#220 - #221, #473: Swinub, Piloswine & Mamoswine

Swinub in a grassy plain, not their usual habitat by any means.

Swinub is one of those Pokémon that has gained significance due to its final evolution, Mamoswine, which was introduced two generations later than Swinub and Piloswine. Of course, Swinub itself is nothing special. With a base stat total of 250 it is the weakest ice-type Pokémon in existence, and it stays that way until it evolves into Piloswine at level 33 and finally becomes useful. While it is obviously a piglet - a wild boar piglet at that, considering the stripes on its back - it also has some traits of Peruvian guinea pigs, which have long, shaggy hair that even covers their little legs, as is the case with Swinub. Swinub likes a particular type of mushroom that grows under dead grass, and it searches for them by smell, often discovering hot springs buried under ice in the process. It reminds me of the pigs that were often used for locating and extracting a rare and very expensive type of mushroom delicacy called the truffle, although the use of these so-called truffle hogs has been prohibited since 1985. It seemed that the pigs had an extremely strong appetite for these truffles, which caused damage to the truffles' mycelium (the vegetative part of a fungus) during the excavation and dropped the production rate of the area for some years. These days, well-trained dogs are used to find the delicacy.

A Mamoswine - the big fella in the back - with its family, a
Piloswine (left) and two Swinub (right).

Swinub is like that, too: if it smells an enticing fragrance, it dashes toward it and won't stop until it finds the source. Piloswine is a bit more 'sophisticated', so to speak, as it uses its sensitive nose and ears to check its surroundings instead. It does that because its eyes are usually covered up by tufts of fur and is unable to see properly. Its tusks look insignificant, but they are made of ice, thicken when it snows and have occasionally been proved to be lethal. While Piloswine doesn't have visible hooves, not even when its legs can be seen in full glory, its Pokédex entries talk of hooves that ensure even footing on icy ground, which indicates that Piloswine may be based on a yak. But that idea is thrown out of the window when it evolves into Mamoswine by leveling it up while it knows Ancient Power. Mamoswine, as its name suggests, is based on a mammoth or mastodon - both belong to different genera; they are classified as mammuthus and mammut, respectively. In any case, both are proboscideans that are distant ancestors of the elephant. Mamoswine, however, has a pig's snout instead of a proboscis (also called a 'trunk'), although such hybrid Pokémon are not uncommon. It's interesting to know that even in the Pokémon world there were ice ages, and Mamoswine allegedly disappeared after the last one, until one was dug up from soil/ice (Platinum and HeartGold seem to disagree on which one it is) dating back 10,000 years. To much amazement, it woke up, having survived harsh cold and severe hunger for so many years. It's a bit illogical to say Mamoswine's population thinned 10,000 years in the past while Swinub and Piloswine kept 'existing', but whatever. This is Game Freak we're talking about after all, so what else should I have expected?

Dawn's party, including a Mamoswine. 

Well, what you can expect is a competitive monster. Mamoswine has some beefy HP and a mammoth attack stat - sorry, I had to - with which it can endure quite some hits and hit back as hard as it possibly can. A Life Orb set is obvious here, with a Jolly nature for some more speed, which it needs, or an Adamant nature to boost its attack even further. Its hidden ability Thick Fat is the best option here, as it halves damage from incoming ice- and fire-type moves, the latter of which Mamoswine usually has a weakness to. Because it's quite bulky, it can set up Stealth Rock and proceed annihilating things with moves like Icicle Crash, Earthquake, Superpower, Iron Head, Knock Off, Stone Edge and Rock Slide, while Ice Shard is a rather weak move that does have increased priority. It depends on what you need. Unfortunately, it has no means of boosting its attack apart from a Choice Band, but that item limits it to using one move only.

A Mamoswine set is kind of straightforward, as you - and your opponent, for that matter - know exactly what's gonna come. Evolving Piloswine is tedious, as you have to wait until you get to a Move Relearner in order for them to teach your Piloswine Ancient Power, but at least the result is satisfying. Design-wise I'm not Mamoswine's biggest fan, but at least Game Freak's attempt to create a worthy evolution for Piloswine has paid off. I'll give it a 4-star rating, but only just.

Rating: 4/5