The upshot is that there are no lone quarks floating around. All quarks and gluons are tied up with other quarks or gluons to form particles which are colorless. The Residual Strong Force Atoms which have no net electric charge can still interact electrically, due to the fact that they are made up of particles that do have electric charge. Well, there's a residual strong force as well. Protons and neutrons, which are colorless, can still exert a strong force on other protons and neutrons due to the fact that they're made up of particles that have color.
Pions are particles that consist primarily of a quark and an anti-quark.
There are three different pions, depending on what kind of quark and anti-quark are used. Gluons are still involved, but only in the process within a proton or neutron that creates a pion before sending it out, or in the process within a proton or neutron in which a pion is absorbed. In the case of electromagnetism, this was infinite because the photon is massless. The heavier the mediating particle, the shorter the range of the force. That is, about the size of a typical atomic nucleus.