Discussion Averages of the HP/Retreat Costs of All Base Set Pokemon

DarkMatterGaming

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Edit: I'm going to be updating this post for all future charts instead of making new posts each time. Will probably clean this up tomorrow morning.

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I intend to do this for all of the sets in the future but... there are a lot of them.

I also want to do this for Attacks but there are a lot of tiny details that I'd have to iron out like ranges (i.e. should I calculate Blastoise's damage at base or at max? Or do both?) and things along that nature.

Anyway, here's the actual chart that I made up in Excel and ported over. Certain cards are highlighted; I wanted to keep track of the parts of the Haymaker to see what made the deck really tick.

If there are any errors, please let me know and I'll correct them ASAP.

For those wondering the order of the chart, they are in Card Number order. It was the easiest way to do things using Bulbapedia as a resource.

Some interesting things I noticed:
  • All the Pokemon in Base Set that evolve twice (Abra, the Starters, Poliwag, etc.) all have retreat costs of 1, even Pokemon like Machop.
  • Beedrill is the only Stage 2 Pokemon to have a retreat Cost of 0. By that same notion, it's the only Pokemon in the set to lose Retreat Cost upon Evolution.
  • Of the three final Evolution starters, Charizard is the only one to have a Retreat Cost of 3. Both Blastoise and Venusaur have costs of 2.
I'll probably do Fossil and Jungle sometime this week, maybe tomorrow.

After those, I'm planning to start a chart to visualize how HP has changed over time (mostly to see if there was a lead-up to Big Basics that we can see with data).

Anyway, thanks for reading my ramblings.

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JUNGLE UPDATE:

I felt inspired. Here's the Jungle sheet.

Please note that the set comprised of many, many reprints so the data is somewhat... lighter than you'd think.

Interesting notes:
  • The set introduced many Stage 1 Pokemon with 70 HP. What bbninjas expected to happen regarding the 40 HP Basics actually happened here - the average is 72.5. This is actually only a few decimals off the Base set's average.
  • On the topic of Stage 1s, they have the lowest Retreat Cost average of the set. I believe its due to 1/4 of the Stage 1s introduced having 0 retreat. It's actually the lowest average in the entirety of the data!
  • Rhyhorn has the title of being the bulkiest Pokemon to evolve once in this set, going from 70 > 100 as a Stage 1.
  • Off topic, but the set only had 1 Trainer. Neat.
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DOUBLE UPDATE Fossil AND Team Rocket!

Here's the updated sheet! Base Set's will be cleaned up... eventually.


Interesting Fossil Notes:
  • Kabuto has the Lowest HP out of all the Stage 1 Pokemon in the game to this point with a whopping 30. I think this already well known but it's still really jarring after pouring over all this data already.
  • Golem is our first Stage 2, 4 Retreat Cost Pokemon! The only other Pokemon with a RC of 4 is Jungle Snorlax, a Basic.
  • HP for Basics and Stage 1 Pokemon are actually lower than Jungle's while the Stage 2 is slightly higher than Jungle's average.
Interesting Team Rocket Notes:
  • The retreat average for Basics is below one. This is the first time the game has ever seen something like this. On the contrary, Stage 2 Pokemon have the same retreat average as Base Set in this set: 2.5.
  • The HP averages are much, much lower than Fossil. Basics lost 10 points, Stage 1 Pokemon lost 4 and Stage 2s lost 14.
That's all for now folks!

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Huh that's cool that your averaging the retreat cost of the Base set Pokemon, I would like to see how HP changes aswell
 
Honestly, I wanted to average everything from the get go, but settled on Retreat Cost along with HP to see what it looked like initially. Nowadays Retreat Cost is mostly inconsequential but that wasn't quite the case back then.
 
I find it interesting that the average health for the Basics is 50, because that norm hasn't recently changed much of the eras. I would have expected it to be closer to 40, due to the sheer volume of Pokemon with that amount of HP in the early sets.
 
I find it interesting that the average health for the Basics is 50, because that norm hasn't recently changed much of the eras. I would have expected it to be closer to 40, due to the sheer volume of Pokemon with that amount of HP in the early sets.

Chansey, Onix and Zapdos actually add almost 5 points to the average. I just did it out of curiosity (again) and it averaged to a perfect 45 without them. Just goes to show how much HP dictated the game at that point.
 
Updated the OP with the Jungle sheet. Don't want to flood the forums with these posts (which makes me think this title is kinda dumb in hindsight).

Had to do some finagling with it after realizing I left out a few details (don't work at 11:20 at night, kids) but I'm trying a new format. Will update the original sheet with the new format tomorrow.
 
Lol the game was so different back then. I remember there being a formula for attacks/cost to see of a Pokémon was viable. It was, 10 DMG per colorless, 15 per specific. Ex: Hitmonchan had a basic attack, one fighting energy for 20 damage....THAT WAS A HIGH VALUE ATTACK!!! lol oh how the game has changed....
 
Trying something new: I'm now going to leave a link here to the new data in addition to updating the OP. That way people can go straight to the data.

That being said, 2 new tables have been added.
 
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