My comments are in italics.
>You may have noticed, but each color (type) of Pokemon card has cliche
>traits.  By recognizing these traits, you can aid your own Pokemon or defend
>youself against your main weakness.  Here are the most dominant traits for
>each type(elaboration to come directly)
>Water-lots of damage for lots of energy
>Grass-status effects
>Fire-major energy discarding
>Psychic-Pokemon Powers
And no-damage, defensive or unusual attacks
>Electric-self-damaging attacks
And paralysis?
>Fighting-attacks that damage
You could just say "no frills"
>Dragon-coin flips
For heavy damage, too.

>Water-lots of evolved Water types have attacks with high damage and high
>energy costs.  That's what made Raindance so wildly popular.  Water decks
>should have plenty of energy.  A deck with weakness to water should take
>advantage of the fact that Water types like Gyarados, Blastoise, and Articuno
>take time to power up (provided Blastoise doesn't Rain Dance)
True, but I think Raindance is somewhat difficult to pull off... Those
annoying Electabuzz just rip apart water-types!

>Grass-grass is famous for status effects.  That and Scyther, but we'll come
>back to him.  A deck with weakness to grass should keep Full Heal and Full
>Heal Energy on hand, hindering their opponents' offense(most status effect
>attacks do little, if any, damage)If you're playing grass decide which status
>effect you'd most like to inflict, since 3 out of the 4 negate one another.
Potion-type cards could also help against grass.
>Fire-this is the most well known color-specific trait.  Fire pokemon discard
>a lot of energy.  Fire decks need the most energy of all the types, a way to
>get it out of the discard pile(or prevent it from getting there at all) and
>some defense against water-types. Anti-fire should have some removal tactics.
Using Blaine's Pokémon will help, as Blaine only works on HIS cards... With
that, Cinnabar or No Removal Gyms would aid them when building a fire deck.
Some Fire cards are NOT worth the discard (such as Ember or Flame Pillar).
IMHO, Flareon and Ninetales are the best Fire-types (what a coincidence that
they are also my favorite :-))!
>Psychic-Good Pokemon Powers are found in all types, but unless the deck is
>built around the Power, none is as dependent on the power as Psychic types.
>A Blastoise still has Hydro Pump, a Dark Muk still has Sludge Punch, an
>Erika's Dratini still has Tail Strike, but a Fossil Haunter or Mr. Mime in
>the prescence of Goop Gas is dead in the water.  Also unique to Psychics are
>their weakness to their own type.  A psychic deck should have some colorless
>types that are psy-resistant.
>An anti-psy deck might want to look into Goop Gas.
I agree with your drift that Psychic RELIES on Powers, and most of them
prevent K-O's, but there are a few exceptions. Like I said before, many
Psychics have defensive attacks (like Recover) and unusual ones (like Energy
Absorption). A problem with Psychics is that most do not have beatdown
abilities, use with a beatdown type!
>Electric-The best thing I can find for an Electric deck is Defender.  Block
>the damage you do to yourself, and 20 of theirs.  Vermillion City Gym could
>help too, as well as fighting resistant colorless pokemon.  Surge's Fearow
>suggests itself.
How would Vermilion Gym help? It is a possibly backfiring Pluspower. Would
also be a good idea to include Potions or Energy Flow+PKMN Center.
>Fighting-You probably want to know what I mean by "attacks that damage".  I
>mean that fighting attacks rarely do anything other than damage.  Fighting
>Pokemon rarely have status effects or such.  A fighting deck should have
>PlusPower, an anti-fight deck(usually an Electric deck) should have
Defender. This works >out nicely.
Most Fighting-types have no-frills attacks, but the Ground-Rock subset has
more attacks with frills (particularly Brock's Sandshrew line or Onix). It
would be a good synergy to use Fighting with Normal-, Dragon-, and/or
Dark-types (when Néo comes in English...)to guard against Weakness.

>Dragon-I'm talking about the Dragonite line, not Gyarados.  All of these
>pokemon except Base Dratini and possibly Erika's Dragonair which I have yet
>to see require at least one coin flip.  I don't know of any way to counter or
>aid this yet, but I'm working on it.  You think about it too, all right?
>Especially if their in your deck.
The Dragons are powerful in higher Stages, but we need a good DRATINI (notice
the name).
E's Dragonair needs a coinflip for Blizzard, for your info. (If heads,
opponent's bench is hit for 10; if tails, your bench is hit for 10). Risky
beatdown is their specialty (some of the attacks are not worth the cost, like
Giant Tail). However, the Pokémon Powers are quite useful.

What about the Normal and Flying Types?

Noah Weiss
bigguy7171@aol.com