With 18 main elemental types, there are no shortage of Pokémon affinity combinations. You might assume that, over the course of 30 years, the monster collecting series has tried every possible combination of those types by now. I mean, wasn’t the last true new Pokémon type all the way back in 2013? Surely, after so many installments and remakes of the mainline series, the well of Pokémon types has run dry.
Surprise: it hasn’t.
There are actually ten type combinations that we’ve never seen in a Pokémon game before. Some of these absences make sense. Combos like Normal/Ice, Normal/Bug, Normal/Rock, and Normal/Steel might as well just be the secondary type. ‘Normal’ adds nothing to those descriptions. You can’t fully rule out that they’ll ever happen, though: both Hisuian Zorua and Hisuian Zoroark are the oxymoron that is Normal/Ghost.
But there are five mash-ups that are more reasonably up for grabs in Pokémon Winds and Waves: Ice/Poison, Ground/Fairy, Bug/Dragon, Rock/Ghost, and Fire/Fairy. I know, some of these inclusions don’t sound right. I could have sworn I’d seen a Rock/Ghost type before — there’s a haunted flying coffin, for crying out loud.
So, how likely is it that we’ll see any of these new type combinations? Starter-wise, we’ve got the fiery Pombon as a potential candidate for the fabled Fire/Fairy combo. Based wholly on the start of its evolutionary line, I’m skeptical that Pombon will eventually give us the rare monster type. Little about Pombon’s design comes across as magical, sparkly, or pink, which are characteristics typical of fairy types. But there’s also no telling what direction the designs could go.





