Miltank

Gold and Silver filled Johto with farmyard wildlife, and the dairy slot in the cast went to this 1.2-metre, 75.5-kilogram pink cow. The Pokédex classifies it as the Milk Cow Pokémon and never strays from the subject in any of its entries: twenty litres a day, tastier the better the pasture, and even more nutrient-rich if it has calves. Another entry explains that anyone who cannot tolerate it switches to yoghurt. Another warns that, if you drink too much, your body will start to resemble Miltank’s. Only one entry takes it out of the cowshed, and reluctantly: most people raise it for its milk, it says, but because it is so sturdy, it can also be used for battling.

Wild specimens sometimes carry Moomoo Milk, which is exactly the product those entries describe, turned into a healing item.

It does not evolve and does not come from anything. Its 490 base stat total is all it will ever have: no previous stage to explain it, no later stage to fix it. Its design counterpart is Tauros, one hundred percent male just as Miltank is one hundred percent female, sharing its Egg Group, approximate size and nothing else.

The spread is deliberately lopsided. Up front, 105 Defense and 95 HP; at the back, 40 Special Attack, which throws half the TM list in the bin. It learns Thunder, Ice Beam, Surf and Shadow Ball, and none of the four does damage from that 40. Its physical Attack, 80, is hardly frightening either. The odd stat on the sheet is Speed: 100 on something weighing 75.5 kilograms, enough to move before most of the walls it competes with.

Thick Fat reduces Fire- and Ice-type damage, and on a body with 105 Defense that turns two common special attacks into something manageable. Scrappy is the other option, and it changes the problem completely: Normal- and Fighting-type moves can hit Ghost types, which was the only clean way to ignore it. Sap Sipper, its Hidden Ability, nullifies Grass-type attacks and raises its Attack in the process.

On offense, Normal has no super-effective targets and Rock and Steel eat it up. On defense, it is a different story: one weakness, Fighting, and an immunity to Ghost. Body Slam, at level 40, is the reliable hit; TM Earthquake covers what Normal does not touch; Play Rough, at 45, hits exactly where it hurts, because it hits the Fighting types that are its only real type problem.

What holds it back is the lack of recovery. In this movepool, there is only Rest, which leaves it helpless for two turns, and 490 points spread this way are not enough to take a Fighting-type hit from a Machamp coming in. In a normal playthrough, it survives physical matchups throughout the game; in serious formats, the combination of 80 Attack and zero recovery leaves it out of contention.

It belongs to a single Egg Group, Field, and is one hundred percent female. That does not stop you breeding it: any male from the same group, or a Ditto, is enough, and the offspring is always Miltank. Its 20 incubation cycles equal about 5355 steps, neither fast nor slow for a Pokémon of this strength.

Of its eight Egg Moves, three deserve the slot. Curse raises Attack and Defense at the cost of Speed, which is exactly the trade its stat sheet allows. Brick Break covers the Rock and Steel types that stop its Normal-type moves. Helping Hand patches the healing hole it carries. Double-Edge, Seismic Toss, Reversal, Present and Belch complete the list.

It does not evolve under any condition: not by level, item, friendship or time of day. What you catch is what you get. Its habitat is grassland, it has a Slow growth rate and its catch rate is 45, the figure for difficult-to-catch Pokémon—the same one starters have. With base friendship at 70 and a yield of 2 Defense EVs, defeating it trains exactly the thing it excels at.