#64-66: Abra, Kadabra and Alakazam

According to the Pokedex entries, this family of Pokemon stems from a smart child turning into a Pokemon and reaching deity levels of genius, but can it live up to that?

Abra is one of those Pokemon that makes you want to put a gun to your temple for one reason: teleport. If you don't catch it straight away, odds are it will use teleport and leave you scratching your head. It has dreadful HP (25), physical attack (20) and even worse physical defence (15), with admittedly ok special defence of 55. This suggests it's not worth getting until you see it has 90 speed, and since it's a first evolution, a remarkable 105 special attack, which is better than a sizeable number of fully evolved Pokemon. Add in the abilities: synchronize (if you get a status condition given to you, then they get the same landing on them), inner focus (prevents flinching) and the hidden ability magic guard (prevents indirect damage such as from weather).

Its Japanese name is 'Casey'... Which is creepy considering the origin story in the Pokedex...

Already we can see there's an amazing base to build from with three good abilities and that amazing special attack and speed combo (better special attack than Venusaur and only just lower than Charizard's and it still has two evolutions and a mega to go). Abra is pure psychic-type, which isn't too bad, really since it has few weaknesses (but also few resistances). The problem is, it doesn't learn any moves by level up other than teleport.

Go for the TM list straight away. Psyshock, psychic, hidden power, shadow ball, round, energy ball, charge beam and dazzling gleam all offer good to very good damage, with the first two also being STAB. Ignore physical moves (I have) since the attack stat is dreadful and peaks at 50, so never go there... You get a lot of moves like protect, calm mind (boosts both special stats), thunder wave and stuff which is fairly pointless since you aren't particularly bulky. Rest and sleep talk can be coupled, and if you put them to sleep you can use the immensely powerful dream eater.

The breeding move list is pretty worthless, since the damage moves are physical. The support moves are somewhat wasted on Abra and co since they are definitely sweeper material. You could equip a flame orb on magic guard and psychoshift it off, but then you'll just get slapped hard and probably go down in one. Even when you reach Alakazam you only have 55 HP and 45 defence, with a decent 95 special defence, but just don't bother: this should be an out and out killer.

A lot of the tutor moves are pointless special attacks, but you can get some special ones: shockwave, snore and signal beam. You could also take recycle for a chesto/resto set, but you don't have enough HP in reserve, unlike say Snorlax...

So we evolve to Kadabra early at level 16. You were pretty powerful in special before, but now you're getting silly: 120 special attack being overwhelming, and throw in 105 speed and a respectable 70 special defence. Who cares if you only get 40 HP, 35 physical attack and 30 defence? You also get to keep the nice abilities.

What is it with Psychics and spoons? And moustaches?

You get access to kinesis, which drops the foe's accuracy by one stage (big whoop). Now you also have proper moves, like confusion (base 50), psybeam (base 65), psychic (90) and future sight (120 but doesn't hit straight away, so not necessarily a great idea). You also get more setup moves and psycho cut, but that's physical so why would you take it?

The TM list is basically the same, and the tutor list only really gives you more physical crap, but so long as you go with coverage, even neutral non-STAB hits should hurt most things.

Alakazam came in as one of the early gimmick evolutions: Kadabra only evolves by trade. It also seems that in response to a 'hilarious' in game trade in generation 4, where someone trades you an everstone carrying Haunter that doesn't evolve because of the stone, now trading with the stone still evolves Kadabra.

Again with the spoons?

You know how the special attack was a little daunting earlier? How does 135 sound? Oh, and 120 speed. I've already mentioned 95 special defence, and the 55, 50, 45 HP and physicals which aren't enough to torpedo this great specially offensive threat, especially since the abilities remain good.

Aside from the introductions of hyper beam (ignore) and focus blast (powerful fighting special base 120 but low accuracy and PP yet can deal with dark-type nuisances (though so can signal beam)), the TM and level sets haven't really changed. I guess grass knot could work if facing a heavy foe...

Mega evolution makes a great Pokemon a little broken. 175 special attack base is ludicrous. 150 speed makes Concorde look slow, and you get a nice boost to defence up to 65, so you could maybe take a physical hit (not worth counting on). You lose the abilities, however, and get trace: copies the ability of the enemy.

Never tell it that there is no spoon or it'll destroy you...

Do you really need me to say anything further? If you don't consider using this Pokemon then you'e mad... The only negatives are a slightly restrictive offensive movepool (you do get a lot of boosting moves and the like that you can basically get on most of the Pokemon mentioned on this blog so far), a weird Pokedex description and odd designs. These are all minor: it gets enough moves to get by and the others are merely cosmetic. Train an Alakazam: if you don't have the friends to do the trade-evolve, find some or hire someone... It's worth it. Oh, and I avoided any puns on the names! I'm just magic.

(All artwork presented by Ken Sugimori, taken from the Bulbapedia image archives)