That’s right. During the Pokemon Players Cup stream today we caught a glimpse of the Gigantamax form of Melmetal and it is looking pretty swole. Thanks to Serebii.net webmaster Joe Merrick for using his Pokemon Snap skills to capture our new steel deity in all its glory.

Damn. I would not want to be on the business end of Double Iron Bash coming from that monstrosity. I might have to finally dig into Pokemon Go and evolve Meltan just so I can one day have my own steel juggernaut with gorilla arms. Although just having a Melmetal is different from having one with Gigantamax capabilities, so maybe we’ll eventually be able to catch one in a raid? I hope so, because I wasn’t a huge Pokemon Go fan even when it was safe to go outside.

I didn’t catch much of the Players Cup tournament, but Gigantamax Melmetal wasn’t even my favorite part. That came when Eduardo Cunha pulled off the strategy of the century that turned out to be the turning point in his battle against Graham Amedee.

Snorlax had just used Yawn on Eduardo’s Togekiss, and that put him in a bind because he had just used Dynamax on it and needed its Max Airstream to win the battle. If you’re unfamiliar with Yawn, it’s a move that puts the affected Pokemon to sleep one turn later. During that one turn, it’s easy enough to switch out, but Eduardo was down to his last two Pokemon, so what did he do? He used his other active Pokemon to inflict Togekiss with a burn, which cut Togekiss’s attack power and caused it to take damage every turn.

The catch? Once a Pokemon is afflicted with a status condition, it can’t be hit with another, so the burn allowed Togekiss to avoid falling asleep and stay in the fight! Plus, its Max Airstream is a special move, so the attack penalty didn’t affect it either! The 2v2 format of the Players Cup and most official Pokemon tournaments allows for some interesting strategies, but this one really blew my mind. I don’t have a lot of experience in 2v2, so this is something I would never think of, but it absolutely saved the match for Eduardo.

I’ve been dabbling in competitive Pokemon lately and while there are some hiccups like the slow pace and low variety of Pokemon, moments like this make me want to come back for more.