League Cup Statistics: January 1-5, 2020

✎ Tate Whitesell (@twhitesell42) / Alec Geissler (@geisslertcg)

Click to view rankings + statistics Google doc 
(You can always view the current week's rankings and statistics at the Weekly Cup Data tab, and can check back on previous weeks with the archive.)

Tate's notes
Gardevoir & Sylveon-GX feasted on all
the ADP being played this week and
returned to #1 in the rankings.
  • Expanded results for this weekend have not been tallied yet, but Luke Morsa and I will have an article coming out a few days before Dallas Regionals using data from every BLW-CEC cup we have.
  • Pretty diverse metagame in this sample! 30 different decks earned CP. 
  • The most notable jump was ADP/Bird Trio, up 7 spots from 10th to 3rd. 
  • The most notable drop was Charizard & Braixen-GX, down 6 spots from 7th to 13th. 
  • ADP/Bird Trio outperformed ADP/Keldeo-GX for the first time. I am not yet sure if this is just because people wanted to play something new and shiny, or if ADP/Bird Trio is actually a better deck. Regardless, the high frequency of ADP was probably one reason Gardevoir & Sylveon-GX was #1 this week, especially if a lot of ADP players neglected to tech Lucario & Melmetal-GX.
  • ...speaking of Gardevoir & Sylveon-GX, this is the first time it has been the #1 deck in the weekly rankings since October 12-13 of last year.
  • The Roxie variant of Garchomp & Giratina-GX/Mismagius leapfrogged its Roxie-less counterpart since the previous sample, and it appears to be the superior build of the deck.
  • 14 different archetypes won Cups in this sample. The deck with the most wins in this sample was Gardevoir & Sylveon-GX, with 7. Next up were ADP/Bird Trio and Mewtwo & Mew-GX Toolbox with 4 wins apiece.
  • It might be wise to prepare for stall/control decks next weekend. Doll Stall made a noticeable return this weekend, and Pidgeotto Control has been a top-7 deck for two weeks straight. 

Thanks to everyone who submitted results for the first weekend of our Event Results Reporting Facebook group. Almost everything was done properly, and it made compiling the stats pretty painless for me and the team. Glad to see the group has been a success so far.

Next up: myself, Kashvinder Singh Mann, and Erik Arts will be working to fill in the gaps on our Cup statistics since we missed a few weeks towards the end of last year; Luke and I will have that Dallas article out soon; and expect to see some news from myself and Erin Palmer on some really cool new plans we have for PokéStats this year. Happy 2020 everyone!


Alec's notes
Hey guys! My name is Alec Geissler, I’ve been working with PokéStats since Tate reached out for help with the site, and today I am bringing you guys a short writeup of how the Cup data looked the past week and why some of the decks succeeded over others. Let’s just jump right in! 
  • Gardevoir and Sylveon-GX, otherwise known as Gardeon, came in at the number 1 spot netting 1060 CP in total. I was very shocked that Gardeon earned as much as it did, to be honest. With some areas seeing an increase in Pidgeotto Control, Gardeon would naturally see a decline in success. Despite this, Gardeon players apparently decided it was fine to just take a loss to Pidgeotto this weekend. Notably, we saw Riley Hulbert pilot Gardeon to a first place out of 64 masters in a field that was about 10% Pidgeotto players (myself included). Gardeon has a good matchup spread, but it can be shaky versus Mewtwo & Mew-GX if MewMew runs out to it. 
  • Speaking of MewMew, I am still sold on it being the best deck in the format and I would consider it the best play for any event unless I expect to run into three or more Malamar. The deck's power, consistency, and flexibility is why it came in at 2nd place in these rankings, netting 790 CP. (That’s still a very big jump from Gardeon's 1060 CP, which quite frankly shocked me.) 
  • I don’t fully see the appeal of the new ADP/Bird Trio deck. This deck’s engine is based off Victini from Unified Minds, which serves as a quick way to power up the deck's big Tag Team attackers. The option to use Sky Legends GX instead of Altered Creation GX gives this deck some alternative routes to winning compared to the older Keldeo-GX variant, but I am not sure it is the stronger variant. This deck came in at 3rd netting 661 CP, which again surprised me, but people were probably excited to test-drive a new archetype in this fairly stale format. 
  • Psychic Recharge: two of my favorite words in the Standard format. Malamar has been a go-to deck for me when I've been lost on what to play, since the deck has a lot of options due to the variety of attackers you can build around. Malamar is the best non-GX deck in the format just because Giratina is such an excellent card. Netting 555 CP this weekend, Malamar should continue to see play going into Bochum Regionals. 
  • There was some debate as to whether we should separate the Roxie variant of the TinaChomp archetype from the Roxie-less variant, and I vouched for it being separate so we could compare the the CP count of each. This is one of the strongest decks in the format but also one of the hardest to play. Both TinaChomp builds combined for over 800 CP this weekend, which, as Stéphane Ivanoff pointed out, would put it in 2nd place if we hadn't listed the two separately.