Is the Chateau - Cocoa & White No. 2 very rare?

[Tad Carlucci]

There is "rare" and then there is "recessive" ..

Saga's charts say NOTHING about "rare" .. which is the relative frequency at which one might find the example. That frequency is controlled outside the breeding process by factors such as when the trait was released, which starters (if any) might contain it as a breedable trait, the probabilities for those starters to do so, and whether players like it and want more examples of that trait.

Saga's charts are about "recessive" .. which is the patterns of hiding and exposing the trait while breeding. While they are a great tool for guiding our breeding programs, they say nothing at all about where, or whether, one can find the trait "in the wild" or whether others would value the trait should we produce more examples of it.

The confusion arises because we, as breeders, often favor the more recessive traits because they're Very Good Tools in our programs and because, being so recessive, it's less likely a casual breeding would happen to expose it.

If you think about it, however, that actually means the most recessive traits would tend to become "common" because of our preferences, those with high frequency in starters would be "common" due to that frequency, and the actually "rare" examples seen in the wild are most likely to be those "middling dominance" traits which fall between those two extremes.