thing a lot, but it's really just a prevolution to this:

Malamar-The Overturning pokemon

Height-4"07

Weight-103.6lbs

Type-Dark/psychic

Ability-Contrary/Suction Cups

Now this I love. I don't like squid at all, but this is really cool, in a banana-y kind of way. It looks like someone's peeling Ursula from The Little Mermaid. While I let that sink in I'll go onto its typing. Now you may look at dark/psychic and say "no resistances whatsoever." I look at dark/psychic and say "total versatility." Because it only has one weakness, albeit a 4x one, to bug, and offensively it shines like crazy. Surprisingly enough, the niche I think it will have is as a beautiful counter to fighting types. Despite the dark typing removing its fighting resistance, the majority of fighting types run moves to get rid of flying and psychic types, and the dark type usually fixes that. So yeah, love it. It is said to be one of the best hypnotisers of all pokemon, meaning humans sometimes use Malamar to do their evil bidding. That really sounds like it ought to be an evil-team favourite, and yet I thought we'd established they were leaving the dark types for fire. Possibly they'll be using both. I wouldn't mind that at all. To correspond with its hypnotic force, it can use hypnosis, which there's nothing to say about. It will, however, also be able to use a new move called topsy-turvy, which reverses stat changes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that what Contrary does? So this reverses Contrary's reversal of stat changes and puts them back. Either that or it's only meant to be used with Suction Cups. It strikes me that Suction Cups is a great ability, as there are a lot of pokemon you would want to trap with Malamar, but that Contrary is such a great ability, and currently only available in the Dream World you can go with either ability but with Suction Cups you need topsy-turvy, because it's great. I'm starting to form a team I can see myself using for X and Y, and I think Malamar will definitely be in it. Just one question: Isn't Malamar a candy in the USA?

Pangoro-The Daunting Pokemon

Height-6"11

Weight-299"13

Type-Fighting/dark

Ability-Iron Fist/ Mold Breaker

Well, I'm daunted. This, as you may have guessed, is Pancham's evolution. A 7" 300lb evil fighting panda. Fair enough. It is apparently violent but fair, and attacks those who pick on the weak. The leaf now has a purpose: it can predict opponent's moves. That could be a signature move, or it could mean nothing. One confirmed move is Hammer Arm, which will be boosted by 20% by Iron Fist, giving it an evil 120 base power. 90 base power Drain Punch, anyone? Or any of the elemental punches at 90? Mold Breaker, on the other hand, allows it to hit ghost users with fighting moves, but why bother when it has dark typing? The only use I can see for it is in Earthquake on the flying types it's not going to fancy facing much. So go Iron Fist, people. It's by far the better ability. I thought, hoped and can now confirm it will be fighting/dark, a typing it shares with Scraggy and Scrafty, who don't use what is pretty kickass typing to very good effect. I could actually make a REALLY good dark-type team in Y version, starting with Yvetal, Malamar and Pancham. I LOVE those three.

More later, peeps.

P.S. Sorry about the formatting people. The program is...playing up, to say the least.

The Root of All Evil

Why are you hearing a trumpet fanfare right about now? We'll get to that in a minute.

One of the other pieces of information to be revealed yesterday was the name of the evil group, the Team Rocket of Gen VI. That's all, their name and their mission, which is to make money. So why am I playing the trumpet? Because its name is Team Flair, possibly Team Flare.
*DAN-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DAAAAAAAN*
Why does that make me so happy? Because if you're one of my "pokemon friends," or if you've read one of my posts I put up a while back, you'll know that one of my big wishes for X and Y was that the evil team would NOT focus on dark and poison types. And Flare? That has to be fire type surely. Mind you, I have reservations. Big ones. Fire just would not have been my choice for replacing dark and poison. I mean, yes, it is the only other type that can really be construed as "evil" besides maybe dragon, and that ain't happenin'. So that's cool, very Series of Unfortunate Events. But I've been thinking about it, and you're sure to be seeing this team all through the game, probably three or four times from start to finish. And once again, as when they were constantly using poison types, grass types are in some trouble. I mean, is it not time for good things to happen to grass types? Mind you, I've expressed my opinion before that Chespin might evolve into a grass/rock type, so there's that. But as, it seems, always within the game water types get to sit and smile smugly as they carve down the evil team with ease, unleashing surf after surf on countless helpless Litleos. Still, I was speaking to a friend last night and these were my words: "it seems like they might be more redoing the old games than doing anything innovative. That might work for new people but it'll piss off hardcore fans like me." So a somewhat new evil team is a start. Either it will be a fire type team or, horror of horrors, it's going to be a dance-theatre-cum-evil-team, who will pirouette onto the scene and be evil. Flare!
Poise! Passion! God, I hope not.

