The Second Best Team Rocket Grunt
Back in March of 2021, I wrote a long-winded article about the best Team Go Rocket grunt. Sure, all these grunts are the same. They’re the same copied and pasted model and they all have pink hair. But there’s something about one grunt that stood out. I was, of course, talking about the water-type grunt with 3 Magikarps as his Pokemon. A team like that is so bad that it’s actually good.
Well, good for us at least.
But all of a sudden, I have run into the second best Team Rocket Grunt.
The Grunts have changed a bit since I last spoke about them.
We actually have a few more… varied grunts now. There’s finally a fairy-type grunt, but we still don’t have a steel-type one. Not that it really matters because Aron appears as a rock type grunt. You can also get Lileep and Anorith as shadow Pokemon, as well as Electrike and new fairy type Snubbull. The fights themselves are also much easier now. Well, aside from the bitch with 2-3 Snorlaxes.
In particular, we also have more 1k stardust Pokemon. The biggest turn off for a lot of shadow Pokemon is that 1. they generally have bad stats and 2. they are expensive to purify. After all, Mareep is a pretty common grunt choice, but it costs 5000 stardust to purify one. The equivalent of catching 40 weather-boosted Pokemon. Thankfully though, we have the likes of Aron, Magikarp and the newly added Poochyena, which all only cost 1000 stardust to purify.
Also joining this party is a new Grunt. One that just has three Bidoofs.
Seriously, this male grunt only has three Bidoofs in his lineup. He’s basically the normal-type version of the Magikarp grunt. I don’t know if he can have Bibarel at the end, but I’m pretty sure he just has Bidoofs. Three of them, all using Tackle. I should have checked to see what charge moves they had, but Tackle generates so little energy that I’d be waiting for ages. Of course, since they’re not Bidoofs from the main series games, these poor blighters fall easily to any fighting type.
And, of course, he has the same canned responses as all other grunts. So he’ll exclaim that “Team Rocket is scarier than you think!” or “not enough grit!” after being defeated. Which just adds even more amusement to the grunt.
They did miss a trick here, they could have done more with this grunt. Or even made him stupider. He could have had special lines, just randomly shouted “BIDOOF” before and after battle. Or he could have had 6 Bidoofs instead. That would have been hilarious.
Sadly, this Grunt is event-exclusive.
The only reason we have this grunt at all is because there’s a Bidoof event. Between the 25th June and 1st of July, we’re getting a Bidoof breakout event, with a shiny appearance and random moves on the Bidoofs. This also means it’s in Grunt fights and research tasks. A very amusing event, but it’s highly likely that Bidoof, or at least this grunt, won’t ever be seen again.
Still, it was fun punching three random Bidoofs with my 100% Machamp. I just kinda wish I got to see more of this grunt before he disappeared.