Hard Counter Lookup

v19, 2026-09-20 — Alakazam replaces Gengar. A companion to the Genlocke Field Manual, for a run where one team of six is carried through five games and none of them may ever faint.

This page is the lookup: you just met something — which of your six leaves, and who replaces them. Search the species, or tap a threat tag. It is not meant to be read front to back.

It does name Pokémon, so it spoils what you will meet. The Field Manual is the spoiler-free half. No trainer names and no boss rosters — the blind run stays blind.

Every instruction here is about which of YOUR six is on the field. None of it ever means avoid the fight, skip the trainer or leave the building. You always fight. The only question this page answers is who is standing there when you do.

Not found? Search the type instead: Electric · Fighting · Dark · Bomber · Psychic · Ice · Fire · Ground. If it has two types, find its species row — the archetype rows are for single types.

A game tag means you can meet it there (wild or on a trainer), not that you can catch it. Hidden abilities do not exist in normal Gen 4–5 play; a hidden-only threat is not a threat.

Codes SNOR Snorlax · MAGN Magneton · LAPR Lapras · VENU Venusaur · GYAR Gyarados · ALAK Alakazam Games LG · SS · EM · PT · BW · BW-post (Black/White after the League) · (B)/(W) version-locked

Every card shows the same six slots, in the same order — SNOR MAGN LAPR VENU GYAR ALAK. You are not reading a list, you are checking a position. Two things are encoded, and they are deliberately kept on separate channels:

Colour is the whole legend. Darker means "more so" — the same way conditional formatting works in a spreadsheet.

A light green slot means "fine, but it cannot do damage" — a real category, not an omission. A mode badge appears next to the name only when the default (send the dark green, switch freely) does not apply:

Tags NO EXIT a trapping move/ability, or Pursuit by level-up — checked per row, never assumed from the Dark type · ROCK carries Rock Slide/Stone Edge — see Trap 1 · BOMB · OHKO · PRIORITY · MOLD your ability is off · SLEEP · FREEZE · STURDY · BULK FAILS fixed damage or crits 🔴 dies this turn · 🟡 dies if you stay · ⚪ costs turns, not lives

The rule every row obeys

A switch-in is chosen against the threat's COVERAGE, not its type. A Dark type with Thunder Fang kills Gyarados. A Fighting type with Dark Pulse kills Alakazam. A Ground type with Rock Slide kills both. "Resists its STAB" is not "safe". Every IN cell below was checked against that species' real movepool.

Sorted by severity, then name. KEEP OUT and SEND are codes; everything else is in Watch for.

How the bomber data was checked (v14). The roster is built from structured PokéAPI learnset, move and encounter JSON by Scripts/fetch_exploders.py and Scripts/bomber_full.py — no prose summaries anywhere in the chain. That matters: an earlier version of this page claimed these categories were "checked complete" on the strength of Bulbapedia move pages read through a summariser, and the summariser was silently truncating long tables to about ten rows. It missed two thirds of the exploders, including Drifloon, Solrock, Ferrothorn and the whole Roggenrola line. Anything sourced that way has been re-derived. Categories still checked only the old way — Mean Look, Spore, the OHKO moves, Perish Song, Destiny Bond — should be treated as probably complete, not verified.

Legendaries are deliberately absent. They are scripted one-off fights you enter with a fresh save and full preparation — the opposite of the mid-route lookup this page is for — and listing them would spoil where they appear.

Harmless-looking Normal types that carry Dark moves. Nothing on the team is immune to Normal any more, and for ALAK a Bite is 2×. Before he stays in against anything Normal, assume Bite, Pursuit or Sucker Punch until the fight proves otherwise: Rattata/Raticate (five Dark moves, own row), Sentret/Furret (Sucker Punch 31/36), Meowth/Persian (Bite, Night Slash), Zigzagoon/Linoone, Sudowoodo (Sucker Punch), Ursaring, Stoutland, Watchog, Bouffalant. Only Raticate and Furret punish the switch itself; the rest just hit him.

Version-locked in Black/White: Heracross and Houndour are Black-side; Pinsir, Misdreavus, Paras, Machop, Rhyhorn, Aron, Gastly, Magnemite, Chansey, Seedot, Corphish and Trapinch are White-side, mostly via White Forest.

Not wild-catchable in Emerald despite being Kanto staples: Diglett, Dugtrio, Paras, Parasect, Mankey, Primeape, Onix, Steelix, Scyther, Chansey. A trainer may still field one.

Bombers — the complete picture

Every level-up exploder, in every game, at the level it gains the bomb: 89 species-game encounters, 25 species. Generated by Scripts/bomber_full.py from structured data, and modelling the Gen 3–4 Defence halving, crits at ×2, Lapras's Shell Armor (she cannot be critically hit), and the real four-move window a wild Pokémon actually knows.

Across the 67 early and mid encounters the only gap is a trainer's Forretress (the four early "unsolved" are its Self-Destruct, known from level 1 — see its row). Twenty-two of the 89 never get a turn because ALAK outspeeds and one-shots them: the Koffing and Weezing lines in every game, Geodude, Seedot and Trubbish.

The protocol, in order

1. Can someone outspeed and guarantee the kill? Then nothing else matters — it never acts. This covers the entire Geodude line (LAPR and VENU are both 4× on Rock/Ground). 2. Otherwise put LAPR in. Crit-safe in 66 of 89, because Shell Armor means she cannot be critically hit at all — "survives a crit" collapses into "survives a normal hit," on 130 base HP. 3. ALAK for the Poison bombers only — Koffing, Weezing, Trubbish, Garbodor. He outspeeds them and Psychic one-shots them before they move. Against anything else that explodes he is never on the field. 4. MAGN for the Bug/Steel bombers — Steel halves the Normal blast. Never in a cave: Ground is 4× on him and Electric does nothing to Rock/Ground. 5. SNOR never eats a bomb. 135 HP on 40 Defence, halved in Gens 3–4. A lv19 Koffing's Self-Destruct is 114% of Munchlax. He is the worst bomb body you own, not the best.

