Spinning off of the success of Ash winning another big tournament in the anime, I'm curious to read all the different teams you guys used through out the year and whether your approach changed through out the generations.

I'm just going to try to keep it to the first team I beat every generation with.

Generation I

After months of non-stop grinding, my Blastoise was a one-man gang. Forget about move coverage - Surf, Hydro Pump, Bubblebeam & Strength was all I needed to take down the entire Elite 4. I may have also had Zapdos and Articuno in the party, but Blastoise was doing all the work.

Generation II

The same deal, except I didn't explore every nook and cranny and over-leveled Feraligatr to an insane level. He was still doing all the heavy lifting, but he had some support from the event captures. After that I'm pretty sure I brought in Blastoise to take care of the rest of the game.

Generation III

I didn't actually play through this Generation until way later so this team was a little bit more well balanced. I also went with Sceptile over Swampert because I did play a poorly translated ROM before the release, but I don't even recall beating the game so I'm using this as my base team. I'm pretty sure I used all six slots but for the life of me I can't remember what filled out 5 & 6. Regardless, Sceptile and Gardevoir largely did all the heavy lifting through out that run.

Generation IV

I feel like the first three are pretty common members of any team that generation, with Empoleon making way for other starters. The rest all came down to wireless trade, nobody I knew carried around a link cable so I abused the opportunity to finally have some trade evo Pokemon on my team. Personally I think Gen 4 is kind of a boring generation and unless you really go out of your way, there's little variation among the teams.

Generation V

I remember being really amped for this generation but despite everything the only Pokemon I reall went out of my comfort zone for was Krookodile for Electric, Psychic and Ghost coverage. As you can see, I typically always go water starter, early bird mons for Grass Coverage/Fly and then I like Psychic Special Attackers usually for their move pool. Zebstrika was one of those early game Pokemon like Sawk that I just kept around through out even though I had planned on picking up an Elektross. I didn't plan on catching Vanilluxe but since one of the gyms was Dragon, I had to have coverage and usually the Elite 4 has a few of them on hand as well.

Generation VI

This was the first generation to include Exp Share so I took full advantage and had one of my better balanced teams. The sword and the flower type monster both made the team due to the new typing fairy. I wanted to experiment with it but also have a counter for it. Aegislash was also incredibly broken this generation and had a damn cool design as well. The only thing I didn't use was Megas. For me they fell into the same category as legendaries which always felt like training wheels. Completely fine if you're a kid, but I'd rather stick with the guys who got me to the dance.

Generation VII

In Generation VII, I decided I wanted those training wheels. Generation VII was an odd experience where I had it all mapped out and I wanted to use the Poison/Fire Salamander, the Psychic Raichu and the Normal/Fighting Bear along with the Water starter. However I also wanted to play the game optimally so I took a detour to breed and get all the EV-items and a bunch of Abra so I could get the right nature on Lunala. It just carved through the rest of the game and makes that whole experience really uneven for me. I remember the first half well enough, but I barely touched it after wrecking everyone. Every now and then over the years I'd come back to collect Ultra Beasts or do some of the post-game, but I got back into gaming in a big big way around that time so Pokemon took a back-seat.

Generation VIII

I beat Shield in just a couple of days, making it the fastest Pokemon game I've ever beaten. I may have actually written my Elite 4 team down on PW so I'll have to go check but I'm pretty sure this was it. The only thing I will say is that the first four monsters did the majority of the heavy lifting with Inteleon in particular carrying like Blastoise and Feraligatr did in years gone by. Usually I end up buying both versions, but Shield was a one and done and I haven't touched the DLC yet despite buying it. I've been coming back to it recently and actually really like the quality of life improvements so much so I beat Battle Tower so I really want to get another playthrough in at some point and do it right.

EDIT: I had to split my OP up because it hit an image restriction and was causing the images to load randomly on different browsers. Learn from my example, say no to too many pictures!

I couldn't possibly remember all my teams. I remember I did one Pokemon Red playthrough with just my trusty Bulbasaur. Big Pete's water starter may wreck Brock but gets stuck against Misty.

My most recent Pokemon adventure was Pokemon X&Y. I wrote it up on the old PW. Don't remember much besides Aegislash because there's nothing cooler than a ghost sword and shield. Pretty sure I had a Haxorus as well because I used the nickname Curtis Axew.

On the topic of nicknames, do you guys assign nicknames?

I don't know how the fuck yinz are doing it, but yinz are making me nostalgic to play a lil Pokemon again. Dafuq!?

