When playing through the games, what do your typical teams look like?

Mine usually look something like this:
- Starter
- Early bird (Pidgey, Starly)
- Early Pokémon capable of using Surf (Bibarel, Linoone)
- Other early Pokémon that I start training but usually get lazy with

Sadly, that's my common problem when playing through the games. Besides the starter, I typically have a couple HM slaves that don't receive levels and one or two other Pokémon I try to raise. In my first run through a generation, it's usually just the starter and HM slaves, though. Pokémon X was the first time I actually raised a full team of six Pokémon while playing through the game, but they kept trying to shove too many older Pokémon on me instead of allowing me to try more of the new monsters.

I don't really have a standard model for what my team looks like.

- Starter (optional)
- Magikarp/Gyarados (usually)
- Anything I see that looks moderately cool; type coverage may or may not get doubled up

I don't usually use an HM slave because I don't want to sideline someone I actually like to use (unless I'm doing a solo run of a game in which case I'll have three or four). Cut is a fine move to dump on Espeon, right?

My Teams usually end up like this

-Starter
-Early Pokemon (if Gen 4 it's Shinx or Starly)
-A Fighting Type
-A Ghost or Steel type

I'll always have;

-A fire type
-A grass type
-A water type
(Those three are usually the starter and the other two would be whatever I can find)
-Regional national flying type
-An electric type for paralysis of legendaries (Sleep is just so hard to come by these days)
-Another random type, for raw unnecessary power.

My teams are usually diverse enough that everyone will be able to use one of all HMs so that I can fully train a team of 6. Leave no one behind! This style was something adopted in Black after being upset over having no grass types in HG.

Pokémon Black:
Samurott, Hihidaruma, Ferrothorn, Zebstrika, Unfezant, Stoutland

Pokémon Black 2:
Serperior, Arcanine, Vaporeon, Ampharos, Crobat, Lucario

Pokémon Y:
Greninja, Mega Speedboostiken, Venasaur, Hawlucha, Pikachu, Lucario

I usually pick a team with members type that can take out each gym leader and elite four.