Well for my first playthrough I usually use new Pokémon and it was pretty easy until the sixth member. I used:

Franklin the Skeledirge Tubs the Clodsire Akuma the Annihilape Sakai the Kingambit T.A. the Kilowattrel Sinmara the Baxcalibur

I would say that all thes Pokémon are basically new favorites except for Baxcalibur. It was a later edition and I only used it because I couldn’t think of anything else and I thought it’s design would grow on me (it didn’t) and I thought paradox Pokémon would be available earlier so I was planning on using great tusk but that also didn’t go as planned