What criteria do you have when selecting your Pokémon for your playthrough?

[moon]

"would Ash use this?"

 

[SawkTheWarrior]

It must meet this criteria for me:
- Has no redundant typing with anone already on my team
- Fully evolved has 470< base stats.
-Neutral or beneficial nature (no modest on physical attacker)

 

[Pyrax]

Availability is my sole criteria. Not a fan of when a Pokemon I like is found so late in the game - around the 6th gym (or 3rd island in Gen VII) is my cutoff point. If it's close to the end of the game I don't see much point in using a specific mon since I'd be hours away from the end credits.

 

[CoolKid575]

The only critera I have is that I only use Pokemon from that games native region on my teams. So if I'm playing Diamond my team is going to made of all Sinnoh Pokemon. When I played Violet I used only Paldean Pokemon. I do this because I enjoy checking the different Pokemon of each region rather then just picking my favorites over and over.

 

[Janp]

Speaking of non-challenge runs, I always make team out of new Pokémon only. I pick based on their design and if they seem like fun to play with. But I'm not distant to dropping a Pokémon during the run if I feel I'm not using it enough or it doesn't fit rest of my team. I'm also trying to use Pokémon I haven't used before.

 

[Amore]

I generally try to only use Pokémon introduced in the game I'm playing - its why I prefer BW to their sequels, which is a minority opinion I know, as the sequels give you lots of older Pokémon in the early stages. I'll make an exemption sometimes, for example I used the event Pikachu in my current Violet save, and when I finally play XY I'll have to use some older 'mon to get Megas (but probably not the Kanto starters, given I have all of them in Gigantamax form in Sword). As a kid I always used the box legendary, then went through a phase of not bothering. Now, particularly as there are story reasons in the likes of BW and SwSh, I will use them the first time out. I'll usually avoid type overlaps, but I don't mind if I lack coverage. For example my most recent Platinum and Shining Pearl teams didn't really have much to get past Lucian, just one or two super-effective moves:

Platinum
- Empoleon
- Staraptor
- Luxray (Crunch)
- Roserade
- Lucario
- Rhyperior

Shining Pearl
- Torterra
- Infernape (U-turn)
- Empoleon
- Go Shiny Lopunny
- Garchomp (Crunch)
- Go Shiny Magnezone

Before I vastly expanded my game and console collection, I also made an exemption to my rules for evolution-only Gen I-III Pokémon, as I had no way of trading between my LeafGreen and Emerald files. So my last HeartGold team featured Gengar and Machamp. Then also a Vileplume as I found a shiny, which back then is extremely rare and in fact was only my 2nd ever!

I found myself more and more going beyond the 6 'mon limit in order to enjoy the weaker gimmicky 'mons. For example last time I played Emerald I wanted Salamence and Milotic on my team, both of which due to location and needing the Blend Master respectively weren't available until late on / post-game. So I also had Wynaut and Castform in my team for the first run through - Wynaut lost her place once I could breed a nice Bagon, and Castform made it to the Hall of Fame (messing with the weather really hurts the Ice and Water teams at the end) before giving way to Milotic. Notch-Eared Pichu usually gets some time on the team in HGSS too (despite being lv. 30 its not OP against Whitney due to being a Pichu). Which is good, because I can get quite stuck in my ways but feel that the newer games definitely intend you to have one long save using lots of different 'mons rather than constant replays. So in my Violet save I've already dropped Oinkologne in favour of my shiny Dreepy (again, breaking another of my rules).

On previous occasions I've also just copied the manga characters' teams, which can make for a variable difficulty level - Red and Blue have strong teams that power through Kanto, whilst Silver (Sneasel / Kingdra / Murkrow / Feraligatr / Red Gyarados / Ursaring) could likewise obliterate Johto but Gold's team is far weaker (Aipom / Typhlosion / Politoed / Sudowoodo / Togepi / Mantine / Pichu). With the latter I didn't even bother with Mantine, so need a lot of revives to keep Sudowoodo in the game against Lance!

 

[Harmonie]

Design is the most important factor. With that said, if a good-designed Pokemon is weak or of a type I don't use, I won't end up using it even though I love the design.

I try to not double up on types. It was very hard in S/V, with a number of Fire Pokemon I wanted to use. In this case, if one of them is from the new generation and the other one is one I have used in a past playthrough, I will go with the newer one, for a fresh experience.

 

[Alex_Among_Foxes]

For most of the older Gen games it was whatever I liked the look of more than anything.

However for the most recent games I played (Shield & Violet) I did things quite differently.

In Shield, I wanted to use a team of pokemon I'd either never used before or wanted to use but could only be found late game. (in older Gens)
My final team actually accomplished that pretty well with only 1 pokemon being a 'repeat'.
(though I can hardly call it that given the only other time I used it was in my first playthrough of Heart Gold, which was the second pokemon game
I ever played BTW)

For Violet, I went with whatever pokemon most resembled characters in a story I'm working on. Some are repeats, some are not.

 

[Sweet Serenity]

I'm surprised that I never answered my own question yet. Whenever I play Pokémon, I mostly select my Pokémon based upon my favorites. For instance, Starmie has always been my all-time favorite Pokémon. Thus, I add Starmie to my team in every game if possible. However, when building my team, I always ensure that I have one Water, Electric, and Fighting-type Pokémon if possible. I select Water-type Pokémon because it is my favorite type and in past games, it was a necessity for the HM Surf. I always select an Electric-type Pokémon because Water-type Pokémon are extremely common and Fighting-type Pokémon are important to me because they can take down the common Normal-type Pokémon and can cover many different types without having too many weaknesses. Other than that, I try to keep a powerful Dragon-type Pokémon on my team, along with a Pokémon that can learn False Swipe to help me catch Pokémon easier. Through it all, I prefer to play with a primary and secondary team that I rotate in between gyms.