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Paldea can safely ignore the paradoxes just fine; you have mroe than enough of each type you can pretty much build two teams for each one. Some of them even three!
e: Though I'll say probably the easiest ruling is that in Gen 7, the only time they're in a pokedex, the UB were internally considered Legendary. That internal consideration was seemingly removed in Gen 9, but obviously Gen 7 is not 9
Paradoxes (the box legends aside) arent considered legendary, internally or otherwise, but obviously have a bit more going on with them so if Quinten really wanted to discard them from a Paldea consideration I dont think there'd be much pushback...but as said there's not a single type that is "harsh" in Paldea so its kind of irrelveant
A GSC Ghost team is a tough choice for a limited Dex challenge, but it's also one easy to do better than Game Freak did. All you have to do is use Misdreavus. (Even RBY Ghost would be easier to do better than Game Freak. I didn't get why there was a Poison Gym Leader and a Poison Elite Four in Fire Red because I didn't realize they were supposed to be a Ghost specilist.)
For Pokemon to use other than Ghost Types, there's a pretty limited range of options. The only Pokemon that can learn Shadow Ball are Normal, Psychic, Dark and Ghost Types as well and Nidoking, Nidoqueen, and Eevee's evolutions. (Sorry Crobat, you don't learn it until Gen 3. You'd be on the team if you did.) The other Ghost TM, Nightmare, doesn't add much other than Lapras for some reason and a very strong temptation to use the Leppa Berry Noctowl I used for Restricted Sparring Flying team for an all out team and Confuse Ray has a ton of oddballs that don't work thematically, like Magmar and Lapras. Maybe I should've used Lapras...
Between how shallow movepools are in Gen 2 the the Physical/Special Split not happening until Gen 4, I'm going to have two movesets. One for an in game Gen 2 trainer, and one going all out in a much later game.
I immediately decided to use Haunter for a third Ghost because it's pretty good for an NFE. After looking closer, I realized its stats are actually pretty bad for what I want. The Attack is too bad for Physical Shadow Ball and the bulk to is bad for letting Status Moves do the work. Hypnosis helps get around the bulk because bulk doesn't matter when the opponent is doing nothing and Curse helps get around the low power with 1/4 HP per turn. I'm not sure if Night Shade is better than Shadow Ball for Gen 2 Haunter, but at least it doesn't use its Base 55 Attack. Either Curse pulls its weight enough for Haunter to be threatening or the player switches to play around Curse and Haunter KOs itself to bring in a less exploitable Pokemon. I made this moveset in mind hoping for it to be effective, but I guess happening to KO itself if it's sucking could be seen as a bonus. I was going to use Giga Drain as coverage to help heal from using Curse, but between using Hypnosis and this moveset failing horribly against players that switch either way, I figured I'd go with the more powerful Dream Eater.
Misdreavus
-Perish Song
-Mean Look
-Pain Split
-Endure
Behold the bulkiest user of the classic Perish Trap in its debut Generation. (Whirlpool users don't count because it lasted 2-5 turns instead of 4-5 before Gen 5.) There's 4 Status Moves because what's the point in damage when you have a guarantee KO Move? Also, it was only a matter of time until I did a Pokemon with Status Moves Only. :P The AI switches when the Perish Count is at 1, (Not sure if that was true in Gen 2. I know it's not true in Gen 8's Restricted Sparring and stopped happening in Gen 9.) so you can expect them to pull this off like a real player would. It might make the mistake of using Perish Song first against an opponent that sees it coming and switches before you use Mean Look though... Pain Split is for healing because I can't resist going all out even when restricting myself.
For the last move, Protect was the most evil choice for stalling the countdown. I considered Double Team, Flash, or Confuse Ray as ironicly lesser evils that probably give more turns than Protect does. Looking though the movepool again, I noticed Endure as a nice compromise between being evil and a giving a fighting chance. The thing that made me go with Endure instead of having a Ghost move with Confuse Ray was it gets to show off Pain Split's effect even better. (Now that I think about it, why aren't Pain Split and Mean Look Ghost moves?
