On Articuno

I have way more pent up anger towards non-existent monsters than I have any real right to have. Just yesterday I was complaining about how Latias was a right little bitch, and now I’m about to go on another 500 word rant about another Pokemon. Today’s victim is Articuno, the first of the Legendary Birds from the Kanto region. One of the old originals.

Basically, Articuno is a bastard.

Okay, maybe I’m being a bit unfair. The main reason that Articuno is a bastard is that I have failed to catch Articuno for a very long time.

Basically, in the short period of time that I’ve been playing Pokemon Go, Articuno has always eluded me. Articuno first appeared, for me at least, for a single week during which literally no one would do raids with me. I mean, who would want to do level 5 raids with a level 25 player with nothing but Houndooms and Arcanines, who only has a loose grasp on both the English language and the Greek language?

Not that I actually SAW many raids for Articuno. Almost ALL of the raids I saw during that one week were for Moltres, with a handful of Zapdos raids. I saw a grand total of 2 Articuno raids and both times, I couldn’t get anyone else interested in joining me.

There was ONE raid in which I could have gotten an Articuno. Except I was at work and my siblings, who almost always invite me to these things, didn’t bother inviting me. I’m still slightly annoyed about that.

The Legendary Bird raid week though quickly passed and everyone else moved onto Mewtwo. Mewtwo dominated level 5 raids for weeks and everyone wanted to do those. No one gave a shit about Articuno though.

I went Articuno-less for a long time, until, in December, Niantic announced that all the previous Research Breakthrough legendaries would come back as research breakthroughs. Which sounded amazing, since this meant I had a chance to get Articuno again! Sure, it was only a 1 in 6 chance per research breakthrough but I managed to time my breakthroughs to open on the 1st of December, giving me 5 opportunities to get the icy bird!

Did I get Articuno? No.

At the end of December, it was announced that Lugia and Ho-Oh would also appear in the research breakthroughs for January and February, complete with potential shiny forms. The 1 in 8 chance of getting Articuno worried me, but oh well, I had another 9 more opportunities, I’d get Articuno, right?

Wrong.

I mean, I got lots of other stuff. A couple of Moltresses, a Ho-Oh, a Lugia and even a shiny Lugia. I also managed to only get two Suicunes, which was the one Pokemon no one wanted. But no Articuno. The only reason I wanted Articuno was because of my Pokedex but after weeks of doing my research breakthroughs, not missing a single day, I still managed to not get one. It’s not that Articuno is useful or anything, I just wanted to have all three legendary birds. Bad luck just happened to completely screw me over.

The thing is, Articuno’s window is probably gone now. There are so many other legendaries that need to make appearances that there’s no reason to actually bring the Ice Bird back, aside from popularity. The Regi-Legendaries are probably due to make a reappearance, even if no one likes them, and we’re still waiting on Latios and Rayquaza to make a return as well. That’s on top of the appearance of the rest of the Generation 3 Mythical Pokemon – the last two Deoxys forms and Jirachi, AND the appearance of the other Generation 4 Legendaries. There’s a ton of those left: Dialga, the three Spirits of the Lake, Phione and Manaphy, Shaymin Darkrai and Arceus, not to mention Giratina’s Origin Forme.

There’s simply no room for Articuno to make a comeback any time soon!

Articuno isn’t even that good as an Ice-Type attacker anyway since Mamoswine exists now and is way easier to obtain. So even among hardcore players, it’s not THAT popular.

In the end, I decided to trade for an Articuno. No, it wasn’t really worth the 40k stardust but at least now I have one.