ETA:I've just seen the first video of Team Flare, and that is definitely a fire-type team. The guy used Houndour, who being moderately weak and dark-type has long been an evil favourite. But he is CLEARLY a fire-type trainer, so much so that Chili might come up to him and say "Dude, enough with the fire, we get it!"

My head hurts

I'm sorry guys, but I haven't been on the internet since Monday, been away on business 200 miles away. So I checked back this morning on my source, praying that there wouldn't be too much new pokemon info, but unfortunately, what came up was perhaps the biggest package of pokemon info so far this gen. All this on a day when I have no less than no less than 4 posts to do for my other blog on reality TV. Also, I'm still dog-tired from the trip. But onwards and upwards, because the information virtually all of us have been waiting for is out. WE KNOW ABOUT XERNEAS AND YVETAL! Now, it may make sense to do them individually as usual, but because they so clearly act as both parallels and counterpoints to one another I'll do them together. Also, there is no freakin' way I'm typing their names time and again, so Xerneas is X and Yvetal is Y. Agreed?
Ironically enough they both have the exact typing I initially predicted. X will be pure fairy type, while Y will be dark/flying. They're the first of the "big 3" legends since Groudon and Kyogre in Gen 3 not to be part dragon-type. Mind you, there's no evidence yet that there'll be a third such pokemon, a Kyurem to their Zekrom and Reshiram, but I wouldn't bet against it. Now, there really hasn't been a case where one of the two "mascot pokemon" has clearly pwned the other. Even Groudon, who seems so screwed against Kyogre, can bring up the sun and use Solarbeam, or if it stays rainy Thunder works. Now that baffles me, because I thought for sure fairy and dark were going to be new playmates, and I established that, contrary to my initial speculations, fairy will definitely not deal super-effective damage to dark. This is based on footage of a Gardevoir using fairy wind on a Hydreigon and not quite managing to take it down, doing maybe around 80% damage. Given Gardevoir's awesome special attack (I'm taking what I think is a fair guess that most fairy moves, including this one, will be special) and Hydreigon's moderate to good special defense, there is no way that's a 4x super-effective move. It must be 2x, surely. But all this depends on the battle properties of the fairy type, and that more than anything is worsening my migraine. IT MAKES NO SENSE!
On and up, Xerneas and Yvetal will have parallel but awesome abilities. X's is to be called fairy aura, and will power up fairy type moves by an as yet unknown factor, while Y's ability, dark aura, does the same to dark-type moves. That's pretty self-explanatory, but essentially it's added STAB, making it close to my favourite abilities of all time. And in the same paragraph I'm gonna blast through their moves, because like Dialga and Palkia; Zekrom and Reshiram, they have a pair of signature moves. X's is called Geomancy, while Y's is called *deep voice* Oblivion Wing *normal voice.* Just take a moment and let the awesome of Oblivion Wing wash over you, and we'll continue.

Actually, we're pretty much done. All that is left to say is that some of this seems to fly in the face of my "feminine and masculine" theory. I'm still going with it for now, but it's actually seeming more like good and evil to me. One thing hasn't changed. I am 99% guaranteed to be buying Y version first.

The Sky's The Limit-A Guide To Sky Battles

Use Thundurus. That is all.

A completely made-up analysis of the fairy type

OK, this is a comprehensive prediction of what will happen with the fairy type. I will include all the known information and the rest I'll be trying to make up, but hoping to hit the mark in some cases. Are you sitting comfortably? Who cares, I'm starting anyway.

