So I'm doing my Water-type only run. Additional rules being 4th gen only and, not to overlevel the following gymleaders ace and match their squad in numbers.
Currently my squad is the following, all at level 29:
- Antarc the Prinplup
- Hudson II the Bibarel*
- Yakuta the Floatzel
- Amazón the Finneon
- Galera the East Sea Shellos
My squad is named after a river, bay, sea or ocean the species the pokémon in based on can be found on earth, limiting the nicknames to 6 characters.
- Pinguins on Antarctica and the surrounding ocean
- Beavers were hunted and traded at the Hudson Bay-area.
- I consider Buizel a sea otter, which can be found all along the North American Western Coast, so I picked a bay where a fort was built by the Russians where they traded sea otter pelts (Yakutat Bay).
- Neon Tetra's can be found in the amazon
- The type of sea slug Shellos is based on can be found in the waters of Puerto Galera (Philippines)(note the Eastern Hemisphere).
At this point, I only need to catch Mantyke.
Currently, I was debating which gym leader is best to beat first: Wake or Maylene. I've decided on Wake. As a precaution for overlevelling for Maylene, my squad is at level29, one level below cap, but I'm certain that with good strategy I'm able to beat his team. Then the cap will increase to 30 and that gives me Gastrodon for Maylene.
Afterwards it will be pretty straightforward. My Bibarel is a coremember and it does massive damage whenever it gets to set up. I'm constantly changing its coverage moves to fit the battle (ShockWave for Wake, Pluck for Gardenia, Maylene), while sometimes I decide to just to Rollout after my Prinplup sets up a Charm. The idea is to add Bulldoze for Byron and Volkner.
*I used a Simple Bidoof initially called Hudson, but once I got to to the Grand Underground I realized that those pokémon could have Egg Moves, so I caught another Simple Bidoof, but one that had Quick Attack so it can have a niche of being a SimpleSwordsDanceQuickAttacker. Hence why I tagged it as the 'II' here.