Aside from the Ghost Type regional variant reasoning, Cubone is the only Pokemon other than Gastly you can find in the Pokmeon Tower in Gen 1 and is very well known for its tragic dead mother backstory that's not just in the Pokedex, but in part of Gen 1's plot. Even if you don't know about that, bones are spooky. It's such a thematically perfect fit that I'll gladly ignore that it doesn't learn any Ghost moves. (Curse was ??? Type until Gen 5.)
Even though Curse isn't a Ghost move, (yet) it's still a good setup move. This wasn't planned at first, but having a Ghost and non-Ghost both use it gets to show off the two different effects of Curse. Bonemerang wasn't because spooky bones... mostly... It's just hard to say no to signature moves. It's just something I'd make NPCs show off. Rock Slide is dipping into Egg Moves, but Lance dips into Illegal Moves. (Barrier Dragonite in Gen 1 and Rock Slide Aerodactyl in Gen 2.) I'd say this is fair. The last move came down to Dynamic Punch, Iron Tail, Hyper Beam, or a Special Attack... I like Accuracy and being able to do stuff two turns in a row. Good thing Bonemerang and Rock Slide have perfect coverage in Gen 2 so the last move being filler doesn't matter! I went with Fire Punch because of the Ghost Marowak being part Fire and so I can copy/paste this moveset for the all out version of the team.
Houndoom
-Shadow Ball
-Flamethrower
-Spite
-Double Team
Being a hellhound with cries that have been mistaken for the Grim Reaper's makes Houndoom hard to pass up, especially when it's one of the few Pokemon that gets a Ghost move other than Confuse Ray or a TM. Not going to lie though, using two Pokemon with spooky bones makes it feel like I'm trying too hard. Offensively, Dark and Ghost are almost the same so I didn't bother with Crunch and went with Flamethrower as the only STAB. Spite is another Egg move and is a Ghost move with a unique effect. (at least until Gen 8's Eerie Spell drains PP too.) When I use Double Team I feel dirty and like I should apologize, but I have a reason other than earlier Gen games having bosses that love to use Double Team. Moves missing gives Spite more chances to drain PP.
-Hypnosis
-Nightmare
-Sky Attack
-Steel Wing
My excuse, other than owls are creatures of the night, is in Gen 2 Ghost moves other than Shadow Ball are all either moves with an interesting range of effects or Lick. I'd say Nightmare's massive drain to sleeping opponents is interesting, but I already pretty much admitted the real reason. Sky Attack is a Crystal only Egg Move, but Noctowl really needs the power with its Base 50 Attack and, as I said before, Lance uses illegal moves so it might be okay if this is still in GS. I didn't want Dream Eater again because of not wanting more than one move that's useless without sleep, so I went with Steel Wing instead
After Hypnosis and Double Team fail to win, Gengar uses it's raw power to take down foes without relying on luck. Even if it's using your worse Attack stat, you have to have STAB on a 4 Attacks moveset. I considered Sludge Bomb too, but it turns out Gengar doesn't learn that until Gen 3. Psychic is the strongest 100 Accuracy move Gengar can know, Giga Drain hits the Ground types that threaten Gengar, and Fire Punch hits the Steel types that would wall it. (Steel resisted Ghost and Dark before Gen 6.)
Haunter @ Black Sludge
-Hex
-Sludge Bomb
-Hypnosis
-Substitute
This Haunter isn't beaten by switching between two Pokemon and can easily punish you if you try that. I went with Hypnosis again for the lack of bulk and Substitute to buy a turn to use Hypnosis again after they wake up or to take a hit before using Hypnosis again if the player switches. Black Sludge helps with Substitute's HP loss and Haunter's power isn't bad with its two Special Attacks.
Edit: Replaced Shadow Ball with Hex because of using Hypnosis. Besides the higher power against sleeping opponents, I mostly just like showing off more different moves.
Misdreavus @ Eviolite
-Perish Song
-Mean Look
-Pain Split
-Protect
This is the same Perish Trap set with Protect over Endure and holding Eviolite. Some things never change. I'd say Perish Trap is one of them, but now you can use Whirlpool or Fire Spin now instead of Mean Look.
