How do you make your team?

I, well, use probably a bad way of team building in terms of beating the games: rather than picking out Pokémon based off their typing, covering each other then maybe an hm slave or two, I generally use Pokémon that I've never used before and cram the onto a team together and just hope it works. If not, I'll make it work! I never use HM Slaves, I just put up with HMs till the league when I then remove unnecessary ones such as Cut. Usually, when team building for a game though, I do like to make sure I have a mon that can surf, and a flying mon is pretty cool to have too but not exactly necessary.

Sometimes the mon I pick is one I previously had no real intentions or desire to use, like Quagsire for instance on my Soul Silver run.

And most times when picking my team, I'll predetermine the crew, and if a member of it is one I can only get late-game (such as Snover on DP) I usually breed for one on another game then trade the egg over to the new game so that I have it early on (I know it's a bit of a cheat, but I don't wanna have to wait till gym 7 or something to get my last member haha)

 

Just like OfficialRedG, I use Pokémon I've never used before just to see what happens

 

I've tried pre-determining my team, but it's never worked out nicely for me. In the actual games, I tend to train whoever happens to be useful for the coming gym, either picking new Pokémon from a nearby route or coming back to someone I haven't trained in a while.

For instance: I'm in Hoenn, about to face Wallace. I feel like I could go for having an Electric on my team (because Blaziken's a liability there). I'm going to have to choose between catching a Chinchou from the surrounding wildlife or going back to that Electrike I trained for Winonia and try to build him up to Manectric. It's a tossup.

This said, the ordering of Gym Types has a significant influence on how trained the individuals on my team are. If the next region happens to have its sixth through eighth gyms be Dark, Grass, and Psychic, you can bet I'll have a few well-trained bugs on my team. Otherwise, probably not. It's the main factor.

 

I try to balance my team based on Pokémon that have served me well in the past. I don't worry about natures and stats--I just work with whatever I happen to get.

But if Pikachus are availiable in the wild, a female Pikachu named Lita will appear somewhere on the team at some point.

 

I mostly choose Pokémon I find cute and then train them up with Super Training. I try not to have two Pokémon of the same type, although having one that's poison and another that's grass/poison is okay. I think it's fun having super strong cutesie Pokémon; my Minun really packs a punch.

 

I usually use a combination of Pokémon I love to use and Pokémon I've never used before while also making sure I don't repeat types!

 

To be honest I usually find one Pokémon being the MVP being able to beat even Pokémon with a better type matchup, especially if it has some sort of set up move. Once I have that Pokémon I just fill the rest of the slots with Pokémon I like and have the best utility while making sure I have something that beats the Pokémon my MVP can't handle.

 

Here's an XD team I recently made:

Vaporeon/Houndoom/Claydol/Gardevoir/Roselia/Magneton

Moves matter more to me than stats

 

Yes, the one w/Bonsly