Axew Community Day

Despite having a debut in 2022 during that year’s GO Fest, Axew Community Day is a welcome one. Axew has been a semi-rare Pokemon for ages, only really appearing in windy weather, and it’s been hard to farm candies for them. This Community Day finally allowed us to get our hands on a very popular shiny Pokemon.

A fun day

For me, I had a great day. We played in a group of six, which is actually quite a lot for a Community Day here, at least post-pandemic*. We wandered around town hall, making use of the plenty of shade there from the trees. There were plenty of spawns, although I did notice a LOT of Wailmers kept on popping up. It was still 90% Axew though. The shiny rates seemed pretty normal. I think I got 9 total? Brother got loads of shinies. The weather also helped out a ton. We had windy weather, and managed to get a ton of weather-boosted Axews. Seeing Axews at 1000cp and higher was pretty common.

We also managed to find a 100% Axew, thanks to the only guy in our group of 6 that spoofs. So we got 6 100% Axews, but none of them were shiny, sadly. As for the spoofer guy, he was mostly playing legit, and only spoofs because of the 5-remote-raids-a-day limit. But yeah, we all got a cool 100%. For me, it was actually my second hundo, as I got a lucky hundo from a trade from over a year ago. I very quickly evolved both 100% Haxorus. And I also had enough XL candy to take my lucky hundo to level 50. Its CP is over 4000, and it sits among my best Pokemon now.

As a bonus, the “get extra candy based on nice, great and excellent throws” bonus was active throughout the event. Combined with pinaps, an Excellent throw would net you a great 18 candy. And as Axew is easy to hit excellent throws on, we all managed to get a LOT of candy.

It looks cool

One of the nicer things about Axew Community Day is that the shinies are really cool. Haxorus in particular goes an amazing dark grey, almost black colour, with red highlights. It’s also a cool-looking dragon, despite seemingly having a tiny head. Dragon types are normally cool than most, but I think the Axew family line is among the cooler dragon types. It’s also a pure dragon type, which is somewhat uncommon these days.

Is it good?

The question however is “how usable is haxorus?” Well, the answer is, you can use him. Haxorus is on equal level with the likes of Salamance, better than Dragonite but sadly nothing close to megas or shadows. Still, Breaking Swipe is a powerful move, which was briefly given to Rayquaza as well. While Rayquaza is far less accessible, Haxorous makes good use of Breaking Swipe, and if you didn’t already have a team of 6 strong dragon types, then Haxorus is perfectly fine.

Our local Pokemon nerd also mentioned how Haxorus is good in all PvP leagues, especially as Breaking Swipe charges up pretty quickly. Being a pure dragon type also means things like rock hurt it a little bit less (at least compared to Salamence or Dragonite, which are dragon/flying), but it doesn’t have much bulk and is best used as a glass cannon. Still, it’s definitely viable.

Overall though, I thought this Community Day was excellent. Sure, we didn’t get a massive amount of bonuses, but we sure got some good Pokemon out of this event.

*We’re still not really out of the pandemic, but no one actually seems to care any more. I’m basically the only person who has a mask on when going to the super market or the mall. But for everyone else, it’s back to business as normal.