All Types of Flaws and Resistances in Pokemon TCG

From the outside looking in Pokemon TCG might seem like a game of basic skill, where the more HP and attack power someone's card has, the more likely they are to win the game. And while powerful Pokemon factor into the equation, even the most powerful of them can be brought to their knees if properly understood weaknesses and resistances based on type.

Currently there is ten basic “types” of Pokemon in the TCG. But fans of the Pokemon video games will know that there are 19. Why are there fewer species in the card game? What are the most common drawbacks and resistances for each type? And what common deviations should you pay attention to? Let's dive in.

Basics

At the dawn of the Pokemon TCG – late 1996 in Japan, early 1999 overseas – weaknesses and resistance were fairly easy to foresee. That's what makes this era so great at providing a system overview.

Most Pokemon have a weakness and/or resistance. There are exceptions to this rule, but for the purposes of our explanation we'll ignore them (if a card has no weakness or resistance, it's not a very good concept to explain!).

Take it Fire– card type. This includes everyone's favorite old school beast, the original Charizard. Most often they are weak to Water. In Charizard's case, neither does he resistant to fighting. If a Pokemon is weak to a type, all attacks of this type will deal double damage.

So the common (and understandable) assumption is that when a Pokemon is resistant, attacks do half damage. This is not quite right; instead, this 30 less damage.

What if you read this and then look at your stack of old Pokemon cards and most say “-20” instead of “-30”? Don't worry, they are not coincidences. Over the course of the TCG's rather long lifespan, the resistance was reduced from the original '-30' to '-20'. In recent years, it has returned to 30.

Let's put it into practice with our old, trusty Charizard. Let's say the original Dugtrio a card appears with four battle-type energy cards attached so that it can be used An earthquake. Earthquake normally deals 70 damage. But since Charizard is resilient, it only goes up to 40. Since Charizard starts at 120 HP, it's down to 80, which really isn't too bad.

But it comes Polignev. Poliwrath's best attack usually deals 40 damage. However, Charizard takes double damage from Water-types such as Polyurath. It's 40 becoming 80that beats our boy honestly.

When you play Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocketthis guide will not be very useful for you as many of the rules of the game have been modified to accommodate the 20-card deck format. But soon, we will note it attack on weakness adds 20 damage rather than doubling, and resistance does not exist.

Weaknesses and resistances of each type

But let's leave poor Charizard out of it for now and imagine things more clearly, with a table listing common weaknesses and resistances based on type. However, we cannot stress this enough individual cards may have different weaknesses and resistances than normal cards.

Also, although we'll try to make it clear in the tables as well, very few Pokemon have multiple Weaknesses and/or Resistancesto the point where you'd hardly ever see it today.

Many exceptions

Veterans of the Pokemon video games and newcomers to the main franchise may look at the table above and be confused. To begin with, why are so many types usually resistant to nothing?

Why are grass pokemon weak to psychic? Why are battle pokemon weak to grass or water? There's a lot to unpack.

The most important thing to understand is by simplifying the 19 game types down to ten, the creators of the Trading Card Game actually combined those eight missing types with other cards.

The Poison type, for example, does not exist in a card game. But the majority of its representatives Grass– type or Darkness-type, while some others are common elsewhere.

In the games, Poison-type Pokemon are weak to Psychic. As such, few Grass-type Pokemon cards should deal with the Poison puzzle. The poison has gone to grass and those grass cards retain the weakness.

Indeed, this is an explanation of what may not occur in our brain at first glance. Water is by no means weak to Steel (the game's name for the metal type in the TCG) anywhere but here in the Pokemon TCG.

Why are some water type cards weak to metal? ice is one of the eight non-existent types here, and most Ice-type Pokemon are predictably composed of water. Ice does have a ton of weaknesses in video games, as players know all too well; for TCGs, it's usually metal cards that get this benefit.

Another type that didn't make it into the TCG is Flying. Therefore, flying Pokemon are most often classified as colorless, which is the TCG's unique name for what is elsewhere called “Normal”.

But a lot of flying Pokemon go somewhere other than colorless, and it's usually because they have some defining trait that we tend to think of first—Articuno is a water card; Zapdos – map of Lightning; Moltres is a fire card.

All three cards of these Pokemon tend to have resistance Combat operations. Again, this is the slippery part where the eight missing types count as weaknesses and resistances.

That's why our pal Charizard used to have a battle resistance that made Dugtrio's Earthquake so soft. It's not that fire types are generally resistant to combat; indeed, many lack resistance. This is what Charizard in the games is Fire/Flying.

Exceptions to exceptions

It's true that some of the Pokemon in the TCG are inconsistent with what we've discussed so far. There are various reasons for this. On the one hand, they can be special versions of a species. (The TCG has been around for so long that most species are represented by multiple cards from separate sets over the years.)

Galarian Zapdos from Sword & Shield's Chiling Reign expansion is a great example. This particular Zapdos is a unique type of friend whose type combination in the Sword & Shield video games is fight/flight.

But since the TCG doesn't usually deal with dual types (it has in the past, sporadically), this is a reduction. So, Galarian Zapdos is weak to Psychicwhile most Zapdos cards, being Lightning-type in nature rather than Fighting-type, are certainly not weak to Psychic.

It should be touched on briefly Fairy type cardswhich have deliberately not been mentioned until now. As of Sword & Shieldthe fairy type suffered the unfortunate distinction of being removed entirely. This is the only type that this has ever happened to, and no doubt it came after much thought on the part of The Pokemon Company.

But of course, removing a type from future expansions doesn't magically destroy all physical copies of pre-existing cards. If you play without taking into account the current official rotation of “legal” cards, you may encounter fairy cards, but otherwise you will never encounter them.

And then there are many exceptions. In a long-term card game like Pokemon, you'll find that the representations of some species are completely untrue. These cards are just as worthy of discussion.

Some cards have no weaknesses or resistances whatever. Hey, that's good. Some have a weakness you will never find in any other card of its type. Also fair. As you probably know, a lot goes into what a Pokemon will be weak to when bringing a concept from video games (and anime, manga, etc.) to a cardboard collectible format.

Sometimes you might run into an old card that has a weakness of, say, +20 to damage instead of being doubled. Or resistance with its own peculiarity. These are also rarities.

“It seems too complicated”

If you feel that way, we understand and apologize. We've talked so much about exceptions in this guide that it's easy to lose sight of the fact that they are, indeed, exceptions. Our table earlier most often accurate.

And in the end, all that matters is what you understand when, where, and why one of your cards takes double damage from one of your opponents, or vice versa, or why resistance reduces damage between cards.

Ultimately, this is the most important thing. If you can look at one card, say a water-type card, and see that it's weak to lightning-types, and you realize that a lightning-type pokemon attacking your water-type card will do double the damage? Excellent. Just keep going.

Each Pokemon card has a Weakness/Resistance category. to the bottom of the print. Recognize the symbols, look them up if necessary, until you remember them all. You'll soon be memorizing weakness and resistance as a Pokemon master. (Whatever that is.)