Pokemon Black and White 2 Spotlight: New Pokemon Forms, Part 1

Pokemon Black and White 2 have been released in Japan! This means that we will now be receiving a massive influx of information about the new games. As such, I've decided to compile a few new sections complete with freshly revealed details about the upcoming games to anticipate their release in the U.S. and the European countries. In this first post I will cover some new Pokemon forms introduced in these games, with speculation as to how I think they will contribute to both the casual playthrough of the games and its competitive counterpart. So, without further yammering, let's get into the forms!

Black and White Reshiram

Introduced as the first new forms of the Black and White generation, these two depictions reveal the fusion of Black and White's star players, Reshiram and Zekrom, with their triadic counterpart Kyurem.

How They Look: 

These two forms definitely see an improvement from the previously basic dark and light complexions of the Dragon superstars; there is now color, armor and a whole lot of intricate detail laced into the bodies of the beasts, ranging from the larger, ice-crushing claws of Zekrom's fusion to the burning, blade-like wings of Reshiram's. What's even cooler is the whole idea of fusion, something rarely ever explored in Pokemon except in the meager forms of Mantine or Accelgor and Escavalier. This allows for the balance between dark and light to be disrupted, giving each iteration a sort of power they didn't have before. They have been imbibed with pieces of Kyurem's armor, all the while retaining their color scheme from before. Their faces even match Kyurem's now! Overall, I think the aesthetic design of these new forms look amazing. If I thought Zekrom was cool before, I can't wait to see what Black Kyurem can do for me.

What They Lose and Keep: 

It has been revealed that both of these forms will retain Kyurem's Dragon/Ice typing, meaning that they lose out on the boosted power from moves like Fusion Bolt and Fusion Flare.

What they gain, however, are the new moves of Ice Burn and Freeze Shock, two Ice attacks that have the potential to Burn and Paralyze the opponent respectively. Both of these moves have 140 Base Power and take two whole turns to function (similar to the moves Sky Attack, Solarbeam, etc). While this isn't a major addition to their arsenal, at least they still look much cooler than before. That's definitely a plus.

Competitive Speculation: 

Another thing that these two godly forces obtain is an INSANE boost in the Base Stat Totals. At 700, they now sit at the second highest BSTs in the entire game. This is nothing compared to the increase in their respective offensive stats. Zekrom, who specialized in Attack in Black and White has fused with Kyurem to agglomerate a massive base 170 Attack stat! This is the second highest in the game, just behind Deoxys's Attack Forme. What this means is that Black Kyurem's Fusion Bolt and Outrage will be dealing an unrivaled amount of damage to anything that comes in its path. Similarly, White Kyurem has a base 170 Special Attack, giving it the same effect from whopping powerhouse moves like Draco Meteor and Fire Blast.

The rest of the stats are almost identical to Kyurem's old listing, with slightly more Defense and slightly less Special Attack than before for Black Kyurem, and an inversion of these for White Kyurem. This means that, while Kyurem was restricted to the BL list in Black and White for the sole purpose of its bad typing, things will very likely be changing when Black and White 2's changes are implemented into the tier structures. 170 Base Attack or Special Attack on a Pokemon with 95 Base Speed and good Defenses is alone to single-handedly take control of the metagame.

Dragon and Ice is still a bad typing overall, but with stats like those and coverage like that, there is no reason for these two not to be Ubers AT ALL.