The Monotype Challenge

-Started new game, named self Calen and rival Gary. Chose Charmander as my starter and named it Char.
-Grinded Char to level 10, beat Gary on route 22, collected 5 free Pokeballs from Oak and set out to catch stuff
-Caught a Spearow on route 22, named it Cpt Jack
-Caught a Caterpie in Viridian Forest, name it Lowfat
-(Start catching and boxing one of every species I come across so I can get items from Oak's assistants later on)
-Get to Pewter, grind like crazy. Train Lowfat to level 15, it evolves to Metapod then to Butterfree then learns confusion. Train Captain Jack to level 15. Train Char to level 16, it evolves to Charmeleon.
-Take on Pewter Gym. Not as hard as I expected. Char's ember two-shots Geodude and three-shots Onix despite being not very effective since their special sucks. 1/8
-Get to Mt. Moon Pokecenter. Buy the Magikarp from the salesman, name it Mage. Grind some more. Get Mage to level 10 and Lowfat and Char to level 20 before daring to venture into Mt. Moon.
-Take Mt. Moon in like five phases because I'm terrified that Lowfat will run out of confusions and I'll die horribly. Was probably overcautious, don't have much trouble.
-Get to Cerulean, time for more grinding! Captain Jack evolves to Fearow. Mage grows to level 15, learns tackle, I head to Nugget Bridge to challenge Gary for the pleasure of letting Mage take down his Abra with tackle (Char and Jack take the rest). Fight rest of the trainers on Nugget Bridge and route 25 to level Mage faster, visit Bill, then grind a bit more.
-Mage finally evolves to Gyarados! I now have all my main team members for the bulk of the game, and the super grindy stage of the game is past.
-Let Mage go on a rampage and destroy everything on route 24 with bite for a while till he reaches level 25 (which is about where the rest of the team is at this point).
-Challenge Cerulean Gym. Mage two-shots both Staryu and Starmie with bite while they do negligible damage with tackle. (Probably the easiest time I've ever had with this gym, and I usually pack a Pikachu.) 2/8
-Teach Mage bubblebeam and Char dig. Head south to Vermillion. Between Lowfat's confusion and Mage's bite and bubblebeam, the SS Anne is a breeze, and Gary doesn't give me much trouble either. Get body slam TM and teach it to Mage. Get cut HM, trade for Dux the Farfetch'd, teach it cut.
-Challenge Vermillion Gym, Char's dig OHKOs everything. I was way more afraid of this one than I needed to be. 3/8
-Head through Diglett's Tunnel, let Lowfat and Captain Jack snipe Digletts until they learn psybeam and drill peck respectively. Get flash HM and collect items in the western region, return to Cerulean and get bike, grab a Clefairy from my box (and evolve it to Clefable for the Pokedex entry since I have moonstones) and teach it Flash.
-Get teleport TM and teach it to Lowfat. Head to Rock Tunnel. Mage easily takes down nearly everything, and Char gets to help out with a few trainers' grass and normal types.
-Reach Lavender Town. Am amused to find I have exactly $66666 when I stop in at the Mart. Go challenge Gary at Pokemon Tower for easy exp, then head on to Celadon.
-Get ice beam TM and teach it to Mage.
-Celadon Gym, this should be easy. Let Lowfat and Captain Jack split the trainers between them since they need the experience the most. 4/8
-Take down the Rocket Hideout with primarily Lowfat and Char, along the way Char evolves into Charizard, yay all my team have gained their flying type. Mage takes Giovanni's team. Silph Scope acquired.

-Return to Lavender, time for some ghostbusting. Lowfat takes pretty much everything and Mage deals with the Marowak. Acquire Pokeflute.
-Head to Saffron, Captain Jack takes down the fighting dojo, I acquire Psychic TM and teach it to Lowfat, then it's time for Silph Co. Lowfat takes the poison types, Char takes the electric types, and Mage takes everything else. Find earthquake TM and teach Char. Get to the battle with Gary, and I discover that between bubblebeam, ice beam, and body slam, Mage can solo his whole team (and one or two-shot all but Blastoise). Heal up, then Mage sweeps Giovanni's team too.

-Stop in and get fly HM. Teach Captain Jack to fly. Take bike path south to Fuschia (Lowfat psybeams bikers, Mage ice beams bird keepers). Stop by the Safari Zone and get surf HM and gold teeth, teach Mage to surf. Return gold teeth to Warden, get strength HM, teach Clefable strength.
-Challenge Fuschia Gym, Mage and Char take on the gym trainers, Lowfat psychics Koga's team. ("Winning takes strategy, you can't just use brute force", a juggler tells me, right before I take down his Hypno with the brute force of Mage's body slam.) 5/8
-Realize I completely forgot to challenge the gym while I was in Saffron City, so I fly back and do that. Lowfat takes out the gym channelers' ghosts and Char takes out all the psychic types, one-shotting most and two-shotting the rest. 6/8
-With my team in the low to mid 40s, fly back to Cerulean and surf to the Power Plant. Time for an exercise in trying not to die! Mage digs and earthquakes through the random encounters and we manage to get to Zapdos unscathed. Trying not to die part two! Lowfat uses sleep powder, Zapdos falls asleep, Zapdos immediately wakes up, Lowfat uses sleep powder again, misses, somehow survives a thundershock, uses sleep powder a third time and doesn't miss. Mage switches in, takes its health down to a fraction with an ice beam or two, I chuck Ultra Balls and manage to catch it before it wakes. (Belatedly remember that I was planning to use my Master Ball here since it's the only legendary I care about catching in this run. Oh well.) Name it Zappybird, teach it thunderbolt and flash. Teach Mage strength, then permanently box Clefable; no more off-type HM slaves.
-Zappybird tears through the marathon of water and flying types that is routes 12-15. Char helps out where convenient, and finally learns flamethrower. Upon arriving back in Fuschia, we surf south and Zappybird takes on all the trainers on the water routes up to the west entrance to Seafoam Islands. Then we fly to Pallet Town and do the same up to the east entrance before stopping by Cinnabar Island for real.
-Mage gets us safely through Pokemon Mansion to retrieve the Secret Key. Char and Lowfat get in some training there too.
-Mage bubblebeams and surfs through Cinnabar Gym, OHKOing everyone. 7/8
-Surf to Seafoam, Zappybird takes down everything. Fly to Viridian.

