The Luckiest Magikarp in a Dynamax Raid

For a while now, I kinda forgot that I had a Nintendo Switch. It sat in its bag on my desk, gathering a little bit of dust as I continued to not use it. I did plan to do a play-through of Animal Crossing, but, frankly, it would be pretty boring. All that aside, I opened up Pokemon Shield, to see what my party was doing. For some reason, my entire team, aside from my starter, were poison types. Anyway, weird team composition aside, I noticed that I was in Hammerlocke, one of the two places connected to the wild area. So, since my team was all healed up and ready to go, I decided to go catch some Pokemon.

Back in the game

However, I’ve caught a lot of the Pokemon in the wild area already. And nearby, there was a towering pillar of purple, beckoning me to come over and see what they are. There are various Pokemon nests and dens dug into the ground, with red-purple rocks circling their entrances. And down some of these nests are Dynamax Pokemon, waiting to challenge you.

The nest that caught my eye wasn’t very far away, so I decided to go and see what was in it. I’m not really good at putting names to silhouettes, but this one was obviously Manectric, the evolution of Electrike and a pure Electric type. I didn’t have a Manectric, so I grabbed an Excadrill and decided to do this Dynamax raid.

Random Dynamax Raid Time!

Problem is, these raids pair you with random NPCs. When I say random, I mean it. The NPCs I ended up with, one had a Mudbray (you know, with a type that’s super effective against electric Pokemon), an Eevee and, for goodness knows what reason, a Magikarp. You know, a water type Pokemon. Who are clearly weak to electric types.

Honestly, all I could do was sigh. Frankly, I was surprised there was another super effective Pokemon in our team. Better than none. And since you get kicked out of the den after 4 fainting Pokemon, I was concerned that the Magikarp would get everyone swept away.

I was wrong.

I don’t know what happened, but that Magikarp didn’t die. It didn’t die at all. Not once. Meanwhile, that damn NPC’s Eevee kept on spamming helping hand. Sure, Magikarp wasn’t doing much damage, but at least it would attack and break the shields – breaking the shields is far more important than anything else because otherwise you can’t get the raid done in time.

However, the Dynamax’s Manectric was taking notice of this Magikarp. It didn’t bother attacking Eevee because Eevee was doing nothing. And Mudbray and my Excadrill were both immune to electric attacks. So that Magikarp had a lot of odds stacked against him.

Somehow, Manectric cast Thunder 4 times, and missed every single time. On the last round, however, the Manectric did actually land an electric move, and I thought that would be it for the Magikarp. Nope, Magikarp refused to die, and instead used its Focus Sash, surviving with one health.

It won.

What’s even more amazing though is that the Magikarp then proceeded to do one last attack, breaking Manectric’s last shield, allowing my Excadrill to finish it off so I could end the battle and catch the Pokemon.

I was left feeling flabbergasted. Sure, I did catch the Manectric, but that random Magikarp, well, it deserved a round of applause. Shame it belonged to an NPC, because I’d take that Magikarp off their hands and use it to help me buy lottery tickets or something.

While this random Magikarp isn’t nearly as powerful as the University Magikarp, it served us well. Farewell, you lucky bastard.