Characteristics

Offensive

Offensively the fairy type is obviously extremely useful for its ability to deal super-effective damage to the dragon type. However, like it does with many types steel resists its STAB, as do grass and poison. Its special attack stat is generally pretty high and its speed is among the best of all types, but its physical attack is almost unusably bad, meaning it is valuable as a special sweeper but encounters problems against pokemon with good special defense. It has a good range of moderately powerful to very powerful special moves, but fairy types do not tend to be able to learn moves from many other types. One positive with its moves, however, is that they can often target multiple opponents in double and triple battles. Fairy/fire offers good coverage, as does fairy/ground, but there are no confirmed plans to produce pokemon with either of these typings. Fairy types are popular as the best counters to dragon-types and as reasonably good special sweepers, but they face real problems.

Defensive

Defensively it is not a terribly good type. Its special defense is moderately high, but its defense is on the low side. Its battle properties are also less than favourable defensively, as it takes super-effective damage from normal, fire, poison and rock types, while only resisting grass and dark type moves. Because of the innate weakness of the fairy type defensively, many people use fairy moves but not fairy-type pokemon.

Insert sword pun here

So I had my dragon/non-dragon battle tonight, and when I've come up with enough expletives I'll put something up on it (probably tomorrow.) But for now, they've spoon-fed us another new pokemon. Its name will be Monorpale in France, Hitotsuki in Japan, and it will be based on a sword. Oh, who am I kidding? It is a sword. Look:

Yes, this is actually a pokemon. Since it's you, here's another, of it in battle with a Golem which looks cooler than ever:

It'll be steel/ghost type, which is great typing, and I really love its design. Odd as it is, that works for ghost types. More as it comes, people. Promise

And more has come. The new pokemon's English name will be Honedge, which may be the coolest name ever. It works on so many levels. I'll leave you to find them yourself. It is 2"07 and weighs 4.4lbs. That's a tricky one because it combines what is typically one of the lightest types with one of the heaviest, so we'll go for that. Apparently it is made when a spririt possesses a human's sword. That is what I think the ghost type should be doing. It can use the blue cloth as an arm, which makes sense because I wondered how it would attack. Trainers who grab the sword may find themselves grabbed and their energy drained. Sounds like a signature move! One confirmed move is swords dance. I can't sign off on that, because a swords dance is a traditional Scottish dance performed over swords, or a dance with swords. But either way, some swords dancers make sense, but a sword cannot perform a swords dance. I assume it was done so people wouldn't say "Y NO SWORDS DANCE?" but it makes no sense. Bad move. Really cool pokemon though.

Dragons against the world

OK, this is another thing entirely. I consider myself a dark and dragon type trainer, just because they're my favourite types, and because if I had to make a team of pokemon of one type (which I once did, when I thought I was doing a 6v6 and it became a 3v3 leaving me with Tyranitar, Hydreigon and Houndoom) it would be one of the two. Me and a friend were recently discussing pokemon types (eg dark vs ghost as the better offensive typing. That one we did end up agreeing on, dark has better battle properties, ghost has better moves) and there were two which we just couldn't agree on. One was the psychic type, which I just don't love, as I said here. The other was the dragon type. I really didn't think dragon type's supremacy up to the 6th gen was in question but she managed to find the one problem with it: It's hard to use. And once she said it I realised that she was right (which is not the same as realising I was wrong) and that it took me a while to figure out how to properly use dragons, especially a whole team of them. But still, I felt like the honour of the dragon type was challenged, so I've challenged her to a duel.

The rules

1) Player 1 (me) may only use pokemon which are at least part dragon-type. They are not permitted to use dragon-like pokemon of other types, such as Gyarados, Aerodactyl and Charizard, or other non-dragon members of the dragon egg groups such as Grovyle.
2)Player 2 may not use any pokemon of the dragon type, but can use any of the 620 other pokemon, including any which have characteristics of the dragon type.
3) Each player may have up to 2 legendaries on their team.

The rest of the rules will be firmed up at the time. I was going to post my team and strategy, but that would be stupid pre-battle, so I'll do it afterwards. In the mean time this presents an interesting balance. One of us wanted more than 2 legendaries, the other didn't. You can guess which I was in favour of. I think 2 is fair, but it leaves me with choosing 4 fully-evolved non-legendary dragon type pokemon. How many do you think there are? No, it's less than that. Less. Less. It's 9. There are as many legendary dragon-types as non-legendary. I also have to deal with the fact that my opponent knows part of all of my pokemon's typing and can make a decent guess at which pokemon will be in my team, and that she can make a team to counter it with ice and steel types. Meanwhile she has to deal with the full draconian fury of my team. It's gonna be close.