Marowak @ Thick Club
-Curse
-Bonemerang
-Rock Slide
-Fire Punch
Another if it ain't broke don't fix it moveset. The Thick Club feels broken though. :P I'd teach a Ghost Move, but only Alolan Marowak learns that. At least Fire Punch is a move that'd be STAB for the Ghost Marowak.
Houndoom @ Focus Sash
Flash Fire
-Destiny Bond
-Taunt
-Overheat
-Foul Play
With Destiny Bond as the Ghost move this time, Taunt is used as a less cheap way than Double Team to enable the chosen Ghost move. Overheat is to get a devastating hit off before going down and Foul Play for the alternative STAB is because it's not weakened by Overheat and I'm also a sucker for interesting moves. The Focus Sash is so Houndoom can use at least one move before going down, preferably Destiny Bond or Overheat.
Your Pokemon will KO someone. Probably themself with Struggle. Have fun.
I have no excuse for not resisting. This adds nothing to the Ghost theme unless you want to say this is the Pokemon version of Mr. Bone's Wild Ride.
Gengar @ Life Orb
Cursed Body
-Shadow Ball
-Sludge Wave
-Giga Drain
-Dazzling Gleam
An all out attacker again, this time with two Special STAB moves. I didn't think almost every one would be doing the same thing with almost the same moves in both versions of the team, but if it works it works. The buffed Giga Drain is for Ground Types again and Steel doesn't resist Ghost anymore so Dazzling Gleam is used for Dark types. I went with a Life Orb as Gengar's power boosting item because of Giga Drain's healing. It's a bit mean to give the player hope that you can stall until the Life Orb does the job for you then let them see Giga Drain heal everything Gengar had lost. >:D
I would've gone with a Hex + Hypnosis Mega Gengar to use Shadow Tag if I didn't think it was against the rules. On one hand, Megas are a form change. On the other hand, it's a form that didn't exist in GSC.
Side notes about Pokemon I didn't use:
Ninetales is amazing thematically because of the Pokedex entries about causing a thousand year curse for daring to grab its tails, (With how fluffy Ninetales looks and the sleeping animation in Legends: Arceus where its eight tails that aren't being used as a pillow are covering it, I'm sure that happens a lot.) but I used Noctowl instead because Ninetales doesn't make that much sense if don't know about that, which it's pretty likely considering the number of people that only read the Pokedex entries of Pokemon they catch and don't know eastern mythology.
Hypno was the other Pokemon I considered for Nightmare, but Psychic has the same weaknesses Ghost does. Clefable and Stantler could've worked too, but I'm not a fan of the Gengar is Clefable's shadow theory and I didn't consider Stantler because I forgot about its Pokedex entry. I'm just mentioning Stantler because I think it's interesting so many people went with it.
Typhlosion's Regional Variant is a Ghost Type and Original Typhlosion gained Shadow Ball in Gen 9. That wasn't enough to make me consider it, but I'm just mentioning it to ask if anyone else did.
I didn't have any major team theme plans other than spooky Ghosts going in, but I think I ended up with a theme of annoying movesets other than the pure offense of Marowak and Gengar. I'm hoping the next type and Dex will be good for even more Status Moves. Being cruel with stall is fun! :D
(Edit: Typos/spelling mistakes and changed Haunter's Shadow Ball to Hex on the all out team because of knowing Hypnosis)
Wow look at this punctual submission for the round
I've sorta glanced at the thread but I'm not gonna check if I'm outright copying someone's team until after I post, at which point I guess I'll edit lol. From the glancing at the thread I think this has been a very fruitful round, Johto actually has a number of very good fits. For that reason, I probably won't theme the team that much? I have half a mind to do a Ruins of Alph theme including Xatu and Unown, but I think Psychic-Type has too much overlap here and it needs to be handled with care.
The actual ghosts. I have found the people saying "not using Misdreavus because that's the Johto way" entertaining, but the only thing better than Johto is being better than Johto :')
It's interesting right, because things that I would consider pretty ghostly such as illusion tend to get tied to Psychic-Type in-game instead. There's a danger with a round like this where you just make a Psychic-Type team with 2 ghosts attached. Noctowl, Stantler, Xatu, Hypno, and Golduck are all great Ghost-Type fits IMO, but in a hypothetical world where Xatu and Hypno are the only available Psychic-Type Pokémon this is the team you'd give for Psychic-Type instead.
