✎ Tate Whitesell / @twhitesell42
With the Pokémon Fight Club Facebook group created by PokéStats's Rukan Shao proving to be a success thus far, PokéStats already has some good data on a format that will still not see play at a sanctioned event for another month. That, of course, is the 2019 World Championships format, Standard Ultra Prism-Unified Minds, which Fight Club has been testing via webcam and untap.in for several weeks now. In this article I'm going to look at the data from those past few weeks in an attempt to illustrate how the metagame is currently shaping up for Worlds.
(Before I continue, a reminder that all of Rukan's Fight Club data is available in spreadsheet form for your convenience right here on PokéStats.)
The data
Fight Club began testing UPR-UNI on June 24th, the day after the conclusion of the 2019 NAIC, and has averaged 2.86 BO3 matches played per night in the four weeks between then and now. I've compiled a table of all archetypes that have seen play in at least three BO3 matches during that time period. Note that the wins, losses, and win % shown are for individual games, not BO3 series. If you need an explanation of the AMPS statistic, check out our previous article.
There are a handful of other decks, including Chandelure, Lost March, and others, that have been played in one or two BO3 series in UPR-UNI testing, but I left them out of the table due to the small sample sizes. Those matchup results are available, as always, in Rukan's spreadsheet.
So far, the most-played decks have been Naganadel/Dark and Pikachu & Zekrom-GX, at 26 games played each), with Malamar/Giratina & Garchomp-GX close behind at 24 games played. The success rates of those archetypes have differed, though: Malamar/Giratina & Garchomp-GX is currently the most successful UPR-UNI deck, with a winrate nearly 14% higher than the second most successful, but Pikachu & Zekrom-GX is only a few percentage points above an even record, and Naganadel/Dark actually has more losses than wins.
A couple of holdovers from the previous format, Reshiram & Charizard-GX and Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel, have been the second- and third-best performers respectively. Further down the list we encounter Silvally-GX (which gained a powerful partner in Triple Acceleration Energy in Unbroken Bonds), the new Naganadel-GX from Unified Minds, and a pair of differing Mew & Mewtwo-GX decks.
Further reading/viewing
With the Fight Club results serving as a good jumping-off point for selecting your array of archetypes to begin testing with, you might now start looking for decklists or other resources to guide you in playing these decks. Many top players are already well-invested in the Worlds format with plenty of paywalled article content as well as some free articles and plenty of free Twitch and YouTube content discussing the format and demonstrating gameplay. I'll provide a database of links here as a one-stop 2019 Worlds testing resource for the decks shown in the table above.
💰 = paywall article / 📹 = video content
Malamar variants:
Reshiram & Charizard-GX:
Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel:
Pikachu & Zekrom-GX:
Mew & Mewtwo-GX:
Naganadel/Dark:
Naganadel-GX:
(Before I continue, a reminder that all of Rukan's Fight Club data is available in spreadsheet form for your convenience right here on PokéStats.)
The data
Fight Club began testing UPR-UNI on June 24th, the day after the conclusion of the 2019 NAIC, and has averaged 2.86 BO3 matches played per night in the four weeks between then and now. I've compiled a table of all archetypes that have seen play in at least three BO3 matches during that time period. Note that the wins, losses, and win % shown are for individual games, not BO3 series. If you need an explanation of the AMPS statistic, check out our previous article.
 |
Fight Club's top-performing archetype
from the first month of UPR-UNI testing
|
A couple of holdovers from the previous format, Reshiram & Charizard-GX and Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel, have been the second- and third-best performers respectively. Further down the list we encounter Silvally-GX (which gained a powerful partner in Triple Acceleration Energy in Unbroken Bonds), the new Naganadel-GX from Unified Minds, and a pair of differing Mew & Mewtwo-GX decks.
Further reading/viewing
With the Fight Club results serving as a good jumping-off point for selecting your array of archetypes to begin testing with, you might now start looking for decklists or other resources to guide you in playing these decks. Many top players are already well-invested in the Worlds format with plenty of paywalled article content as well as some free articles and plenty of free Twitch and YouTube content discussing the format and demonstrating gameplay. I'll provide a database of links here as a one-stop 2019 Worlds testing resource for the decks shown in the table above.
💰 = paywall article / 📹 = video content
Malamar variants:
Reshiram & Charizard-GX:
- Celio's Network deck profile 📹
- Caleb Gedemer for PokéBeach 💰
- Pablo Meza for SixPrizes 💰
- Gabriel Semedo for SixPrizes 💰
Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel:
Pikachu & Zekrom-GX:
- Celio's Network: testing game vs. Mew & Mewtwo-GX 📹
- Caleb Gedemer for PokéBeach 💰
- Phinnegan Lynch for Cut or Tap 💰
- Luke Morsa for Flipside Gaming
- Rahul Reddy for SixPrizes 💰
- Gabriel Semedo for SixPrizes 💰
Mew & Mewtwo-GX:
- Celio's Network deck profile 📹
- Celio's Network: testing game vs. Pikachu & Zekrom-GX 📹
- Grant Manley for PokéBeach 💰
Naganadel/Dark:
Naganadel-GX: