Hey, Trainers! Welcome back!
This month we are getting a chance to catch a Shiny Chansey! And to be honest… your chances are EGG-Cellent!
The date and time are Sunday, February 4th, 2:00pm till 5:00pm local time. Here are the bonuses you can expect:
Chansey is, of course, the star of the show but we’re going to go ahead and take a look at Happiny first as it is the actual base stage of this family of monsters!
Spotlight on Happiny
Happiny was introduced in Generation 4 along with a whole host of evolutions and pre-evolutions for pre-existing Pokemon. You were gifted an egg and when you hatched it, this adorable little monster was the prize! Of course, many of us have fond memories of Happiny from the anime – it was a Pokemon Brock obtained and it was ridiculously powerful for being an actual infant. Remember the time it hoisted a whole boulder over its head, single handed AND there was a Piplup stuck to it?
Fun times!
I’m just glad it didn’t try and cram that boulder in its pouch – The Pokedex makes a lot of points about Happiny doing its best to emulate Chansey by shoving round, white stones into its pouch as though they were eggs. It is too young to lay eggs of its own so it gets broody and uses these little round stones as a surrogate egg. If it likes you, though, it will gift you the egg. I guess it’s probably trying to emulate Chansey, who gifts nutritious eggs to Pokemon in need.
And here’s the star proper! It’s Chansey!
Chansey have been hunted for their egg laying properties for generations. This has done two things: One, it has made their numbers dwindle severely and they are very rare as a result. The second thing is that successive generations of Chansey have become very adept at running away. The fastest of the bunch survives to live another day, after all! So, in general, these Pokemon are fairly rare and anyone who manages to snag one? Very lucky.
These kind hearted Pokemon do lay several eggs every day and share them with friends, loved ones and anyone it may find who is injured or hungry. In short, it is more than happy to share its eggs with poor souls who have found themselves low on luck.
The next stage? This creature was the absolute bane of anyone trying to beat down Gyms back in the early days of Pokemon GO.
Blissey.
Let Grandpa Jim share his tales of the olden times with you all – back when Generation 2 first dropped in Pokemon GO, it was a wonderful time of celebration. We had been limited to the first 150 for so long that we didn’t care that everything we saw in the wild was either a Snubbul or a Slugma.
We just enjoyed having new monsters to raise. And evolve! Suddenly, those worthless Golbats we’d been hoarding? Majestic Crobats. Those Onix we’d been grinding up into Candy? Steelix by the mile. Kingdra? Absolutely.
Chansey had already been kind of a pain in Gyms up to this point. See, Gyms could have up to 10 Pokemon a piece and there were no species restrictions – you could literally have a Gym Tower with 10 Chansey stacked one on top of the other. That’s fine. No problem. Launch on in there with a few Machamp and it would be difficult, but not impossible. Back when Gyms looked like this.
(I still put that Caterpie in Gyms to this very day. Some men just want to watch the world burn.)
Then came Blissey.
With the added CP and HP and a few Psychic Type moves to boot, these guys became super difficult to deal with unless you had a team of near maxed out Gym-Bro Machamp ready, willing and able to eat nothing but eggs for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Many lower level Trainers or those who had not the time or resources to Bulk Up a team of Fighting Type powerhouses found Gyms to be hardly worth the time. Hence, Niantic was forced to change up the system, allowing for only one of each species per Gym. To this day, Blissey hoarders the world over lament these changes, wishing for a bygone era where they and they alone reigned supreme over a pink, egg-shaped dystopia of broken dreams.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
So. Is Blissey still a creature of Nightmares? Or is it more like the soft, pillowy nurse that her PR team would like us to recognize every time that egg-shaped silhouette crosses the horizon?
With a Max CP of 3117, 129 Attack, Defense of 169 and a Stamina of 496 (That isn’t a typo I promise) this critter is just a pain to take down. But… it’s not really doing a lot of damage in its own right. You’d be hard-pressed to find a use for this Pokemon on an offensive team. It is, and always has been, a defender and little else. It doesn’t hurt that it’s a pure Normal Type so it has exactly one weakness in Fighting Type attacks, but offers only one Resistance in Ghost.
In terms of Fast Attacks, you have Zen Headbutt and Pound, the latter of which is STAB but the former of which is better for Type coverage by a good margin. For Charged Attacks you get Psychic, Dazzling Gleam and Hyper Beam. Hyper Beam is STAB and should be on the moveset just for power’s sake but Psychic is easily the best choice. I’d have both. The Community Day option of Wild Charge isn’t exactly going to change Blissey’s place in the meta, nor does it offer a lot of Type coverage against common Blissey counters so I’m not sure who this is for. Still! It’s a powerful move in its own right so you could sub out Hyper Beam for it to offer a faster charging move to cover unexpected foes and sacrifice the STAB you get from that Gen 1 Kame Hame Ha stand in.
Shiny Happiny is just a slightly cooler shade of pink so be aware when hatching those Eggs that it may be tougher to differentiate than normal. Just be careful when ditching any extras! Shiny Chansey is like… a very weird green. It’s not nice looking. It’s kind of gross, actually? Definitely deserves a recolor. Shiny Blissey is almost indistinguishable.
Thanks for joining me this month, Trainers! As always, I wish you the absolute best of luck out there! Stay cool, stay hydrated and have fun!
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