you know i love chinchou.. but i found out very quickly that having one as the main water/electric type (game wise not competitive wise) that she became very hard to bring to her full potential due to the fact that she is your main surfer and possibly whirlpool and waterfall, which really limits her to a water type role, this is bad considering that since she is ele/wat she now has an extra weakness as opposed to regular water types.
i honestly thought that when i transferred my lanturn into pokemon stadium 2, she would be a powerhouse, but then i found out she wasnt the fastest nor the strongest,
this was more of an fyi instead of a discouragement, by all means lanturn can be a very good pokemon without the shackles of HM's it's just i became really disillusioned after seeing how well mine performed in poke stad 2
... I always use a slave for HMs.. the battle party is mainly used to obliterate the gym leaders and team rocket (or.w.e they are called now). Trainer encounters are so much of a joke that using a crazy team would be overkill.