Geez. I must be a bit out of it. I decide to let Genesis and Wrap try to take on a Youngster's Rattata, and at first it works fine as the Rattata misses with Hyper Fang and Genesis lands the Wrap, but Wrap ends fairly quickly and I guess I wasn't even thinking about it because I find Genesis getting hit with a Hyper Fang before successfully landing another Wrap. There was no message telling me that the first one had ended! Yet I must have had to input the command again, because this wasn't like Rage; I distinctly remember that about Gen I. Non-critical, the rat takes out nearly three-quarters of Gen's HP in one blow. I don't bother sticking around for the rest of Wrap, having LavaLord take care of the Rattata.
I vaguely remember that 4x damage wasn't really a thing in Gen I either, which would make sense given that dual-types where one would halve a type and the other would double it didn't add up to x1, but Genesis still takes out Geodudes in one shot. Then again, they have crap Special anyway, so that's not really a huge feat. A level 17 Onix provides no gauge of whether Genesis is really that strong as the first Vine Whip crits, but the Onix was actually faster than Genesis.
...Ah, crap, what now? I encounter a trainer with a Slowpoke and stick with Genesis, banking on it not having any Psychic-type attacks yet. It does. Mercifully, Genesis isn't KOed, but what can I use against a Water/Psychic type? Certainly not Genesis, Poka, LavaLord, or Jeffrey. I go with Masterplum. Since his only damaging attack is itself a Psychic-type move, I go with the Confusion/PoisonPowder combo. The first Supersonic fails, but after getting it confused, it proceeds to attack itself three times in a row; combined with two turns of poison damage after the first PoisonPowder succeeded and one turn of not-very-effective Confusion, it goes down. Of course, after I'd already switched to Masterplum, I realized that combining Gen I's tendency to only start giving Pokémon level-up moves after the lowest possible level you can catch them (and often failing to take fishing into account; Psyduck, for example, only gets its first level-up move at level 28, and that move is Tail Whip) with the fact that we already saw the Slowpoke use a Psychic-type move, Poka probably would've been perfectly safe.
*double-checks*
Yes; yes it would've been. Slowpoke, while avoiding the same ridiculous levels of move deprivation that Psyduck suffers, starts out with just one move and learns its second move at level 18, one level higher than the Slowpoke I just faced. Confusion was literally the only move that Slowpoke knew. And yet, with this being Gen I, that actually made it legitimately scary. Psychics were so broken in this generation.
Now, I never much cared for Thrash so that's not an issue when it comes to deciding whether to evolve Jeffrey early or keep him a Nidorino for awhile, but a pure Poison-type is kind of a liability and a Ground-type would definitely be useful to have, give it STAB when I teach it Dig...
Wait, what do you mean, Nidorino can't use TM 28 and neither can Nidoking? I mean, yeah, I've got two other Pokémon who will be able to use the TM when I get it, and I'll be able to get a Ground-type for use against Lt. Surge when I reach Diglett's Cave, but it's the principle of the thing. I mean, there are lots of Pokémon that can use TM 28. F***ing Ekans can use it. And Nidoking, hell, even Nidorino has the type of TM versatility generally reserved for pure Normal-types. In fact, I just got my Sandshrew counter, because now that he's a Nidorino rather than a Nidoran, Jeffrey can learn Water Gun via TM 12. Surely I'm not the only one who generally used TM 12 on a non-Water type because any halfway decent Water-type would learn Water Gun on its own, and generally then some better Water-type moves later on.
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I'm a cat person, but I can still appreciate a SuperNiceDog.