Legendary Pokémon

I don't think you can get any Geo's before confronting Wattson.

You can get some in Granite Cave. That's what the pokedex says at least.

There's plenty of alternatives, I just have this pet peeve of hating to waste EXP points on Pokemon that I'm only going to use for one battle. It just seems like those point would be better off with Pokemon who ARE going to be in my lineup and just hope for the best on the gym leader. Which worked fine.

Shroomish, Sableye, Zubat (!),Trapinch (a lil' bit later in the game)

Let's see...for the THIRD Gym...

Starter
Electrike
Swellow
Aron // Geodude
Lombre // Nuzleaf // Shroomish // Breloom // Gloom
Kadabra // Kirlia

treecko is a pretty good starter. he helps a lot in the E4 b/c the champ is water as is the last gym. in the begin. it can be hard due to a lack of defence when facing Brawly, but it helps alot.

I always start with Treecko, and I usually use these:
Dustox (Protect helps a lot against Norman's Slaking and it's not affected by Brawly's fighters either)
Plusle (resist a little Wattson's pokémon and disrupts Tate&Liza strategies)
The others I vary... This time, I'm using Castform and Gardevoir.

castform is hard to do it with. rem. when i said i traded the pkmn i wanted to ued? castform was one. his stats arnt all that good. he is useful being able to learn boltbeam and flamethrower, which can kill many others, but it has to be a modest,rash,quiet, or mild nature for it to work. gardevior is very good to start w/but it may be hard to find a good one w/ralts being so rare.

But Castform is good for metagame (unfortunately, ONLY for metagame...) because it can be three types of special sweeper. He helped me a lot against Steven and Tate&Liza (in sapphire).

yes. but he has pretty mediocre stats. you have to severly train it for it to be good. i gave up on mine and put jirachi in its place.