Ninetales, on the other hand, toes the line a little better. While it could certainly be included on a Psychic-Type team, that's partly just because the kitsune is such a notable mythical being and has so much source material attached. Ninetails itself is a departure from a "vanilla" kitsune since fire element is a bit of a footnote in kitsune lore. A "vanilla" kitsune would most likely be a Ghost/Fairy type nowadays (and I would like to see this happen), and on top of Ninetales' sizeable Ghost-Type movepool I think it fits well here.
I only want one Dark-Type on the team to once again avoid too much attention being dragged away from the Ghost-Type, and my choice is Murkrow. In part it's due to its status as a Dark-Type being somewhat attributed to it being considered a bad omen, as " Feared and loathed by many, it is believed to bring misfortune to all those who see it at night. " is its Gold entry so it's had this from the start. While this is a repeated Dark-Type trait (e.g. Absol), in real world applications this kind of omenship is tied more with spirits and therefore is quite ghostly. It also fits the trickster theme we have going so far, as it loots shiny objects from humans (and, of course, later gets Prankster as an ability).
Though I wanted to be sure not to make a Psychic-Type team, I'm allowing myself Hypno partly because I have a trickster theme going on, and also because I think it's a fairly undeniable inclusion. Especially with the new Ghost-Type move Nightmare in this gen, Hypno's association with sleep, and being one of the more malevolent mons in the game by the second gen, it's hard not to bring it in.
Ultimately, I think Marowak is another unavoidable inclusion. It was already the Actual Ghost in Kanto, and especially bearing in mind that we're creating a team for the second games ever, that is the only source material to use in situ. There's a slight tonal shift here wherein Marowak has a much sadder relationship with death and the afterlife than the other Pokémon who are more trickstery, and so I am going to use Marowak as my ace. The tonal shift makes more sense at the end, some kind of in-battle dialogue like "we were having fun so far but now it's time to destroy you", I think it works well.
In the end while I think the illusion tie-in is good, the only real illusionist I included was Ninetales. Stantler, Noctowl, and the like are great picks, but I like the route I have taken wherein the Pokémon included more directly trick and mess with humans rather than just their surroundings in self-defence, as the kitsune is also a direct trickster to humans. It feels more fitting to Misdreavus and Gengar, as they very directly mess with humans themselves.
...Yeah, this is my first time here and there's already not much to work with. You have 4 instant picks and not a lot of room to make 2 more Pokemon fit, but I somehow managed to do it. This is one of the more generic teams, but you'd be surprised to see that I picked Crobat instead of something like Ninetales or Noctowl. I went with the more spooky and scary vibe for this gym and I think Crobat fits that pretty well (hehehe, caves full of Zubats...) Misdreavus, Haunter, and Gengar are the actual Ghost-types in Gen 2, Marowak was a ghost in Kanto at the Lavender Tower, Hypno's got a creepypasta written about it, and Crobat fits the vibe. Nothing else much to say, but feel free to bonk me in the head for using Crobat instead of anything else. I don't wanna be generic here.
Some REALLY out-there picks for the wildcards this time around. Meganium, Ampharos, Scyther, Dragonair, Tangela, and Togetic were all definite surprises.
Amusing that we got Kabutops and Aerodactyl but not Omastar, and it's funny to not see Muk at all, since most of the other Poison mainstays made it in and it's gotten a fair few Ghost-type moves in later generations (though admittedly not in Gen II). The same goes for Girafarig.
I was expecting to see a lot of Marowak and I was right: even without an Alolan form, it's got distinctly gloomy Ghost-y vibes, being a literal graveyard mon. Ninetales I expected, but it being the next-most common choice over all the others was a slight surprise; Crobat of all things coming after that was also very unexpected. Did at least correctly anticipate that at least a couple of people would leave Misdreavus out; Haunter got a good showing here too, which is nice for it. No Gastly, though!
