Top 100 Pokemon #89: Escavalier

The Pokemon series has come up with a number of unusual ways for a Pokemon to evolve. It started with just level-ups, evolution stones, and trade evolutions, and then there were trade-while-holding-items, friendship evolutions, divergent evolutions based on stats, gender-specific evolutions, location-based evolutions...

Gen V joined the fun with a unique evolution method of its own, where two Pokemon evolve specifically when traded for each other. The reason? The extra energy of a Link Trade allows one to steal the shell off the other.

Yep, meet Pokemon's most knightly thief, Escavalier.

Yeah, I had a bit of a burglary incident during a power high, but don't worry, I'm all chivalry now.

#89: Escavalier

To understand Escavalier and his pre-evolution Karrablast, you also have to understand their counterparts, Shelmet and Accelgor (spoiler: they'll be covered later on in this list). Shelmet is a snail with a steel shell; Karrablast is based on the Japanese snail-eating beetle. Hence, you trade one for the other, and Karrablast steals Shelmet's shell. (Don't worry about Shelmet, though; he takes full advantage of his shell-less state in his evolution. More on that later.)

Putting his thieving ways in the past, though, Escavalier looks pretty darn awesome. One wonders just where he got those jousting lances, but they make him look very fearsome. Moreso if you find yourself on the receiving end of one of them.

Not so much a Megahorn as it is a Megalance.

Competitively, Escavalier sports a Base 135 Attack, which is absurdly high. This means his STAB moves, particularly Megahorn, can punch massive holes in his opponents' teams, even if they resist his attacks! He also has great defensive stats, with Base 70 HP and Base 105 Defense and Special Defense. The one really "bad" stat he has, though, is Base 20 Speed, tied with Ferrothorn for the lowest Base Speed among all fully-evolved Pokemon. Which makes his Pokedex entry rather puzzling.

If base 20 Speed is "high speed", then either the entry writer was in a Trick Room at the time, or I'd hate to see what he thinks of Snorlax. 

Sure enough, that ridiculously-low Base Speed makes Escavalier a perfect choice for a Trick Room sweeper. His abilities are Swarm and Shell Armor, plus Overcoat in Dream World; the first two are decent abilities, though nothing earth-shattering. He has a pretty limited movepool, with STAB attacks like X-Scissor/Megahorn and Iron Head (he unfortunately can't learn Gyro Ball, which would be awesome with his low Speed) and some other moves like Pursuit, but nothing really in the way of coverage. Still, Megahorn in particular is a move with 120 Base Power coming off Base 135 Attack; that's going to cause a lot of damage even on a resisted hit.

As a final note, there's a fair amount of Escavalier fanart around showing him being the protectorate knight of Lilligant. While I cannot pinpoint an exact origin for this pairing, I do know of a pixiv-based doujin comic series (the ShubaDore Playhouse by yosinoya35, which can be found on your local 'booru) that has the two and an Accelgor involved in assorted hijinks, which may have popularized the pairing. Either way, pics of the two together do tend to lean towards adorable.

Let's just hope they're not facing a Fire-type.

Next time: For the Pokemon Video Game Championships 2010, a doubles tournament-style competition where each team was allowed one high-end legendary along the lines of Kyogre and Giratina, this non-legendary Pokemon was used on the decor for the World Championships in recognition of him becoming a surprising threat in that particular competition.