Pokemon Deck and Card Analysis Feb 17 through Apr 14

I published a previous analysis here on the composition of the best decks in the meta, and I’m continuing that analysis in this posting.  That analysis looked at the first month of the meta post Ultra Prism.  This analysis includes all of that data and also brings in data from all of the major events after March 17th as well.

Let’s go over ground rules again just so that we’re all on the same page and you know what you’re looking at:

• All data herein comes from the limitless website.  I go to the completed tournaments, pull up all of the decklists from those tournaments, and copy and paste the data over into an Excel spreadsheet where I use a variety of formulas and macros to manipulate it into usable data.  I’m more than happy to provide you with this raw data if you’d like to work it yourself.  Just let me know in the comments and I’ll send you a copy.
• Limitless doesn’t have every decklist from every tournament.  They have the majority of top finishers but not all, but I think what we have here is probably very representative of the current meta.
• There were a LOT more tournaments in the first month post UP than the second.  I had 171 decklists last time, this time I have a total of 222, only about 50 more.  There were eleven events in the first analysis; there have been only five additional events since then.
• This analysis does not contain any sort of weighting for the amount of players at a particular tournament.  For example, 1st place at Collinsville with more than a thousand players is given an equal representation as the 1st place finisher at Bogota which had only thirty players.  The smaller tournaments could potentially skew the data, but I’m just not sure exactly how to adjust for this.
• I only have partial lists of data in this article.  Full lists are available on PDC.  Feel free to check out the full lists if you are interested in seeing them.  

Alright now that that’s out of the way, let’s get down to the number crunching!

Here are the ten most played cards overall:

	Card	Number of Cards	How Many Decks Ran This Card
	Ultra Ball	831	211	3.94
	Guzma	714	219	3.26
	Fighting Energy	597	82	7.28
	N	592	216	2.74
	Double Colorless Energy	494	130	3.8
	Choice Band	483	186	2.6
	Tapu Lele-GX GRI	475	207	2.29
	Professor Sycamore	474	173	2.74
	Cynthia	451	203	2.22
	Puzzle of Time	424	106	4

The last column is the average number of cards per decklist, for some reason I can’t put the title in the header.  

And again, I apologize for not being able to get the publish to web function to work properly.  If you want to see beyond the top ten, I have all of that at PokedeckCentral.

And here are the total cards played for decks finishing 8th or better:

	Card	Number of Cards	How Many Decks Ran This Card
	Ultra Ball	342	87	3.93
	Guzma	301	90	3.34
	Fighting Energy	265	38	6.97
	N	250	91	2.75
	Professor Sycamore	200	73	2.74
	Choice Band	199	76	2.62
	Double Colorless Energy	191	50	3.82
	Tapu Lele-GX GRI	185	85	2.18
	Float Stone	172	75	2.29
	Puzzle of Time	168	42	4

The big thing to note is that Cynthia drops out of the top ten when we’re just looking at decks that finished 8th place or higher and Float Stone takes her place.  She didn’t fall far, though, only from 9th to 11th.

Here is the frequency of which you’ll find a card in a decklist overall:

	Card	Played in this many decks
	Guzma	219	99%
	N	216	97%
	Ultra Ball	211	95%
	Tapu Lele-GX GRI	207	93%
	Cynthia	203	91%
	Choice Band	186	84%
	Float Stone	180	81%
	Professor Sycamore	173	78%
	Field Blower	160	72%
	Double Colorless Energy	130	59%

And for just the top 8:

	Card	Played in this many decks
	N	91	100%
	Guzma	90	99%
	Ultra Ball	87	96%
	Tapu Lele-GX GRI	85	93%
	Cynthia	82	90%
	Choice Band	76	84%
	Float Stone	75	82%
	Professor Sycamore	73	80%
	Field Blower	66	73%
	Double Colorless Energy	50	55%

 

Here are the most common cards by type overall:

Pokemon 3593 cards, 27%, 16.2 cards per 60 card decklist

Supporter 3071 cards, 23.1%, 13.8 cards per 60 card decklist

Item 2920 cards, 21.9%, 13.2 cards per 60 card decklist

Basic Energy 1520 cards, 11.4%, 6.8 cards per 60 card decklist

Tool 1012 cards, 7.6%, 4.6 cards per 60 card decklist

SPE 842 cards, 6.3%, 3.8 cards per 60 card decklist

Stadium 362 cards, 2.7%, 1.6 cards per 60 card decklist

(More apologies here as I again can’t get the formatting to transpose over.)