Get into it 🤯 ! Buy a Switch and come join us in Paldea on Friday.

I rarely come up with nicknames. I'm too busy becoming a Pokemon master to sit around and think about the best name. The only exception was Soul Silver where I had Schnappi the Feraligatr, Hercules the Heracross, Isis the Xatu and I'm struggling to remember the rest. In games like Disgaea where you have to name your units, I just default to wrestlers/actors/sportstars/musicians etc.

Amazing memory you have. I could ballpark it for yellow and gold but after that?

Nov 14, 2022 14:19:49 GMT @ness said:

Amazing memory you have. I could ballpark it for yellow and gold but after that?

I’ll check some of my teams later!

The battling is the least interesting part for me so I don’t really remember any of that stuff!

Nov 14, 2022 14:30:37 GMT @aaron said:

I’ll check some of my teams later!

The battling is the least interesting part for me so I don’t really remember any of that stuff!

What reason is there to play Pokemon other than to have your slave pets fight to utter and complete exhaustion over and over again?

Explore and meet people. @aaron played Sims with extra steps!

The professors and all the gym leaders are my friends!

Oh man, I can't really remember for the earlier games, although I usually go with Squirtle (if available, as it's my favourite of all the starter Pokemon) as my starter in Fire Red roms, so you know Blastoise made the team. Damn, Big Pete, now I'm tempted to fire up Let's Go Pikachu, Shield and Brilliant Diamond to see what my current teams are, hell I might dig out Pokemon Sun while I'm at it.

Based on the teams I currently have...

Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu
Pikachu, Venusaur, Mew, Blastoise, Arcanine, Charizard

Pokemon Shield
Rillaboom, Corviknight, Dreadnaw, Eternatus, Mandibuzz, Braviary

Pokemon Brilliant Diamond
Infernape, Torterra, Empoleon, Dialga, Machamp, Gengar

Big Pete, feel free to criticize my Hall of Fame teams for those games. Which Hall of Fame lineup is your favorite of the three?

Edit: I gotta dig out my 3DS charger cord, so I can charge up my system to look at my Pokemon Sun Hall of Fame team.

Good stuff Lony.

I don't think you could put together a much better Diamond team. The starters play such a pivotal role in the campaign, moreso than any other generation I can think of and the cover legendary is always going to stand out. Machamp and Gengar are pretty strong cover monsters as well. My only question is why didn't you go with any Underground exclusives? I presume the reason is because you were playing a lot with your family and wanted to enjoy the trade feature as much as possible, but the Underground is what separates this from the original and you get more access to a lot of Sinnoh Pokemon earlier that way. I have to give props for not including Staraptor and Luxray - no matter how hard I try those always tend to make my team.

The thing I'm curious about with your Generation 8 team Lony is whether Braviary received much use. I wonder if we had the same experience where we may have had a team of 6, but it could just as easily be a team of 3-4.

I haven't actually played Let's Go Pikachu but I just presume you treated it like Yellow where you pretended to be like Ash, you threw in Arcanine because he's bad-ass and Mew because you may as well get your money's worth.

This was my BD HOF team!

You only did it with three Aaron?!

Nov 15, 2022 14:40:21 GMT Big Pete said:

You only did it with three Aaron?!

I can see the other three on my MacBook but they don’t show up on my phone!

It should be:

Luxray
Staraptor
Toxicroak
Empoleon
Dialga
Houndoom

Now four images are showing on my phone. What’s going on?! 😭

Now five are showing!

This one is tough

GEN 1: Charizard/Dragonite/Zapdos/Articuno/

I think Moltres rode the bench due to Charizard.

I did not have a cable link to fully take advantage of Alakazam or Gengar or Machamp or Golem IIRC but I think in another run, I ended up rolling with some of these guys. Gengar & Alakazam are absolutely nasty.

GEN 2: Feraligatr/Tyranitar/Umbreon/Houndoom/Scizor off the top of my head. These five ran amok. I forgot the final one, maybe a grass pokemon. I think the legendary bird(I had Ho-Oh since my brother had Pokemon Silver) came after the Elite 4?

I took a break for GEN 3-5

GEN 6: Delphox/Aegislash/Pangoro/Tyrantum/Xerneas/Talonflame(IIRC) were my main 6. I forget if Xerneas comes before or after you compete for the endgame tourney.

GEN 7: Decidueye/Solgaleo/Crabominable/Lycanroc I forget the other two.

GEN 8: Inteleon/Corviknight/Coalossol/Toxicrity(BEAST, he was my right hand man)/Grimmsnarl/Zacian