Who is crit-safe, by phase

ALAK is never in this table and never will be — 55 HP, no immunity, and every bomb is a crit-kill on him. His entry in the bomber story is the row above the table: the ones that never get a turn.

The four with no crit-safe body

In Black/White the bomb no longer halves Defence, which is why the BW Solrock, Drifblim and Skuntank are not in this table.

Six of those nine instances are trainer-only; the three wild ones are Solrock in Emerald, SoulSilver and Platinum. And these are not 6% crit risks: a lv49 Solrock's Explosion is 121% of Lapras with no crit at all. The rule for all four is never let them detonate, not pick a sponge.

What does not explode

Verified from structured learnset data, not memory:

• Bronzor, Snorunt and Numel never learn Explosion or Self-Destruct in any of the five games, by any method. Their BOMB tags were fiction and are gone.
• Bronzong, Metagross, Metang, Cloyster, Glalie and Camerupt learn it only by TM or tutor, never by level-up — so a wild one can never bomb you. Only a trainer's might.

Two things typing does not cover

Aftermath (Drifloon line) fires on a contact KO — finish those with Thunderbolt, Surf or Psychic rather than a contact move. Destiny Bond takes your Pokémon with it regardless of typing.

Where the team is thin

Scripts/team_gaps.py runs all 649 Gen 1–5 species against the six by STAB typing, abilities included. 71 species have no body that resists both their STABs. Most of those still have four or five neutral bodies with real bulk behind them, which is why they are not on the index. The ones worth knowing by shape:

The lesson is not a seventh Pokémon. It is that the six have exactly one job each in these fights, and the HP floor rule (below) is what turns a four-neutral matchup into a safe one.

Standing rules the rows assume

• HP floor. Nothing enters a new opponent below 60%. If it drops there mid-fight, switch it out on a resist turn even at a tempo cost. This is the most likely real death for this team: a Pokémon at 40% in the middle of a six-mon fight, unable to switch or heal, eating a high roll.
• OHKO moves fail when the user is below the target's level, and sit near 30% at equal level. Being at the cap — not under it — is the defence. Nothing on the team is immune to any of them; nothing resists Sheer Cold.
• Shed Shell on MAGN and SNOR from SoulSilver on. It lets the holder switch out through any trap, wild or trainer. It does not exist in Gen 3.
• Set mode gives no free switch after a KO. Whatever is in stays in as the next Pokémon comes out. You can still switch on your own next turn — it just costs you that turn and hands the newcomer a free hit, which is exactly the tempo you cannot spare. The bomb-eater, the ace answer, the resist — all of it has to be on the field before the KO.
• Gen 5: Volt Switch and U-turn. The AI pivots for free every turn; you cannot. Never enter on a predicted matchup in BW — enter on what is actually in front of you.
• Crits are 2× in these games and ignore Curse and Intimidate. LAPR's Shell Armor is the team's only structural defence.
• ALAK is a one-turn answer. He never enters a Bug, Ghost or Dark type, never a bomber he cannot one-shot, and leaves the moment one of those moves shows on anything else. If a row does not say he kills in one, he does not go in.
• Fixed damage keys off CURRENT HP. Dragon Rage 40, SonicBoom 20. Heal before any route with known users.

Three traps the table cannot hold

1 · Rock Slide (ROCK). Most Ground types carry Rock Slide or Stone Edge specifically to hit the Flying and Water switch-ins you are about to send. GYAR and LAPR are both 2× Rock. Never send either into a Ground or Rock species until you have seen its moves. Default to SNOR or VENU. Ground immunity is worthless if the move is Rock Slide, and the 30% flinch means the second one lands before you can leave.

2 · Gen 3 has no escape from a trainer-battle trap. A Smoke Ball only ever lets you flee a wild battle — inert against trainers in every generation — and the Shed Shell does not exist before Gen 4. So in LeafGreen and Emerald, being trapped by Mean Look or Arena Trap in a trainer fight is unsurvivable unless you win it. The lead rules are the entire defence there.

3 · Double battles. Emerald has mandatory ones; BW has doubles, triples and rotations, and a few fights pair you with an AI partner you do not control. Party slots 1 and 2 are your pair — set the order before the door. "ALL − LAPR" is unplayable when you must field two.

Default pair: the zone's lead + SNOR. The strongest general pair is GYAR + SNOR — Intimidate drops both opponents' Attack at once, and SNOR's Earthquake passes harmlessly under a Flying partner. Against confirmed bombers, LAPR + GYAR — and she never Surfs beside him.

Your own spread moves hit your partner. LAPR never Surfs in a double. SNOR never quakes beside MAGN (4×). Never MAGN + LAPR (one enemy Electric move hits both). This is the most likely way a careful run kills its own Pokémon.

ALAK is the worst pick here. Two attackers focus the frailest thing you own and he cannot switch away in time. He sits a double out unless both things opposite are ones he one-shots. Set mode still applies — pick the pair for the whole team, not just the first two.

Time-wasters, not threats

The ⚪ rows at the bottom of the index. Nothing dies, but "walk away" is not an option against a trainer — no bag items means no Ethers, and a stall ends in Struggle recoil. Kill them slowly with the strongest neutral hitter.