Pokémon Go Community Day, 2/4/2024

The process of placing a Community Day edition at the start of the month is one that I'm sure was made through at least one decision. For this particular edition, I personally had to go through some decisions as well, and there are more decisions to be made as well - but I'll save the latter for another time. What's important that the current edition is a rather fortunate one in certain ways, and that's something to be recognized regardless of the decisions that were made.

With that, the featured Pokémon for this month's edition is... Chansey, the Egg Pokémon. It's similar to the featured Pokémon of Magmar and Electabuzz from a long time ago, as it's the main member of an evolutionary chain that includes a baby form (Happiny) and a further evolved form (Blissey) - only it doesn't need an evolution item. To that end, the latter gets the Charged move of Wild Charge, while the former also appears by way of 2 km Eggs gotten during the event, which may be Shiny as with Chansey. The main bonus also benefits the former: quartered hatching distance, for hatching those Eggs and any others as desired, as with the past featured Pokémon. 

The remainder of the bonuses are of the familiar sort. As usual, extended Incense and Lure Modules serve to facilitate capturing as many Chansey as possible, along with photo bombs for a few extra. Double catch Candy and double Candy XL chance facilitate earning more resources from the captures with the limited time. Trade bonuses, as discounts and an extra Special Trade, are available to those who need to use them. The paid Special Research is entitled "The Shape of Happiness" and deals with the "happy-go-lucky" aspect of this species family. Other bonuses involved additional Chansey raid battles, Field Research and showcases, shop bundles, and stickers - once again, as part of the norm.

As for today, I spent it at a place with a meetup history and got to go through the event with lots of friends. We were all vying for as many Chansey and related resources as possible, but we were also vying for a special chance - yet this is better detailed when that special chance comes about. In any case, I got the usual lineup of Chansey evolved into Blissey with the special move; some people even obtained "perfect surprises" due to some extraordinary scouting, while I got mine through fortunate Field Research - befitting the featured Pokémon of today's edition.

I'm on the far left in the back.

With today's edition, I actually had been considering attendance to it as a "representation" of camaraderie against attendance to a "representation" of festivity, and I chose (that is, decided on) camaraderie - moreover because the "representation" of festivity (actually, make that "representations", since there were a couple for today) were planned in a bit of an impromptu as well as minorly conflicting manner. Still, it also meant letting go a little bit of something that could assist my attendance to this edition. The camaraderie makes up for that slightly, though I do hope to make it up some more later on.

As this edition shows (moreover personally at that), some things may have to rely on fortuity in order to turn out great, and the selection (decision) of Chansey as this month's featured Pokémon may be considered to play into that. A few chances were abound, and some - including me - took some of those chances to make some fortunate turnouts. It's a situation that is hard to replicate in any other edition, but with luck, those other editions might serve to replicate the best successes like what happened with this one.

One year ago: Distilling TCGO-TCGL Matters

Two years ago: The Past, Present, and Future of Silph Arena PvP

Three years ago: The Consideration of Gaming Journalism

Four years ago: Lost Player Ties

Five years ago: The False Gods

Six years ago: Tournament: PTC18 Online Tournament 2

Seven years ago: Pokémon and Mahjong Tile Games