Worlds 2019: Top Deck Lists and Some Stats

The 2019 World Championships have come and gone and Australia's Henry Brand took home the biggest prize in Pokemon TCG, beating former world champion Shintaro Ito in a match he was considered an underdog. Gis Mewtwo & Mew-GX pulled ofc the upset win over the favoured Blacephalon-GX. I mean, who had Mewtwo & Mew down as a finalist (I had been testing it for a while though and liked it)?

I'll share what I thought were the 10 best decks (and one just for fun) at the World Championships and also share the price for each deck so those still looking for a deck will have a rough idea on how much they might need to spend to get a specific deck or to see which investment might be worth making for the next 3 months.

After that I'll share some fun stats on said World Championship along with a full Day 2 standings with some details on their region and their ranking in it, and if they were a Day 1 or Day 2 player. Also with that I'll share the best performing decks on a points per game basis to give an idea of which decks did well to go with their popularity.

I hope this will be of some help for those still trying to figure out what to do for the new meta or which decks they should build/buy next, and hopefully the fun few stats I did will be helpful in any way possible to anyone out there.

Just a note, prices are all done in USD so you may have to convert the prices to your own specific region. Prices were taken from Troll and Toad on the 24th of August.

Mewtwo & Mew-GX

Blacephalon-GX

Reshiram & Charizard-GX (Green's)

Reshiram & Charizard-GX (Abilities)

Pikachu & Zekrom-GX

Oranguru/Pidgeotto

Gardevoir & Sylveon-GX

Weavile-GX/Naganadel

Malamar/Ultra Necrozma-GX

Malamar/Spell Tag

And just for fun, Chandelure

Deck prices in comparison:

1. Mewtwo & Mew-GX - $448.64
2. Pikachu & Zekrom-GX - $328.94
3. Reshiram & Charizard-GX/Abilities - $321.09
4. Malamar/Spell Tag - $251.59
5. Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel - $240.87
6. Malamar/Ultra Necrozma-GX - $233.91
7. Weavile-GX/Naganadel - $232.75
8. Reshiram & Charizard-GX/Green - $211.38
9. Gardevoir & Sylveon-GX - $174.11
10. Oranguru/Pidgeotto - $100.92

You know the game is getting a bit expensive when even the lowest priced deck on this list is more than a hundred dollars when that was never the case. Trainer staples such as Acro Bike, PokeGear 3.0, Cherish Ball, Mysterious Treasure and Custom Catcher have all risen in price. Consistency boosters such as Dedenne-GX and Jirachi are both well above the $25 dollar mark. 

The safe bet is still PikaRom in my opinion, it's the most consistent deck and can deal with most of the decks in the meta at the moment. I personally would advocate for the Ability ReshiZard deck, sure it might cost quite a lot to get your Dedenne-GXes and Jirachis but boy is the deck fun to play, and it's really good.

I cannot in good faith recommend investing in Malamar decks anymore. As a Malamar player myself, I know how good it should be but it still suffers from consistency issues. It may be one of the best decks in the game when it's fully set-up but how often will you achieve said set-up? If you're brave enough and just don't want to play Tag Team decks, go for Malamar then. It's honestly the only viable non-GX deck around for the time being.

Day 2 World Championship Standings

The top 8 were made up of two Oceania players, two European players, two North American players and two Japanese players. World Champion Henry had only been 5th in the Oceania ranking but still showed why he was one of the best in the region and now the world. 

Blaine Hill's story might be even more impressive as not only was he a Day 1 competitor, he only finished 185th in the North American rankings with 552cp, just barely making the cut for his invite. Just shows that even if you didn't have the best of seasons, all you need is a great deck at Worlds, grind through the tough competition in Day 1 and Day 2 and you'll be right up there with the best in the world.

Of the top 32 finishers, 12 of them were Day 1 players. An interesting note, only 3 of the Day 1 players would change their decks going into Day 2 (Freitas, Morimoto, and van der Kolk). The rest clearly feeling comfortable with their choice with the games in Day 1 not influencing them in any way possible. 

Decks with best average points (Points per rounds played)

1. Reshiram & Charizard-GX - 1.70 (18 players)
2. Mewtwo & Mew-GX - 1.68 (10 players)
3. Gardevoir & Sylveon-GX - 1.56 (11 players)
4. Oranguru Control - 1.55 (6 players)
5. Dark Box - 1.50 (2 players)
6. Blacephalon-GX - 1.49 (8 players)
7. Keldeo-GX/Bronzong - 1.42 (2 players)
8. Rowlet & Alolan Exeggutor-GX - 1.42 (1 player)
9. Pikachu & Zekrom-GX - 1.38 (23 players)
10. Fossil Box - 1.36 (2 players)
11. Malamar/Ultra Necrozma-GX - 1.22 (9 players)
12. Malamar/Giratina & Garchomp-GX - 1.15 (5 players)
13. Slowpoke & Psyduck-GX - 1.14 (1 player)
14. Shedinja Control - 1.09 (2 players)
15. Malamar/Spell Tag - 1.07 (8 players)
16. Spiritomb - 1.05 (3 players)
17. Gengar & Mimikyu-GX/Omastar - 1.00 (2 players)
18. Chandelure - 1.00 (1 player)
19. Zeraora-GX/Magnezone - 0.75 (1 player)
20. Beheeyem - 0.71 (2 players)
21. Whimsicott-GX - 0.57 (1 player)

Despite being so popular, ReshiZard still ended up having the best point average which shows how good the deck is, converting it's popularity into big finishes for most of it's players. The same can't be said for PikaRom. It was the most popular deck but it suffered from many poor results from some players. Mew2Mew also had a strong showing here, helped with some big finishers in the Top 8 specifically. Blacephalon-GX would have had the best average if it wasn't for the last two placements, which brough the average down from 1.8 to 1.49.

The biggest thing here is the fact that Malamar, for all it's hype going into Worlds, flopped at the big stage. Not just one variant but all three of them. The highest placing one was the Ultra Necrozma variant and that's still only the 11th best deck in this standings. It shows that despite it's popularity, Malamar still suffers from consistency issues and the results back that up.

Just a note, I tried to find more stats to add on to these ones here but as I'm tied up with my army training and not having enough information on who played the Greens or Ability versions of ReshiZard, I had to skip out on some stats for matchups.

Region with best average points (Points per rounds played)

1. Oceania - 1.53 (12 players)
2. Japan - 1.50 (19 players)
3. Korea - 1.43 (2 players)
4. North America - 1.41 (36 players)
5. Latin America - 1.36 (12 players)
6. Europe - 1.33 (36 players)
7. Africa - 1.29 (1 player)

Just did this for fun but it was interesting to see that the players from all 3 Oceania/Asia based region ended up having the best average scores. The huge amount of North American and European players may have played a big factor in this as well.

Wasn't planning to post a lot so hopefully this was enough (still felt like a few things were missing). Hope it was of some help to anyone out there.