And for top 8 finishers:

Pokemon 1487 cards, 27.2%, 16.3 cards per 60 card decklist

Supporter 1249 cards, 22.9%, 13.7 cards per 60 card decklist

Item 1185 cards, 21.7%, 13.0 cards per 60 card decklist

Basic Energy 631 cards, 11.6%, 6.9 cards per 60 card decklist

Tool 405 cards, 7.4%, 4.5 cards per 60 card decklist

SPE 342 cards, 6.3%, 3.8 cards per 60 card decklist

Stadium 161 cards, 2.9%, 1.8 cards per 60 card decklist

The most common Pokemon overall and their percentage of the total Pokemon cards played:

Tapu Lele-GX GRI 475 cards, 13.2%

Zoroark-GX SLG 362 cards, 10.1%

Zorua SLG 339 cards, 9.4%

Buzzwole-GX CIN 175 cards, 4.9%

Wimpod BUS 112 cards, 3.1%

Lycanroc-GX GRI 104 cards, 2.9%

Remoraid BKT 98 cards, 2.7%

Octillery BKT 96 cards, 2.7%

Trubbish BKP 95 cards, 2.6%

Mew-EX XYP 82 cards, 2.3%

And for the top 8 decks:

Tapu Lele-GX GRI 185 cards, 12.4%

Zoroark-GX SLG 145 cards, 9.8%

Zorua SLG 143 cards, 9.6%

Buzzwole-GX CIN 84 cards, 5.6%

Lycanroc-GX GRI 54 cards, 3.6%

Remoraid BKT 50 cards, 3.4%

Octillery BKT 50 cards, 3.4%

Wimpod BUS 44 cards, 3.0%

Rockruff SMP 43 cards, 2.9%

Mew-EX XYP 82 cards, 2.3%

The big things to note here: Garbodor BKP will get you into the top 64 but won’t get you into the top 8.  Also, running Octillery is good way to help get yourself into the top 8.

Supporters overall:

Guzma 714 cards, 23.2%

N 592 cards, 19.3%

Professor Sycamore 474 cards, 15.4%

Cynthia 451 cards, 14.7%

Brigette 322 cards, 10.5%

Acerola 176 cards, 5.7%

Mallow 86 cards, 2.8%

Skyla 53 cards, 1.7%

Professor Kukui, 50 cards, 1.6%

Team Flare Grunt, 34 cards, 1.1%

Supporters top 8:

Guzma 301 cards, 24.1%

N 250 cards, 20%

Professor Sycamore 200 cards, 16%

Cynthia 164 cards, 13.1%

Brigette 128 cards, 10.2%

Acerola 65 cards, 5.2%

Mallow 37 cards, 3%

Skyla 22 cards, 1.8%

Professor Kukui, 18 cards, 1.4%

Team Flare Grunt, 14 cards, 1.1%

So I’ve ranted multiple times about how 90% of the Supporter cards that are played consist of six unique cards…  three of which are rotating out of the Standard format at the end of August.  This will mark a significant strategical shift in the new meta.

Here are the main points that I’m taking away from this study:

• Top 8 decks run Lele just a little bit less than the overall decks.
• There’s a little bit off a drop off with Zoroark GX from overall to top 8.
• Buzzwole, Lycanroc, Octillery, Sudowoodo, and Regirock are all more prevalent in the top 8 than in the overall universe.
• Garbodor BKP has a huge drop off between overall and top 8.
• Almost 90% of the Supporters played in all decks consist of six unique cards … three of which are rotating out at the end of August.
• Almost 90% of the Supporters played in all decks consist of six unique cards… and there are thirteen Standard legal expansion sets at the time of this writing.
• Top 8 decks run more Sycamore and less Cynthia.
• Top 8 decks run more Guzma and N.  The only card run in every top 8 decklist was N.  
• A little bit more than 90% of all Item cards played consist of eleven unique cards.
• Three different Tool cards make up over 99% of the top 8 Tool card population.
• I did a one off analysis from this and came up with a total of 192 out of the total 222 decklists ran SPE.  That’s a whopping 86% of meta decks ran some sort of SPE.
• Fighting types were more prevalent in the top 8 than overall.   Grass, Fire, Lightning, and Water as well but to a lesser extent.
• Metal, Dark, and Psychic were all less likely to make the top 8.