This article is in response to the various "best
Pokemon" debates that seem to crop up perenially in
the PoJo community. I may go over some points that
have been made before, but once people demonstrate
their understanding of these principles involved, all
the reiteration can end :)

Best Pokemon: Face it, people, there IS no best
Pokemon. There are many cards that could be considered
the worst, but I won't go into that here. All of the
Pokemon that supposedly kick ass have one or two major
(and possibly fatal) drawbacks. Charizard goes through
energy like a cheetah on meth. Chansey makes an
excellent blocker, but exhibits suicidal
tendecies--and it looks like a bad dream brought on by
one too many anchovy pizzas. I could go on and on, but
I won't.

My personal favorite Pokemon? Ninetales and Arcanine.
Let's take a look at them. Ninetales has 80 HP,
weakness to water, no resistance, and a 1 retreat
cost. For two colorless, it has an attack identical to
a Gust of Wind. True, your opponent is free to retreat
his Pokemon on the next turn, but that is not always
as easy as it sounds. Say your opponent's Pokemon has
a 3 retreat cost, with 0 or 1 energy on it. Unless
your opponent has a Switch handy, his Pokemon will
take at least one Fire Blast, possibly two. And for
you, that means a high probability of another prize
card in your hand.

Arcanine is slightly less powerful, but is probably
all-around a more balanced Pokemon than Ninetales. For
two fire and one colorless, it does a guaranteed 50
damage. Its second attack, Take Down, uses two fire
and two colorless to do 80 damage, with 30 damage done
to Arcanine. This is obviously not ideal for
continuous use, but provides a nice backup when you
need that Pokemon knocked out NOW, not one or two
turns down the road. It also has 20 more HP than
Ninetales, which means it can suck down damage and
continue to dish it out in return.

So, do these cards have any disadvantages? Of course,
there are always disadvantages. As with most Fire
Pokemon, they each must discard 1 fire energy to
perform their main attack. While this can be an
encumbrance, it is still better than Charizard, and a
person playing a well-thought-out fire deck should be
drawing enough energy to put down a new one each turn
and keep them rolling. Arcanine also has a high
retreat cost, but with his good attacks and high HP,
you shouldn't have to retreat him as often as lesser
Pokemon. And both of them are Stage 1, although Vulpix
and Growlithe are some of the more useful basics in
the game. Growlithe can do a reasonable amount of
damage earlier in the game, and if your opponent gusts
out Vulpix, he can try and stall with Confuse Ray
while you evolve or retreat him.

And then there's the weakness to water. This is
obviously their biggest stumbling block, and if you're
playing mono-fire against mono-water, you are
dead--it's that simple. To avoid this, include some
colorless pokemon, or, better yet, some strong
Electric or Grass basics. Two obvious candidates are
Scyther and Electabuzz. I'll come out here and say
that Scyther is my personal choice. Firstly, I see no
reason to jump on the Electabuzz bandwagon with
everybody else. Secondly, and most importantly,
Scyther doesn't remind me of a cat who suffered a
tragic encounter with a set of jumper cables. I don't
include both because I don't want to go to 3 colors.
This choice may make a deck vulnerable against a
Blastoise deck, so the obsessive-compulsive
competitors may not wish to go the Scyther route. I'm
not one of those, though. :P

Hope these ideas help somebody. I will be submitting a
deck based on these principles as soon as I can
accumulate the neccessary cards and try it out.

Fan mail, hate mail, and mail-order vulpixes may be
sent to:

PernSpike
pernspike@yahoo.com


_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com