Editing Pokémon (section)

=== Pokémon ===
You should know the most by now. But in case you are an idiot and skipped reading the above I'll tell you again: You can play basic Pokémon to your bench. Your bench holds up to 5 Pokémon. You can only evolve to higher level Pokémon via the basic ones. You can not skip an evolution step. (Except with some trainer cards like Pokémon breeder). When your active Pokémon bites the dust you have to switch to a benched one. No you can't play a basic Pokémon from your hand when your active one jumps the line, it has to be benched beforehand.

One thing of note is that not all cards representing the same species of Pokémon have the same abilities, but these are still the same for the purposes of deck maximums and evolutions. In the video games, these were distinguished by their level, which is a small bit of flavor text. In reality everyone separates them by where they originated and number within the set if there were multiple variants within it. Some cards of the same species of Pokémon have different names, with the earliest being Team Rocket's Dark ___ cards. You can have four Starmie, four Dark Starmie, and four Misty's Starmie in the same deck. When evolving, the base Pokémon must have a specific name: You can't evolve a "Misty's Staryu" into a "Dark Starmie", which evolves from "Staryu".

Eventually a few variant Pokémon types came with rules implications. These all boiled down to that in exchange for being more powerful the opponent takes multiple prize cards if they get KOed. Don't bother learning them all, most of the types are obsolete and won't be legal for Standard ever again.

Dual Type Pokémon show up in some sets. Weakness is applied before resistance.

==== Pokémon Powers / Abilities ====
[[Image:Venusau.jpg|thumb|right|Look at this motherfucker. You wish you were this smug.]]
Some Pokémon have Pokémon Powers (Charizard at the top of this page has one for example). You can activate it on your turn before your attack as long as your Pokémon is not asleep, confused or paralyzed. Some of them are just helpful (look at Venusaur to your right there.) and some are just outright unfair. Like Mr. Mime's Power. He can reduce any damage to him greater than 30 to 0. If you happen to be playing his weakness, you are fucked. Unless he's asleep, paralyze him or confuse him. Eventually these were eventually separated into PokéBody (passive abilities) and then eventually emerged into Abilities after the games introduced the same concept by that name.