Pokémon Scarlet & Violet - Meganium the Unrivaled
5As the Pokémon Europe International Championships is going on, we got another event for Pokémon fans as a little bonus: the next 7-star Tera Raid Battle event, Meganium the Unrivaled. I don’t know if there’s anything special about Meganium and the tournament (probably not), but why not? I wonder how many people participating, or at least visiting the event, over at the ExCeL Center in London are playing this Tera Raid Battle event. (Or has played, or plan on playing.) Don’t forget to pick up Marco Silva’s Iron Hands, if you want. And if you play TCG Live, the full-art card for Raging Bolt ex.
I’m curious about this because, while Meganium has the highest visibility, and arguably popularity in general, of the Johto starters, Meganium is also arguably the lowest-ranked of all starter Pokémon. Meganium was one of Ash’s most frequent battling partners in the Johto arc of the anime, and it gained a second wind when Meganium was prominently featured on New Pokémon Snap. Also, it’s one of the first Pokémon unambiguously based on a dinosaur (some kind of sauropod, maybe an Apatosaurus?). However, people are hesitant to use the Chikorita line, both going through the single-player story and in PvP battling, for the same reasons: Meganium has “stone wall” type stats with a type bearing a lot of weaknesses and relatively few strategies for that, and yet, those “stone wall” stats are a bit too even to really use as a pure staller, even with an advantageous matchup. The result is that if you pick Chikorita to journey through Johto, you’re going to have a lot of long, drawn-out matches, yet it can’t draw them out long enough to deal with many Pokémon trained by human opponents.
With moves like Synthesis, Heal Pulse, Reflect/Light Screen, and Safeguard though (and Aromatherapy in previous generations—don’t know why it’s gone), with the Hidden Ability of Leaf Guard, the intended purpose of Meganium is probably the cleric, to use more standard RPG terms, a character who heals and protects teammates rather than directly attacking.
All of these disadvantages mean, of course, I see it as a challenge. Meganium has long been on my list to put onto a team. I just need to find where I can do so. Or wait to see if Meganium gets better moves in future generation. It would be neat to have Aromatherapy back, with moves like Life Dew and Revival Blessing, to fully embrace that cleric role.
For this one, I used Forrest again, my Forretress. He is largely unchanged:
Forretress (Forrest)
Level 100
Ability: Overcoat
Base Stats: 252 HP, 200 Defense, 68 Sp. Defense
Hold Item: Leftovers
Nature: Relaxed
Tera: Bug
Moves: Reflect, Iron Defense, Pounce, Lunge
This is because this Meganium is a physical attacker, packing Curse to turn those awkward stats into a strength, taking advantage of the 30x multiplier on its HP. Hence, to meet those Attack boosts, I have Reflect, Iron Defense, and Lunge: Reflect to protect the team, Iron Defense to boost Forrest’s own Defense, and Lunge to drop that Attack any time it goes up, and Meganium will use that a LOT. Pounce is there from later on in the Hisuian Decidueye the Unrivaled event; I didn’t use it here, and looking at Forretress’s moves, I don’t think I really needed a fourth move. Would’ve been nice to have a stat-resetting move like Clear Smog, or something that reduces Defense to deal with Body Press though.
Meganium will put up Reflect and Light Screen at the beginning of the battle. I found that you could safely ignore this, as while it reduces damage to Meganium, the barriers will go down not long afterwards, and Meganium won’t put them back up. Meganium will also start putting up a the Tera Raid Battle shield after having taken a minor amount of damage, and the shield takes up about 40% of its total HP. Twice during this battle, Meganium will reset its own negative stat changes, and twice during this battle, Meganium will also reset your Pokémon’s positive stat changes. Meganium will use Bulldoze once, late into the battle. This is likely why people brought in Fire-types with non-Fire Tera, as by then, they’ll have Terastallized and no longer be weak to Ground. And yes, Meganium does have a Grass-type attack, Seed Bomb, for those who forget (or don't realize) that Meganium won't just spam Zen Headbutt all day long and bring in Basculegion or Golurk or something.
Nevertheless, I noticed people were having a hard time with this one. Most baffling was one where someone brought in a Level 37 Eevee, which I hope was just a mistake. I’ll probably put up a “failures” video of this event later.
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