Mareep

Seven kilos and eight hundred grams, and most of that isn't animal: it's wool. At 60 centimetres tall, the figure is misleading, and the first Pokédex entry explains why — its fleece doubles in volume when it builds up static electricity. What you almost always see is a ball of fur puffed up by the charge.

That wool does two jobs. One is the same as any sheep's: it stores air, and that air keeps the Pokémon cool in summer and warm in winter. The other isn't voluntary. The charge is generated by friction, finds no way out and stays inside until something discharges it. The orange ball at the end of its tail acts as a gauge: the more electricity it carries, the brighter it shines.

That's where the cruel joke in the more recent entries comes from. It's small, it's soft, people approach to pet it, and whoever does gets a painful shock. Clothes are made from its sheared wool, and those clothes charge themselves, so they have to be treated separately before they're sold.

It's the first of three and the only one in the line covered in fur. Flaaffy keeps a tuft on its head and shows its skin; Ampharos no longer has wool anywhere. The official category, the Wool Pokémon, only fits it.

280 base points and nowhere to hide them. Its peak is 65 Special Attack; behind that come 55 HP, 45 Special Defense, 40 Attack, 40 Defense and 35 Speed, a figure that leaves it moving last against almost any opponent its size. When it faints, it gives 1 Special Attack EV.

Static can paralyse on the slightest contact, and for something that's going to take a lot of physical hits, it's the best safety net it has: it doesn't prevent the damage, but it leaves the one dealing it worse off. Plus, its Hidden Ability, raises Special Attack only if a partner has Plus or Minus. It's designed for Double Battles and forces you to build the whole pairing around inflating a stat of 65.

Being pure Electric makes it clean defensively — Ground is its only weakness — and narrow offensively, because Ground types themselves are immune to everything it throws out. With 40 Defense, that clean matchup is no use: anything coming from below knocks it out in one hit.

The movepool arrives in the wrong order. Thunder Wave at 4 and Thundershock at 8 are all it has during the first ten levels, and the attacks with real power — Electro Ball at 32, Thunder at 46 — show up long after it evolves at 15, so only players who deliberately cancel the evolution ever see them. Dazzling Gleam at 39 and Power Gem at 29 would cover holes against Dragon, Dark or Flying, but they fall on the other side of that same divide.

It's not a competitive Pokémon. Its place is on the early routes of a normal playthrough: paralyse whatever you want to catch with Thunder Wave, lower the opponent's Speed with Cotton Spore at 11 and let Static do the rest.

Egg Groups Monster and Field, a broad combination that lets it breed with a good part of the land-based Pokédex. The gender ratio is 50%, so breeding your own line doesn't depend on finding the female or resorting to Ditto.

Twenty egg cycles work out at roughly 5355 steps, little compared with what's typical. Six egg moves come from the egg, and two are worth mentioning. Baton Pass has something to work with here, because Charge at 15, Cotton Guard at 36 and Agility itself — also an egg move — leave three boosts to pass to another team member. Swagger confuses the opponent and raises its Attack at the same time, a risky play that only holds together alongside Facade, which it does learn by TM. The other three are Electroweb, Confuse Ray and Electric Terrain.

It evolves into Flaaffy when it reaches level 15 and into Ampharos at 30. No stones, no items, no time-of-day requirements or obscure conditions: two levels and that's it. Its growth rate is Medium Slow, so those two numbers arrive later than they look.

It lives in grasslands, and its catch rate of 235 leaves it just short of the maximum possible: an ordinary Poké Ball with the opponent already somewhat weakened is almost always enough. Its base friendship is 70.