My starter pokemon. I wasn't particularly fond of any of the starters (though I haven't been since gen 2), but I always pick water so it was an easy choice. Because it had been a long time since I last had played Pokemon I hadn't thought that I'd need to give him a name, and despite the fact that I'd have to watch him for the entire game I chose the name fairly fast. I alternated between Mario... Luigi... Mario... Luigi a few moments and just picked Mario for no particular reason. I really liked his middle evolution...

Mario is naturally the powerhouse of my team and gets the majority of the fights. I have never had much of a strategy, so I rely on the good old

Cottonee was one of my favourite gen 5 pokemon from the start, and it's possible that I might have considered getting Pokemon Black instead of White more seriously if Cottonee hadn't been available in White. Luckily there was an NPC who traded me hers for Petilil, something I wasn't really interested in. She even had a cute name, and she gets boosted experience so I really like her.

Fluffee is often used for catching Pokemon, because she is one of the few ones I have that are capable of status ailments. I'm considering whether I should replace Poisonpowder with Sleep powder or a paralysing attack, because the poisoned opponent has a chance of fainting due to poison before I manage to catch it. Her ability Prankster (high priority to status moves) makes poisoning the opponent easier; she gets the hit in even if the opponent is faster and OHKOes her right after getting poisoned. Fluffee has had to sacrifice herself for... a greater good quite a many times. Sorry Fluffee!

She also knows Solar Beam and Leech Seed. I'm considering teaching her Sunny Day so I wouldn't have to load for Solar Beam, but I really like Leech Seed so I don't want to replace it... But I guess I could do with just Giga Drain. Grass type has a lot of interesting moves, it's difficult to choose just four of them.

Fluffee is yet another case where I prefer the pre-evo over the evolution. This time I'd need a stone to evolve it, so I don't need to prevent it from evolving all the time.

I love how poofy she is, but her entrance animation is a bit silly. She makes a very loud bang when hitting ground, I'd expect such a lightweight cotton pokemon to land with a soft thud instead.

I like to associate Cottonee with my OC Beta, who has very poofy hair.

The enseble darkhorse of this generation. I loved its evolution Darmanitan from the start, so naturally I wanted one, and I wanted it to be male. When I run into my first Darumaka it was a girl. I thought it was a rare pokemon, so I caught it anyway and named it Rose without sparing much thought on the name. Because I was not too fond of the fire monkey I had been given there was room for a fire pokemon in my team, so I let Rose join it. And then I fell so much in love with it that in the end I didn't want to let it evolve... So I had to catch another Darumaka to get Darmanitan to my pokedex. I know Darumaka's stats aren't that good, but I won't let it bother me. Darumaka is just so cute with its silly cry and how it withdraws its limbs to its body and rolls like an egg~~~

Rose is in charge of defeating all grass opponents when Mario is useless, and I tend to switch it out for bug and ice foes as well. It works against electric too, Mario would be OHKOed. Naturally she soloed through the Ice Gym. The only move she uses is Fire Punch. She has Headbutt, Facade and Overheat as well, but I never use them... I guess I could teach it a TM for variety, like Sunny Day or Flame Charge. Rose revealed me how little I knew of Pokemon mechanics: When it learned Overheat I was very excited because it was such an "expensive" move (only 5 PP, harshly cuts user's SP attack) but dealed massive damage (power 140). Then I was very surprised when it turned out to be quite an useless move; it dealt less damage than Fire Punch, which seemed to be a lot "weaker" move (power 75, 15 PP, can cause burn, better accuracy, no negative side-effects). Then I checked the pokemon's stats for the first time in my entire pokemon playing history and found out that (at that time) Rose's attack was over 100 while sp attack was abusmally low, around 30. So it wasn't a miracle that a special move Overheat wasn't that useful.

Every now and then her ability Hustle (raises attack but lowers accuracy) causes her to miss and possibly get her knocked out by the opponent. My thoughts are usually "well that was your own fault for not aiming properly stupid". Rose seems to be suited for physical attacks quite, because even her characteristic raises her attack. Her nature has nothing to do with attack though, instead it lowers sp def and raises speed.

So far Rose is my only pokemon that has taken part in a musical (favouritism on my part). She often gets dressed with a black ribbon and a cane.

love squirrels so this one was a must-get. For some reason I was determined to get a female one and call it Cleo. I got the chance to trade a Boldore for one fairly fast, but... it was male and its name was Minipete. And since it was a boy I couldn't even breed it, because Ditto wasn't available at that time.

For those who haven't played gen 5 games: There is a new way to make rare pokemon even rarer and more annoying to catch: Moving grass. On a rare occassion a patch of grass starts moving, and rarer pokemon can be found there. If you get there of course, if you get a wild pokemon attack in regular grass before that the phenomenon has ended when the fight ends. And of course there was only 20% chance that the moving grass attack is Emolga, I only tended to get Audino after Audino. And Emolga has 50% chance to be female... So I was very happy that the first Emolga I run into was a girl and I even managed to catch it.

She has three electric attacks but I can't remember what the other two are, because I always use Thunderbolt. Acrobatics turned out to be very useful in a triple battle when it could hit all the opponents.

Cleo isn't very strong yet, but she's useful against electric foes. And her handy ability Static (may paralyse on contact) has been pretty useful even if she faints from just one attack.

She's going to be strong!

For some reason I really like Cleffa, even if it's a pink cutecute girly thing. So I went to catch a Clefairy as soon as I learned they were available and made it breed with my Ditto Nuljaska ("Slime blob"). Then the Cleffa hatched, and I was happy that I could get it in my pokedex. The I checked her characteristics, and it said.... Proud of its power. What the hell!? What power exactly is a lvl 1 baby pokemon proud of!? I was so sorry for her and ummm touched by her optimism that I decided that I'd train her so that she'd have something to be proud of. Then I remembered that it's just a couple of pixels on the DS screen and the characteristic was just chosen at random, but I didn't let that bother me too much.

So I gave her a Lucky Egg, put her first on my party and went to battle some lvl 60 pokemon trainers. In a few minutes she had risen to over lvl 20. She even took care of one Kakuna herself, because all the opponent could do was Harden. Everything went nicely, though extremely slowly when her Pound and Magical Leaf dealt very little damage to an opponent three times higher level. Then the foe Kakuna run out of PP so it actually started harming Myy with Struggle... Luckily it didn't OHKO her, and it dealt more damage to itself than what Myy could do, so I could just keep healing her and let the Kakuna knock itself out. A bit lame victory but that way she got all the exp for herself.

Myy won't be allowed to evolve either. Baby pokemon stats are pretty horrible, but it's so much cuter than Clefairy so I'll have to live with it. At least it can learn a lot of TMs.

Keep it up Myy! I'll train you to lvl 100 for sure! One day I'll let you challenge Cynthia and her lvl 70+ team!