#142: Aerodactyl

Well, we've now come across the only fossil Pokemon that has an in-game trade, as well as the lack of standard evolutions... But, it's a giant pterodactyl, so it has that going for it...

Aerodactyl is a rock/flying-type, because they've all been rock-type so far. Unlike the others so far, however, it's actually fast, with base 130 speed coupling well with a good 105 attack. The special attack is a little low at 60 (not an issue, just pretty much rules out ancient power), but there is some bulk there, with 80HP, 65 defence (the lowest of the three) and 75 special defence. I said some bulk, not lots. You get the ability pressure (common with legendaries, this doubles the foe's PP usage on each move) as well as rock head (eliminates damage from recoil moves like brave bird etc.), with the hidden ability of unnerve, which prevents the foe from eating their berry.

Yeah, this may make you forget about eating...

What do you get with these decent stats and an interesting typing? Well... One thing that's interesting is that you can get the three elemental fangs, along with bite, quite early on. All of these have the chance to flinch the foe, the elemental moves correspond to their type (bite is dark) and they have base 65 power to bite's 60, but they can also inflict status ailments. All four of these moves are, of course, physical. Iron head also has a decent chance to flinch the foe with a base 80 physical steel move. Supersonic fills a niche to confuse the foe, whilst wing attack is a physical flying move, only base 60 but does get STAB, with a good PP of 35 and can hit anyone in a triple battle. Scary face is there to drop the foe's speed, whilst roar scares the foe out of battle, dragging in another opponent, so this can be used to replace the target if you can't work with it, or shuffle them onto arena hazards, with the drawback here being that roar has a very low priority.

Agility allows you to boost your already rather alarming speed, we know ancient power rather well by now (base 60 special rock that can raise all your stats by a stage), and crunch is a base 80 physical dark move that can lower the foe's defence. Take down may actually be useful here with rock head, barring the fact that it's only 85 accuracy and 90 power, whilst return (which nearly everything can get from TMs can top out at over 100 power, 100 accuracy and never has the issue with recoil). Sky drop is an interesting move, where you pick up the foe on the first turn and then throw them back to earth in the second, damaging them at base 60 flying physical and stripping them of a turn, which can be handy in multi-battles (say you pick up a water absorb foe and make sure it doesn't get healed when you have to use surf on the other foes). Iron head pops back up again just before hyper beam (base 150 power normal special with only 90 accuracy and a recharge turn) rears its useless head, in before rock slide (base 75 rock physical move, 90 accuracy, with the chance to flinch and break parts of the arena) and giga impact (see hyper beam but replace special with physical).

So we have a nice big level list, let's see the TM list... There are a few too many special moves in there (hidden power, flamethrower, fire blast, incinerate, round) but it's still pretty good. You get the standard array, remembering either return or frustration as being better than take down depending upon how happy everyone is. You could take sandstorm for consistent foe damage that you will be immune to, but since you are very much geared to be more of a physical sweeper, why bother? Just take things like earthquake, smack down (don't make me define these again, but you may have forgotten that smack down hurts foes in the middle of something like fly at base 100, rather than base 50, as well as stopping the attack), roost (gives up your flying-type for the turn in order to heal you), rock tomb (base 60 rock physical) and aerial ace (base 60 flying physical, no accuracy check), steel wing (base 60 steel physical), facade and thief, payback (I guess this is for when you're up against another Aerodactyl or a trick room team, as base 50 dark physical as a standard is poor, but it does double if you've already been hit in this turn), stone edge (base 100 rock physical with 80 accuracy as the drawback), fly, strength and bulldoze. Wow, there's a lot of decent, not brilliant, moves in there. Highlights surely include fly, return (as normal), earthquake, arguably smackdown and payback as situational moves, facade and stone edge (if you ignore the crappy accuracy).

If you breed this majestic monster you can be rewarded with assurance (again, this only works if your foe uses a recoil move and is amazingly fast, like a life-orb Deoxys, or your teammate is even faster than you, since it's base 60 dark physical that hits twice as hard against a foe that has already been hurt in the turn), dragon breath (a special move, sure, but it can paralyse the foe), pursuit (base 40 dark physical but will hit a foe before it can switch out at base 80 instead), whirlwind (see roar, since they're basically the same) and tailwind, which boosts the whole team's speed. The tutor, on the other hand, offers a few moves we've already seen (tailwind, iron head), along with aqua tail (base 90 water physical with 90 accuracy), iron tail (base 100, 75 accuracy steel physical) and sky attack (base 140 flying physical, 90 accuracy, 5 PP with a boosted critical hit ratio, a 30% chance to flinch and the necessity of a charging turn that can be overcome with use of a power herb, but you need to consider your items...). You also get a smattering of special moves available to be tutored, these being: snore, heat wave, earth power and dragon pulse.

No evolution? No problem. Not content with having a higher base stat total than either of the other fully evolved fossils so far, Aerodactyl is the only fossil to have a mega evolution so far. This bestows upon it a new ability, tough claws (boosts power of contact moves by a third), as well as 30 more in attack (now base 135, scary), 20 more in defence (base 85 now means that the decent base 80 HP won't all go in one hit), and 20 more in special defence up to base 95 now, with special attack getting an unnecessary bump of 10 to base 70 (I guess if you need to run ancient power or whatever), and then finally a boost of 20 on speed to a reality-defying base 150. Yeah, unless you get a Ninjask or a speed form Deoxys, you may well be attacking first: seriously, you are tied for third fastest with Mega Alakazam, normal and attack form Deoxys and other Mega Aerodactyls, and the only ones ahead of you (Ninjask and Deoxys) have their own drawbacks, namely being a bit weak (the former) and routinely being banned or a pain to get (until Delta Episode in ORAS) for the latter. That doesn't mean you should slack off and not invest in it, since with some investment you may overtake those ahead of you, whilst with no investment, things like Mega Beedrill, Mega Mewtwo Y, Mega Sceptile, Electrode, Accelgor and co could catch up to you.

Seems to be cosplaying Serj Tankian...

What we have here is a scarily fast physical attacker: even without mega evolving you pack a serious punch before the vast majority of Pokemon will even know what happened. You get a nice array of moves to pick from, sure not all of them hyper-powered but they have their roles, with the fangs you get nice coverage, and hey, you can even get stealth rock from the tutor. This Pokemon is pretty unreal, if you think about it. Sure, you need the old amber to get it, but that's now seriously easy to find in Generation 6: across Y and Alpha Sapphire I probably have about 20 spare, to the point I stuck them on things to wonder trade. If you can't find one, let me know and I'll sort you out: you need this Pokemon as an option.

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