Tbh I don't think Dragapult counts as mixed attacker. It's clearly designed as phisical attacker, with the intentional design of not having a reliable ghost stab for balance reasons. Just people value a fast special attacker more due to the nuclear power of Draco Meteor and spammability of Shadow ball.
I agree to a degree just looking stats overall, but I think it is fair to consider in Dragapult's case, it's so heavily specced into Speed that its intended role is to just hit decently hard while outrunning things rather than battering through things fresh like Salamence or Metagross would, while the gap between attack stats isn't as wide as something like Garchomp (which wasn't blisteringly so but had a speed advantage in its debut gen as well). They probably could have put 10 points into each of its defenses at the expense of SpA if they didn't intend for Special/Mixed to be an option (even if not the primary one), since it wouldn't be enough to shift Drag's role from a relatively-frail Fast Attacker.
This seems more because their special options make better use of Sheer Force than their physical ones. Kind of a true statement when not bringing up the Nidos, too; it's a lot more common to see physical moves with either no effect, a conditional boost that isn't impacted by Sheer Force, or a drawback if the move is really powerful. Physical moves with a secondary effect aren't unheard of but they tend to be weaker than their special options. Heck, even Landorus usually goes special when using Sheer Force, despite having a higher attack stat.
I mean to be fair to the Nidos, their options for a special movepool are just way better for sheer force than their physical movepools. The elemental punches just aren’t competing with Flamethrower, T-bolt and ice beam, and that’s before STAB moves being factored in. Poison jab stands no chance against sludge wave and the best physical ground type move Sheer force works with is Bulldoze at 60bp.
Fly and Teleport exist.
I think broadly its because babies just had a weird place, mechanically, in the TCG
I wonder if this had to do with how the TCG team doesn’t like the Baby Pokémon at all and decided to not bother with them most of the time after their debut. I strongly believe so since most of the GSC Baby Pokémon aren’t well received at release by even casual fanbase due to being dex fillers due to only being obtained as Eggs and also weaker than already weak former first stage Pokémon, alongside especially weak cards even by first stage Pokémon standards.
I think this is projecting a lot, especially since those Pokemon are definitely still popular to varying degrees...and there's certainly no proof the TCG team "doesnt like the baby Pokemon at all"
That would be because Riolu isn't a Baby.
In the card game it isn't, but in the games it, Togepi, and Toxel are all considered babies coding-wise(and lore-wise in numerous official media sources). All three lack the normal TCG baby traits because they were introduced the same generation as their evolutions. Which also means those three pretty much have to appear in any set their evolutions appear in as normal Pokemon cards.
The original Neo Genesis Cleffa was one of the best cards back in the day. Baby Pokemon back then all had a passive mechanic where if it was your active Pokemon the opponent had to win a coin flip to even use an attack, and had no weaknesses or a retreat cost(but also no resistances and only ever had 30 HP). Cleffa's main draw was that, for one energy of any type, you could shuffle your hand back into your deck and draw 7 cards. You were insane to NOT splash this in any deck. This is also why it was one the cards reprinted in Celebrations to represent the Neo era of the TCG.
I am pretty sure people have been complaining about gen 1 focus in games & stuff for a large chunk of the series life span, yes. Including within the gen 2 games...
And most Johtomons are dogshit, like, only Typhlosion, Feraligatr, Ho-oh, The beasts, and TTar are good from that generation. And Blissey, who only rose to OU because of the bear, and will likely drop to UU in November
lol…
