Guys, a bit of help please, lol. I'm a beginner at Pokémon and I have NO IDEA what I should be looking for if I want to form a core 6 pokemon party. Any tips or suggestions?
There are multiple ways to approach this. The depth of team building is the most complex and complicated aspect of Pokémon, but for a beginner like yourself, there are some much more simplified rules. But the biggest thing to remember, and this is truly a golden rule: "everything works in game."
You do not need to make a perfectly balanced and optimized team to beat a Pokémon game. What you like and who your favorites are can be just as good of options as having a balanced or optimized team. Do not feel like you
need to do anything. But if you want a simple beginner's team structure, here's what you can do.
Think of your team as A, B, C, D, E, and F.
A, B, and C should form what we call a "core", which refers to complimentary coverage of types. The most straightforward one is Fire, Water, Grass, which don't share any weaknesses and all hit different things super effectively. Having a Fire/Water/Grass core means you will be able to properly respond to different threats - especially opposing Pokémon of those types. You can respond to Fire with Water, Respond to Water with Grass, etc.
Pokémon D and E should be another coverage core with complimentary types to deal with specific threats. Fighting and Psychic, for example. Fighting can hit all the Dark types that Psychic can't. Psychic can hit the Poison types Fighting can't. Fighting Pokémon can't hit Ghosts, but Psychic Pokémon usually have a Ghost-type move to hit ghosts super effectively. These partners aren't so much about
perfectly responding to certain threats that might give you trouble otherwise and give you options to switch in and out safely.
The D & E core is very flexible. Do not worry too much about "perfect" coverage here. Dragon pairs well with Fairy, but it also pairs well with Steel. An Electric Pokémon would appreciate a Flying type friend who is immune to Ground type. But a Flying type loves a Ground Type who is completely immune to Electric and can hit back for massive damage. The important thing here is that they are not both weak against the same things.
Your final Pokémon, F, can be a few different things. It can be a super tanky bulky Pokémon who can just tank hits and buy you time to revive or restore your other party members. It can be a super-fast cleaner who can come in and revenge kill threats who've taken someone else out. It can be a Pokémon with lots of super effective coverage to hit the most amount of Pokémon. This should be whatever your team needs.
This is just the most simple way of doing it. It's also not the only way of doing it. A/B/C and D/E/F can be two perfect cores instead for maximum balance. Or if you have great type coverage with one Pokémon (for example, the blessed Thunderbolt/Ice Beam combo on a water type), you can afford to have other Pokémon specialize in more specific things since your Water type can do so much at once.
Your team can also change throughout the game. Dragon types are rare early on, but are common in the late game. If you bring a Dragon Pokémon aboard, you might adjust another party member to cover its weaknesses better. For example, now you might have a 4x weakness to ice like a lot of Dragons do. So you'd need to have a switch-in specifically to eat those ice beams.
Hopefully this helps and isn't more confusing than it needs to be. Just remember: everything works in game. You only have to think about it as deeply as you want to.
