Mega Pokemon and What They Could Mean, Competitively

If you’ve been following Pokemon X&Y news, then you’ve heard that they’re adding a new feature called Mega Evolution. This allows several Pokemon to take on a new and more powerful form in battle when they hold a certain item and meet another, as of yet unknown condition. It’s a cool new feature, one of many in the upcoming X&Y, and it’s set to cause some drastic changes to the way competitive Pokemon works.

All of the information about Mega Pokemon and their abilities in this article is factual, but everything else is pure speculation.

The big stink here is that a lot of these Mega Evolutions get new and more powerful abilities. For example:

• Kangaskan’s Mega Evo gets the new Parental Bond ability that allows it to attack twice.
•  Mega Lucario gets Adaptability, which raises its damage from it’s Steel and Fighting moves by an extremely significant amount.  
• Mega Mawile gets Huge Power, which doubles its attack stat. This is massive considering it’s attack stat is way higher than the next strongest Pokemon that gets Huge Power.

These abilities make already powerful Pokemon even more ridiculously powerful, and seem like they could unbalance the game.  They definitely allow you to add a ringer to your team.

Mind games

Another powerful trick with Mega evolutions is that you choose when to activate the Mega Evolution.  This helps you play some mind games with an opponent.  

For example, say you have an Absol holding it’s Absolnite and waiting to Mega Evolve.  Your opponent is down to a few support Pokemon and you send Absol in. He knows Mega Absol gets Magic Bounce as an ability, so you can make him afraid to use some of his support moves because they’ll get sent right back at him. Meanwhile, your regular Absol retains increased Critical Hit rate from Super Luck, and can freely use Sucker Punch or Pursuit since your foe is likely either going to attack or switch out.

However, part of the deal with Mega Evolution is that, supposedly, you’re only allowed one Mega on your team. There’s no telling how they plan to limit that, it’s possible you can only use the Mega Evolution button in the menu once per battle. No matter how it works, though, it’s clear you’re only allowed one of these powerhouses in a battle. This means that likely every competitive team in Gen VI will run a Mega, so hopefully there are a lot more Megas than have already been revealed.

This limit combined with the ability to choose when to activate Mega Evolution leads to another sort of mind-game: Mega bluffing.  

You can bring several Pokemon capable of Mega Evolution. Only one of them can actually Mega Evolve, but your opponent can’t know which. Therefore, you can bring a Blaziken and a Lucario with normal sets and a hard to determine item like an Expert Belt or a Choice Band.  Meanwhile, you have an Absol with its Absolnite waiting to Magic Bounce a Stealth Rock or a Spore back at your foe. You can play mind games, acting like you’re bringing in Mega Lucario to sweep, luring them into a debilitating Pokemon like Sableye, then jumping into Mega Absol to Magic Bounce a Will-O-Wisp.  

All in all, I think Mega Evolution adds a lot of strategy to the Pokemon game, and I’m excited to see what happens when Pokemon X&Y drop on October 12th worldwide.