Things I'm astonished were not more popular choices: Murkrow, Houndoom, Umbreon, Xatu, Ariados, Weezing, Alakazam, Hypno, Stantler, Noctowl, and (genuinely) Unown. Stantler in particular was one I was expecting to see more of, since it'd have been one of my go-to picks here. But it's always good to see other thought processes.
Results link is below, though it won't be viewable until the vote closes. You have until June 21st 9PM GMT to make your choice!
The big thing for me is...no fossils? We had my Kabutops and one Aerodactyl. I'd have expected a LOT of Aerodactyl at a minimum, given that it's a flying skeleton.
Otherwise, most of the mons make sense. It's nice to see Haunter getting some love. Ninetails being so high is a bit odd to me, I'd expect a Dark or Poison to take that spot, but it fits. A lot of the one-offs are fairly random in this list, but justified by the specific team(my Scyther says hello). But all the 2s-4s are things that I would 100% buy Morty rocking in a PWT setup.
The big thing for me is...no fossils? We had my Kabutops and one Aerodactyl. I'd have expected a LOT of Aerodactyl at a minimum, given that it's a flying skeleton.
Otherwise, most of the mons make sense. It's nice to see Haunter getting some love. Ninetails being so high is a bit odd to me, I'd expect a Dark or Poison to take that spot, but it fits. A lot of the one-offs are fairly random in this list, but justified by the specific team(my Scyther says hello). But all the 2s-4s are things that I would 100% buy Morty rocking in a PWT setup.
Ah speaking of Morty, I forgot about Stadium 2. How'd he resolve this situation?
Round 1: Gengar, Ariados, Sudowoodo, Noctowl, Girafarig, Marowak
this mfer really didn't pick up Misdreavus again. Sudowoodo...Doipy went about it in a different direction I think might be here as a roundabout reference to petrified wood; kind of similar to what yo uwanted out people picking fossils.
Round 2: Gengar, Mantine, Granbull, Misdreavus, Exeggutor, Lapras
....well at least he picked up Misdreavus.
Stadium's rosters are truly the poster childred of this thread.
meanwhile round 2 had Scyther, Heracross, Pinsir, Sudowoodo (sure...trees and bugs; like weepinbell being a honeypot) and........... Quagsire and raticate
Which yeah we can probably sit here and try & work that out but those really are just random picks at face value. Stands in stark contrast to round 2 Falkner who picked up let me check my notes here Zapdos. Disqualified from the thread
I'd still recommend reading the individual posts to see how people arrived at these conclusions, but this is easy for copying into notepad and rearranging the lines as needed. Current order is of course random.
WOOT! After Gengar & Misdreavus I'm the only one who picked my other picks!
"He does know that probably means he's losing, right?"
"Sometimes we gotta take what little victories that we can muster"
That said, I'm not liking the voting method. I like it when we were just voting for 5. Now if you felt there was enough people that you wanted to extend it to like 8 alright, but I feel having a position for every single person is a bit overkill (especially when a lot of teams are similar).
Heck, if we have this many people we may want to consider another voting method, one which possible have multiple rounds of voting, because so many teams are similar unless you match them up against each other (like in a knock-out tournament) it may discourage people from voting on some which, while solid, can't stand out.
Anyway, after looking through all the teams multiple times, I decided on my top 6.
The state of Morty not having a Misdreavus in Round 1 may be partly due to the fact that the Stadium 2 rosters tried not to overlap any pokemon used in the entire gym, so in their case they had the job of trying to come up with 18 unique picks to spread across the whole ghost gym.
As the first opponent, Medium Holly has a lot of weaker picks including Ditto and Unown which I thought was novel, and Sage Ty actually ends up with a pretty interesting selection of a Mean Look gimmick team across both rounds, though the strategy changes focus from passive damage to general hax.
Also my attempt was more in light of working backwards to rationalize some of these picks, but if I were to replace Celebi I would probably pick Delibird to represent the spirit of Christmas and the fact that Present's effect is like a potential trick or treat to represent Halloween.
WOOT! After Gengar & Misdreavus I'm the only one who picked my other picks!
"He does know that probably means he's losing, right?"
"Sometimes we gotta take what little victories that we can muster"
That said, I'm not liking the voting method. I like it when we were just voting for 5. Now if you felt there was enough people that you wanted to extend it to like 8 alright, but I feel having a position for every single person is a bit overkill (especially when a lot of teams are similar).
