#77 + #78: Ponyta and Rapidash

I love how the rose-tinted nostalgia spectacles of the 'gen-one-ners' who criticise anything from Chikorita onwards as unoriginal and stupid can overlook that these two Pokemon are literally just burning horses...

Ponyta is reasonable, I guess. It looks cute, it's fire-type (usually a good thing) and it has 85 attack and 90 speed, with decent 65s in both special categories and 50 HP, 55 defence. Run away is a useless ability, but you also get flash fire (being hit by fire means that your fire moves get stronger, which is pretty decent) and the hidden ability of flame body, which is good both in battle and in the overworld. In battle, physical contact with flame body Ponyta will inflict a burn on the attacker, whereas if you're walking around to hatch an egg, flame body makes this process twice as fast, which is pretty useful if you're breeding for serious competitive play and don't want to spend years hatching (merely months).

The favourite of Bronies everywhere...

Remembering that your physical attack stat is better, you get some decent moves available by level-up. Growl is there for lowering the foe's attack and tackle to hit for normal physical base 50 when you start out. From there, you get tail whip to lower their defence, and ember, a base 40 special fire move. A little while after this you get the much more preferable flame wheel, which is both more powerful (60) and more in line with what you'll likely be built as (it's physical). Stomp is a pretty good normal-physical move for coverage at base 65 and can ruin foes who have used minimize, which few things tend to do so. Thereafter you can get flame charge, which is slightly weaker than flame wheel but does boost your speed by one stage. Fire spin is a fairly weak special attack (base 35) but does trap the foe in the fiery vortex for a few turns, keeping them in play and taking sustained damage. Take down hits hard (base 90) and is physical and normal (coverage option, maybe) but does come with only 80 accuracy and rather heavy recoil. Inferno is special and base 100 with STAB, but lacks accuracy (50) and PP (5) yet will inflict a burn on the target. Agility comes in to allow boosts to speed.

The remaining moves come after the chance to level up at level 40. Fire blast is mildly inaccurate with only 5PP but hits with 110 base as a special fire move (the same type as most moves available by level up, it seems). Bounce is an interesting prospect as a flying move, like fly it has the turn out of the way but hits with less power (80) and less accuracy (85), but since this combats one of your major weaknesses (ground) and gives you the semi-invulnerable turn then it could be very useful. The last move by level up is flare blitz, a physical fire move with base 120 power and 100 accuracy but will lead to severe recoil.

As per usual you get things like toxic and hidden power, and as a fire-type you definitely get sunny day but not rain dance available from the TM list. It would be worth mentioning if toxic didn't come up. Oh, and yes, you do get return, rest, sleep talk, substitute, swagger, confide, facade (but you can't get burned so rely on poison or paralysis), attract, protect and double team, too. As for more interesting ones, solar beam gives much needed combat for water-types (you shouldn't really be in against water, but if you only have Ponyta left and they have a water-type, all you can do is fight or give in) and since you may have gone with sunny day to boost fire damage then this could work. An alternative is to take wild charge (electric physical base 90) if you can stomach the recoil. Secret power and strength offer reasonable power (70 and 80 respectively) as neutral coverage to most things. You also get to take flamethrower if you'd rather that to fire blast and want to run special, and you also get overheat (if you don't mind decreasing your own stats using a powerful move) and incinerate. Finally, there's will-o-wisp.

From the breeding list there is not much to write home about: things like charm I find to be rather useless, and double-edge is just a better take down. What you could take is double kick (base 30 physical fighting that hits twice, so effectively base 60 and a sash breaker), or maybe low kick (based on the foe's weight) or horn drill (hits lower level foes and is more accurate the more you outlevel them, leading to a one hit KO). Thrash is a very powerful (base 120 physical) normal move that attacks for a few turns and then leaves you confused. The tutor is rather useless: bounce (see above), heat wave (strong but special), iron tail (strong, inaccurate and can lower the foe's defence), low kick (again) and snore (as they always give).

In truly unoriginal style, every stat increases in base by 15 upon evolving to Rapidash. 100 attack and 105 speed is pretty good, and hey, even 80 special attack is pretty good. The thing is, you're stuck with the same abilities, so run away is still there, making you worse.

Fresh out of the Queen's stables...

As you may have guessed, the level-up list has not changed, not even levels. Hyper beam and giga impact are now available as TMs, but a better option is probably poison jab. The ground-type physical move drill run has also been added to the tutor list. Whoo!

All-in-all, this isn't bad, but there is a shocking lack of variety in moves once again. There's also the slight problem that all the good fire moves, really, are special, and you are better at physical, so this is a bit of a tricky spot, though not a deal-breaker. You'd be fast, hitting quite hard but probably taking recoil into the not enormous HP pool, and the defences are ok at best. Maybe worth considering, but not really top-table worthy.

(All artwork presented by Ken Sugimori, taken from the Bulbapedia image archives)