AOTW Rapid-Fire!! Mummy, Bad Dreams, and Cursed Body

Purely for ambience, click here first.

Boys and girls of every age,
wouldn’t you like to see something strange?
Come with me and you will read,
 a Halloween Ability of the Week!
This is PKMNCast, this is PKMNCast,
We talk pokémon and never tire!
This is PKMNCast, this is PKMNCast,
This is Ability of the Week Rapid-Fire: Mummy, Bad Dreams, and Cursed Body!

Yes, folks, Halloween is upon us again! And while my free time won’t allow me to build a holiday-themed team like I’d been secretly wanting to, just try and stop me from waxing intellectual about some of the spookier Abilities in our favorite games!

First up in this Rapid-Fire is Mummy. Last week, we talked about Mold Breaker being the Ability that subverts the defensive Abilities in the game, but Mummy subverts all of them. Introduced in gen five, Mummy is the signature and only Ability of Yamask and Cofagrigus. As a rule of thumb, basically every other Ability in the game prevents something, heightens something, or passes on a status condition like poisoning, and therein lays the unique quality of Mummy. Rather than defending or powering up its user, Mummy has absolutely no effect on the pokémon that has it. Its power is that it’s the bubonic plague of the pokémon world. If a monster with Mummy as its Ability is attacked by another pokémon with a move that makes direct contact, the attacking pokémon’s Ability is changed to Mummy, obliterating their original Ability! Mummy will continue to propagate and spread to any other pokémon that makes direct contact with a pokémon that has Mummy, and the Ability will not be changed back until either the battle ends, or the pokémon that has contracted it is recalled to its pokéball.

Next up, we have another exclusive Ability, and this time we’re talking about a Legendary. Because of that, you probably won’t be using Bad Dreams too much since its sole user, Darkrai, is banned from tournament play, but that doesn’t stop it from being a pretty nifty Ability. When the defending pokémon is asleep, Bad Dreams causes them to lose one eighth of their overall HP at the end of every turn, like a built-in Nightmare. Partner Darkrai with a pokémon with Arena Trap and Hypnotize them into a knockout! To fully utilize the Ability, why not try a move set of Hypnosis, Dream Eater, Substitute, and Protect?

Finally in this Halloween edition of AOTW, let’s talk about Cursed Body. Like Mummy, Cursed Body was introduced in generation five, and in the main game, you’ll only find it with Jellicent evolutionary family. If you journey to the Dream World, though, you can also procure a Froslass, Shuppet, or Banette with the Ability. Cursed Body is right at home on a Jellicent, too. It’s bulky enough to often weather a super-effective attack, and in my experience, Cursed Body’s 30% chance to Disable an attack after being hit by it comes in reaaaal handy, and unlike Iron Barbs or Rough Skin, the move does not have to make direct contact! Be wary of utilizing this Ability on a Substitute, user, though. While Cursed Body will break through an opponent's Sub', using your own neutralizes the Ability.

That wraps things up for this ghost-centric Halloween-themed Ability of the Week Rapid-Fire! By the time you read this, I’ll be adjusting to my new digs in suburban Chicagoland, so if you don’t hear from me for a bit, chalk it up to the “settling in” process. Again, happy Halloween folks! Kids, don’t eat all your candy in one night. Adults, drink responsibly. Steve… eh, you’re probably okay.

-Wil
www.wheretheresawil.com

PS: Assuming you read at the same pace I do...

In this town, we call home, everyone hail to the Pumpkin Song...
La! La! La! La la la! La la la! Whee.......