-Challenge Viridian Gym, Lowfat and Mage split the gym trainers, then Mage sweeps Giovanni's team. All but Nidoqueen are OHKOd by bubblebeam, I don't even need to use surf. 8/8
-Set out on route 22, meet Gary again, Mage solos his team again because I can, this time all but Blastoise are OHKOs. (Blastoise takes three strengths, and he uses skull bash so he doesn't even do me any damage on one of those turns.)
-Mage takes all the wild encounters on Victory Road while Zappybird, Char, and Lowfat split the trainer battles. Arrive at Indigo Plateau, heal up from the journey, and head on to challenge the Elite Four.
-Lorelei is easy. Zappybird's thunderbolt one-shots all her water/ice types and Slowbro. Char's flamethrower two-shots Jynx.
-Bruno is easy too. Mage's surf takes his rock/ground types and Lowfat's psychic fells the fighters. All OHKOs.
-Agatha is harder. Gengar takes two psychics to fell, and gets a confuse ray in on Lowfat in between. I switch Lowfat out afterwards to dispel the confusion, and let Mage ice beam Golbat. Lowfat takes Haunter with another two psychics, Char takes Arbok with two earthquakes (and gets paralyzed in between), then when she brings out her second Gengar I accidentally bring out Mage instead of Lowfat. It takes two ice beams and a surf (and Mage has to deal with confusion and tank a few night shades in the meantime), but Gengar goes down. I heal Mage and Lowfat with potions and Char with a full heal before continuing to the next room.
-Lance is easy, Gyarados goes down to Zappybird's thunderbolt, Aerodactyl to Mage's surf, and both Dragonairs and Dragonite to Mage's ice beam, all OHKOs.
-Gary's Pidgeot gets OHKOd by Zappybird's thunderbolt, Alakazam falls to two Slashes from Char, Rhydon and Arcanine both one-shot by Mage's surf, Exeggutor two-shot by Char's flamethrower, and Blastoise OHKOd by Zappybird's thunderbolt. I become the Kanto Champion, on my first try, with minimal use of healing items and only between members.

Zappybird the Zapdos, level 61
Thundershock, drill peck, flash, thunderbolt

Lowfat the Butterfree, level 59
Teleport, sleep powder, psychic, psybeam

Char the Charizard, level 56
Earthquake, dig, flamethrower, slash

Mage the Gyarados, level 58
Bubblebeam, strength, ice beam, surf

Cpt Jack the Fearow, level 41
Peck, drill peck, fly, swift

Dux the Farfetch'd, level 16 (cut slave)

-Was feeling pretty uninspired while naming these guys so went for a few cheap jokes. I have no regrets.
-Was reminded of all the things I love and hate about first gen game mechanics. Had fun this time, probably not going to play one of the originals again for a while though.
-Gyarados is a beast in first gen and I love it so much. (It's a pity that the special split nerfed it so hard.) Mage was probably MVP of this game, though my team was balanced enough and supported each other so well that that's a hard call to make.
-I was impressed by how versatile Charizard was. His ability to learn strong ground attacks was crucial to covering the team's weakness to electricity (and having a second team member strong against poison was no bad thing either).
-I'd kind of planned Mage to be my anti-psychic weapon, given its amazing physical attack stat. But I realized sometime around Koga's gym that Char was actually better, given its better speed, still very respectable attack, and access to slash's near guaranteed crit.
-Lowfat amazed me with how competent it was as a pseudo-psychic. By the Elite Four it certainly showed that its stats weren't as good as the others, but it did just fine despite that. For a mon I'd previously dismissed as not worth it past the early game, it really surprised and impressed me with how good a special attacker it was and how well it kept up with the rest.
-I don't generally like to use legendaries, but Zappybird was pretty awesome to have on my team.
-Training Captain Jack was probably a mistake. It didn't have any strengths that the others didn't duplicate (Char was at least as good against grass and bugs, Lowfat was better against fighting types, and even its immunity to ghost-type attacks wasn't as useful as Lowfat's possession of attacks super-effective against Kanto's ghosts), I had to keep grinding it throughout the game more than anyone else, and probably ended up taking exp someone else could have used more than really contributing to the team's viability. Once I got Zappybird, who also had its one really good move of drill peck, poor Jack kind of ended up being just a fly slave, which Dux could have done just as well.
-On whole, these guys were a great team and I loved them all.

RESH starts journey, chooses Mudkip. Named Mudkip KIPPER
Catches Wurmple and Cascoon, named MIKE and DUSTER. MIKE evolves twice, ending at Beautifly.
HOLY CRAP A SHINY POOCHYENA, named GOLDIE. Too bad this is a Bug-type monotype.