Heck, if we have this many people we may want to consider another voting method, one which possible have multiple rounds of voting, because so many teams are similar unless you match them up against each other (like in a knock-out tournament) it may discourage people from voting on some which, while solid, can't stand out.
Anyway, after looking through all the teams multiple times, I decided on my top 6.
How about people nominate teams and give their reasoning, then the X most-nominated are voted on? Would let people shout out the teams they liked and generate more discussion.
I'd still recommend reading the individual posts to see how people arrived at these conclusions, but this is easy for copying into notepad and rearranging the lines as needed. Current order is of course random.
That said, I'm not liking the voting method. Iike it when we were just voting for 5. Now if you felt there was enough people that you wanted to extend it to like 8 alright, but I feel having a position for every single person is a bit overkill (especially when a lot of teams are similar).
How about people nominate teams and give their reasoning, then the X most-nominated are voted on? Would let people shout out the teams they liked and generate more discussion.
I figured we'd see Primeape a little more often, considering what it evolves into now.
Marowak and Ninetales don't surprise me at all; they were pretty much my default choices after Gengar and Misdreavus. The former includes a literal ghost of one in Pokemon Tower, a Ghost-type Alolan form, and the whole theme of its line is that it wears the skull of its dead mother. And the latter's first ever Pokedex entry talks about it putting thousand-year curses on people, plus it would go on to be able to learn a variety of Ghost-type moves in later generations (e.g. Grudge, Hex, Ominous Wind).
P.S. I'd also suggest compiling all of the teams into one post so the rest of us don't have to sift through 3 pages in order to decide how to rank each entry.
Feel free. I promise I'm not trying to make more work for you, I know running something like this can take a lot.
Also, I'm shocked that no one has duplicated a team yet, just through random chance. I know there's a lot of options, but 19 is also a lot of teams, and some of the slots are pretty common.
Gengar @ Spell Tag
- Shadow Ball
- Thunder Punch
- Ice Punch
- Destiny Bond
And the strongest STAB Ghost move goes to a mon with base 65 attack. Anyway, Gengar as the archetypal Ghost mon edges out Marowak as representing the Pokemon Tower in Kanto (it doesn't have particularly spooky locations in Johto).
Misdreavus
- Pain Split
- Shadow Ball
- Thief
- Psychic
Almost didn't make the cut, Mt. Silver doesn't seem too crazy and it would have been a great meme. Unfortunately, said meme would go against the requirement of ignoring any other trainers of the same type within a gen so I erred on the side of caution. This was also the last mon I was writing the moveset for, and I ran out of item ideas. Having the slot filled does lead to an interesting story note, which I'll detail at the end. Now Flutter Mane, that could work really well.
Porygon2 @ Leftovers
- Thunder Wave
- Double-Edge
- Ice Beam
- Recover
This was actually my first thought for an off-Ghost mon. Edgy headcanon about being executed for a crime they didn't commit aside, it has an obvious comparison with an actual Ghost in Rotom, could become Ghost through its type-changing moves, and was produced by the same organization as the device for discerning ghosts. I think it works decently as the character's first mon before they visited all the sites and picked up some true Ghosts. This is also the start of a minor mechanical base for Ghost's love of status, with it and the following mons each having a reliable way of inflicting status.
Parasect @ Miracle Seed
- Spore
- Giga Drain
- Pursuit
- Growth
I was considering Clefable for Mt. Moon given the supernatural aspects and speculation about a relationship to Gengar, but then I remembered that this location also has straight-up zombies. This is the sleep user of the status trifecta.
Weezing @ Miracle Berry
- Toxic
- Sludge Bomb
- Explosion
- Fire Blast
The poison user and representative for Burned Tower.
Aerodactyl @ Hard Stone
- Earthquake
- Ancient Power
- Wing Attack
- Steel Wing
I'm trying to have a full four moves described, so the most obvious mon for Ruins of Alph is out. I ultimately decided on one of the mons depicted in the tile puzzles and Aerodactyl specifically for also having a skeleton sprite in gen 1.
