Pokémon Day 2026 - Pokemon Winds and Waves coming 2027!

[Fivepoint]

I end up feeling like Meganium-Mega just has worse Drought, which they were already comfortable giving to a Mega. In a weather face-off, it would still get its preferred weather active except when fighting TTar-Mega specifically because of when Mega activates, and it loses any team-support potential the field condition provides. I don't feel like going from a 3* fire weakness to a 2* is worth it. The concept has some fun potential for a dual-weather set, but Meganium doesn't have the movepool for it.

Counterpoint: Mega Margaret is exempt from the draft for WW (weather wars) II. You don't need to worry about your sun running out or getting replaced with a different weather from the opponent switching out after Drought activates if all of your moves just pretend that It's Always Sunny In Meganium anyway. Yes, not being able to support the rest of the team isn't great, but the way Mega Sol works makes Megan Thee Ium way less checkable/counterable than if it actually just set up sun on switch-in.

they also gave Scizor max SpA stats too on top

yeah thats what i said 0 investment

 

[Esserise]

Karxrida beat me to it but wow yeah this was literally just made so tournaments would stop crashing. Accessibility to good comps for people without the mainline games looks to be so deep in the toilet that one is left to wonder why they even bothered with a mobile phone version.

On top of everything else that's been said it seems we can kiss any hope of decent single player content goodbye given the overview barely even bringing the idea up. What a grim release man

To me it feels like the entire dimension of the game’s “standalone” content, as in, not being a supplement to players with a mainline game, is really just a token inclusion.

One of the things lots of people said in the wake of Dexit was, “Well, if we can’t bring them into every game, at least let us battle with them all i. HOME or something.” And I’ve always felt like that’s essentially what Champions is (well, that, and like you said a way to avoid embarrasing crashes during official tournaments). It’s annoying and clunky that it’s an entirely separate app, but I guess that’s probably easier to manage from a development angle than cramming a full-fledged battle mode into HOME itself. But I don’t think they ever aimed to make a “new Stadium/PBR.” Just bringing battling to the HOME side of things in addition to storing and trading.

But I think they probably knew that saying “this app is useless if you don’t already have a mainline game” would kneecap it pretty hard, and so tried to create a way for anyone to play them game. But then again… even if that is the case, I’m not sure I understand the f2p gouging approach. People like Pokémon games not just because of the battling, but because they’re a full experience. You battle, catch, go on an adventure… and if you want, you can even try to compete with real players. But I struggle to imagine there’s a huge audience of people who 1) don’t already have a mainline game and 2) want to battle competitively more than they want any of what else a mainline game has to offer… so why put the squeeze on such a niche segment of the audience?

 

[Worldie]

You guys really forgot how much p2w launch Unite and (as far as I hear, even current) pokemon TCG apps are, have you.

 

[R_N]

Suppose another reason for Champions it it sidesteps making a fuss over hacked mons.
Like obviously anything in Champions itself won't be hacked; it's just a Pokemon you're editing
And even if you hack something and bring it in from Home, we're not going to be doign hack checks because its probably just making a "champions-mode" copy and wont have to worry about finer details like" the pkhex user forgot to hit the Legal button". Just brushing away any niche illegal combo.

You guys really forgot how much p2w launch Unite and (as far as I hear, even current) pokemon TCG apps are, have you.

My recollection of Unite's pay problems, from people who did play the game, is less on the P2W side and more on the "they're selling $50 cosmetics" side. I do think it might be more p2w now, because it added like 6 gachas and an unlock track that is charitably described as "heinous", but I cannot recall where money factors into that equation from the last time I saw talk about it.

This one is at least opting for the more simple option of "nickle & dime".

 

[doipy hooves]

You guys really forgot how much p2w launch Unite and (as far as I hear, even current) pokemon TCG apps are, have you.

Arguably launch Unite was a lot less decisive in terms of the micro advantages from stats and more skill/experience/teamcomp-dependent (with F2P Eldegoss being top tier for a good while), compared to the present where the new releases are all overtuned and paid-only for a few weeks and then nerfed immediately when available for free, and also buffs usually correlate with the mons featuring on battle passes.

https://community.pokemon.com/en-us/discussion/23049/march-13-2026-patch-notes
Case in point: Patch notes after the latest Unite release Moltres less than a day after its release on March 13.

 

[Esserise]

You guys really forgot how much p2w launch Unite and (as far as I hear, even current) pokemon TCG apps are, have you.

I’m not really surprised, per se. More just disappointed and a little confused if Champions really warrants it. Obviously the game has to make money somehow, but UNITE, TCG Pocket, hell even GO are all very much their own self-contained, standalone experiences, whereas Champions seems first and foremost to be just a home base for official competitive battles extending out from the main series. Anyone who has a mainline game to use as a system for preparing their Pokémon basically doesn’t have to rely on VP at all except for obtaining items and cosmetics, whereas anyone looking to try Champions by itself has a much steeper climb ahead of them in order to get a functioning team going in the first place. I just don’t really get why you’d do that when you could instead make it easier for interested non-mainline players to become operational within Champions.

 

[Codraroll]

Until now, we've used the same thread for Winds&Waves discussion and Champions discussion. Things are getting a bit tangled now that Champions is right around the corner, while WiWa is still months away if not more.

Please discuss Pokémon Champions in the brand-sparkling-new, purpose-built thread for that game:

Thread 'Pokémon Champions - releasing April 8, 2026'

Mar 24, 2026

We have a release date!

The other thread is getting quite cluttered with Winds&Waves and Champions discussion tangled up in one another, so please continue all Champions discussion in this thread.

• Codraroll
• Replies: 1,596
• Forum: Orange Islands

• 

This thread stays open for WiWa discussion for a little bit longer.