Color Theory

[Henry J. Cobb]

In the Pokemon card game, each pokemon has a "color" (even if that color is
colorless), this is the color of all the attacks this pokemon makes, the
color of energy usually required for its attacks and strongly influences
the other colors this Pokemon is resistant or vulnerable to.

Attacks of a color that the Pokemon is resistant to are reduced by thirty
damage and attacks that it is vulnerable to do double damage to it.

As a general rule, the resistant(R) and vulnerable(V) colors for each type
of pokemon are:

Color of Attack
Defender Psychic Fight Elect Grass Water Fire
Psychic V - - - - -
Ghosts - R - - - -
Fighting V - - - - -
Armored Fighters - - R V - -
Hardened Fight - - - V - -
Lightning - V - - - -
Grass - - - - - V
Herd Animals V - - - - -
Water - - (V) (V) - -
Fire - - - - V -
Colorless R V - - - -
Birds - R V - - -

Notes:

A few water Pokemon are vulnerable to Grass rather than lightning:
Gyarados/Magikarp, the Poli line and Omanyte/Omastar.

The herd animals are the Nido family, Koffing/Weezing, Grimer/Muk,
Ekans/Arbok and Zubat/Golbat(Resistance to fighting).

The Birds here are the colorless birds, but this category influences
everything with wings. (Except for Psyduck/Golduck who are standard water
pokemon.) The legendary birds (ZapDos/Articuno/Moltres) are resistant to
fighting and vulnerable to nothing.

Dragonairs are great because they lack the vulnerability to fighting that
other colorless pokemon have but are still resistant to psychic attacks.

The Armored Fighters are the Dugtrio/Diglett, Sandshrew/Sandslash,
Cubone/Marowak, Rhyhorn/Rhydon and Aerodactyl(Resistance to Fighting not
Lightning)

The Hardened Fighters are like the Armored Fighters, but lack the
resistance. They usually have a harden attack instead. Onix,
Kabuto/Kabutops and Geodude/Graveler/Golem.

Ghosts are the Gastly/Haunter/Gengar family. They really beat up on
fighting and psychic pokemon.

Color Cycles:

The standard psychic, fighting and colorless pokemon form a circle of
dominance. (Like "Rock, paper, scissors") Most Fighting pokemon are
vulnerable to psychic attacks, while most colorless pokemon are resistant
to psychics and vulnerable to fighting attacks.

Likewise the colorless birds are resistant to fighting and vulnerable to
lightning, but the lightning pokemon are vulnerable to fighting attacks.

Lastly, some water pokemon are vulnerable to grass attacks, most grass
pokemon are vulnerable to fire and almost all fire pokemon are vulnerable
to water.

Notes on types:

Fighting pokemon blow chunks because so many great pokemon are resistant to
fighting attacks. (Though it is fun to seismic toss the Chancys and the
occasional misplaced pikachu.)

Everybody should keep some colorless pokemon on hand to deal with the new
Gengar family in the fossil pack. Dragonairs are very nice for this and
can be powered by any color of energy.

Every other general type is vulnerable to something, but may have families
without vulnerabilities.

Nobody is resistant (or vulnerable) to colorless pokemon and they can be
powered by any type of energy, but tend to require lots of energy to
function. (Double colorless is pure gravy here.)

The entire Charizard family can attack with any color of energy (except for
Muking the big lizard) and can be mixed (inefficiently) into any deck.

The same goes for Scyther(Winged bug, vulnerable to fire, resistant to
fighting), Voltorb/Electrode, Ponyta/Rapidash, the Eevee family(otherwise
standard pokemon of the various colors) and the Beedrill family (Except for
Weedle)
--
Henry J. Cobb hc...@slip.net http://www.io.com/~hcobb
Any sufficiently cool technology is indistinguishable from religion.