You might have noticed that there's a spooky location missing: the Pokemon Mansion on Cinnabar. I've gone with the idea the the character was unable to investigate there before it was destroyed in the eruption between gens 1 and 2, or in a way, between gen 2 and FRLG. A Fire type only really felt complete if I could slot Burn into the minor focus on status and Will-O-Wisp isn't around yet. Otherwise, it would have been on the team in place of Misdreavus.
After consultation with Ironmage, we have a new question...
You are a Steel-type specialist in LGPE Kanto. How do you best represent your chosen type?
Should anyone need it, Kanto dex listing is here, with a section including all of the Alolan Forms available in LGPE. A gentle reminder that Meltan and Melmetal are not valid choices for this round so please do not include them on your rosters. Any team with either Meltan or Melmetal will be disqualified.
You have until June 26th, 9PM GMT to make your case!
Thanks to those who've given feedback on the process so far; correspondingly, we'll do things a bit differently this time around. Going to steadily add teams to this post to give people an easy reference. I'm going to find a new voting widget which will allow voters to only select a fixed number of top choices (so if we end up in another situation where we have ~20 teams, you can vote for the 5 you like and disregard the rest).
Magneton - Gotta have this guy, the OG retyping and also the only native steel type in the entire dex. FRLG players know the pain.
Alolan Sandslash & Alolan Dugtrio - We could pass on these guys, but I don't want to pass on the flavor, especially since the typings are interesting. And half the reason we probably got the regoinal forms here was for the sake of type diversity anyway...take what you can get.
As for what's next...
Alolan Golem - Metal Filings & electromagnetism tend to go hand in hand with Steel Types (magnet pull, probopass, the magneton line, etc) so I think it fits pretty nicely. I strongly expect a few electric types to make it on these teams
Cloyster - Let's go at this from a different angle. Steel types are defined by their high defense stats; Cloyster's shell is nearly indestructable even Kingler required like a dozen direct bashes to get in a bomb can't break it. It not only has the highest Defense stat of Gen 1 Pokemon (180) but even to this day it's still one of the highest defense stats in the game. It's tied with Aggron and the only ones higher are 3 megas, Eternamax, Stakataka & Regirock, and then Steelix, the Avaluggs and Shuckle. I think that's worthy of steel type team
Last Pokemon was kind of hard to pick. It'd have been easy to go with another Rock type (which is basically Steel-1) like Rhydon (metalic drill horn, like a steel earth-boring equipment) or another Electric type (Electrode, hello) but I'll admit once I got my hands on this one I decided to get too cute:
Porygon - Terrible Pokemon? Yes. But you gotta admit that while Steels are most associated with a metal coating, they're also kind of associated with computers, robotics or just general machines. That's Porygon to a T. Probably made of all kinds of rare earth metals. Learns Magnet Rise.
Melmetal being 600 BST lets it be Kanto's spiritual second psdeuo #Free Melmetal
Here out of obligation. I honestly forgot about Alolan Dugtrio when I first saw this prompt, and was only reminded of it on the Team Planner Site. If I can't have Mega Blastoise as an ace, consider Sandslash as the ace.
Rock and Electric types "feel" close to Steel types, with Alolan Golem being Rock/Electric feeling very close to a Steel type. It's also partial based on a railgun, pairing well with Blastoise's cannons.
Once again, it was either Alakazam or Hypno, this time for being a Psychic type using a metal tool. Once again, Alakazam is chosen because it's cooler it has two spoons as opposed to Hypno's singular pendulum. Considered for the mega slot just from having more spoons.
The best Kanto Steel type, despite not being a Steel type. Ever since Flash Cannon was introduced, Blastoise has had it as a move reminder move, even in the Lets Go games, so it's associated with a Steel type move.
Considered members are Electrabuzz due to it spinning its arms like a generator, Electrode from being an inanimate Electric type, Onix/Scyther from evolving into Steelix/Scizor, Rhydon from dex entries mentioning it's horn can crush diamonds, Slowbro/Mega Slowbro because of its hard shell, Magmar because I associate it with Fuego Ironworks in Sinnoh, and any Pokemon with predominate horns/blades.
