Rapidash

It debuted in Pokémon Red and Blue as Kanto’s number 78, back when Fire was the rarest type in the Pokédex and almost anything that could burn ended up on the team. It’s a horse with a horn: cream-coloured coat, a straight spike on its forehead, and flames where its mane and tail should be. A unicorn, basically, even though nobody calls it that in the game.

Every Pokédex entry repeats the same figure: 240 km/h. It trots aimlessly through fields and plains, and only when it has somewhere to be do the flames of its manes flare up and send it into a gallop. One entry describes it as “highly competitive” and explains the rest of its character: it chases anything that moves quickly, with no reason beyond catching up to it. Within the herd, the fastest specimen is in charge, and it decides the group’s pace and destination.

At 1.7 metres and 95 kilograms, it’s big enough to ride, and the series has used it as a mount more than once. It finishes the Ponyta line, which has no third stage: everything it gains, it gains all at once, at level 40.

500 points distributed without any mystery: 105 Speed and 100 Attack up front, an 80 and another 80 in the special stats, followed by 70 Defense and 65 HP, the two figures that bring it down. It gives 2 Speed EVs when it faints, and that’s the entire statement of intent.

Of its three abilities, one does nothing against a trainer: Run Away only works for fleeing from wild Pokémon. Flash Fire nullifies any Fire-type attack aimed at it and powers up its own in return. Flame Body, its hidden ability, can burn anyone who hits it with contact.

Being pure Fire gives it a long list of resistances—Fire, Grass, Ice, Bug, Steel and Fairy—and only three weaknesses, but those three are Water, Ground and Rock, in other words the attack types you see most often. With 65 HP and 70 Defense, almost any neutral physical hit hurts.

Its best attack, Flare Blitz, arrives at level 47 with 120 power and deals recoil based on the damage it causes, which is noticeable on those 65 HP over two or three turns. Fire Blast, at 29, hits for 110 on the special side, but it launches it from 80 instead of the 100 physical Attack. Double-Edge, at 37, is more recoil on the same fragile body.

In serious battles it doesn’t hold up against the other Fire types, which hit harder or bring a second type. Where it works is in a normal playthrough: with 105 Speed, it moves before almost everything you find on a route, and Flare Blitz runs over any Grass, Ice, Bug or Steel Pokémon that gets in its way. Hypnosis, at level 21, handles what it can’t burn, when it lands.

It belongs to a single Egg Group, Field, the most populated in the series, so it can breed with almost any four-legged beast. The gender split is clean, 50% female, without the seven-to-one trap that starters carry. Its 20 Egg cycles work out to roughly 5355 steps.

Its Egg Move list is empty. Everything it knows is learned by levelling up, so breeding here is for stats and passing down the ability, not for inheriting unusual moves. Flame Body is the one worth passing from generation to generation, and not because of battles: having it in the party speeds up hatching the other Eggs.

The evolution has no conditions: Ponyta reaches level 40 and that’s it. No items, no friendship, no time of day and no location. That’s late for a two-stage line, and for a good part of a normal playthrough you have to carry the smaller form around.

It grows at the Medium rate, the most predictable of the six. Its habitat is grassland and its catch rate, 60, sits in the awkward zone: it won’t stay in the first Poké Ball, but it doesn’t force you to set up a status-effect trap either. Wild specimens sometimes hold a Shuca Berry.