Best and Worst GBL Cup Formats

Pokemon GO
#1

Hi! With the upcoming MyStERy cUP I was just wondering what you all’s favorite and least favorite cups were! Here’s mine in order of my least liked to my favorite

Halloween/Flying - I actually didn’t play these as I wasn’t really feeling Pokémon Go at the time. I’m kickin myself for missing Halloween Cup it looked like a lot of fun. The flying cup looked pretty meh.
Little cup - The worst of the cups IMO. It was fun for a bit. There was an inherent unbalance with Bronzor. The plus side is it was cheap to play and if you didn’t play bronzor all your games went very quick!
Catch cup - a bizarre premise and it came at weird time. Everyone was locked down? Tell them to go catch Pokémon! The more you invest the better you do, but rating means nothing! I invested fairly heavily in this one and had a good time with it. I carried through a Snorlax from Kanto Cup and later put it up to UL so it didn’t feel like a waste.
Holiday Cup - maybe someone can help me with this one, but something wasn’t right about this cup and I can’t place what it was. I essentially stood still in this cup despite playing most of my battles. The meta was just pretty random and it felt like grass was set up for failure right from the start. Still a fun cup that catered to a lot of underused Pokémon.
Kanto Cup - the gold standard for me. When it came out everyone was on hypno and Awak and all the stuff PvPoke said was good, and then as it progressed people learned how easy that stuff was to counter and suddenly stuff like rapidash and Electrode were every bit as popular! My only complaint is the lack of steel types and poison types led to charmers being a little to consistent and as well A-muk was just an insanely safe pick no one could ever really stay off of.

I hope they continue doing these! They are the best part of GBL!

1 Like
#2

Holiday Cup was weird, I agree. My theory is that it pretty much only removed Azu and Gunfisk while most of the other big ones were still in. I used the exact same team I had in open GL…
Catch cup started out fun but became miserable as it went on and big players got all the meta mons anyways. Flying Cup got old in minutes; you didn’t miss much, but Halloween was a really good one.
I really enjoyed Little Cup in the end. It seemed like it would be a nightmare but there were more weird and fun options available to it than I expected. I hope they do another.

I have to agree with you Kanto Cup is the best one. Only there could I get away with a G-Rapidash-Pidgeot-Golduck team. I hope they continue doing single-gen cups like that.

#3

I enjoyed Halloween cup the most with Kanto Cup a close second. Little Cup had a fine premise but Bronzor ruined any fun (and yes I used Tackle Bronzor). Halloween and Kanto Cup were good because most of the Pokemon that were allowed in the cup were also good Pokemon for Great League. Little Cup had that same potential but fell a little short at the time.

1 Like
#4

What I liked about the Little Cup was that it was the only time I reached Rank 10.

An anti-meta team was so easy —> Vulpix, Seel, and Barboach or Poochyena.

#5

I was all about seel. I rarely ever pulled a negative set in Little Cup because seel killed it so hard on the swap. Lotta people never seemed to catch on

1 Like
#6

I got all the way to rank 15 with HC though…

#7

@canipetthatdog and @DarkGopher I agree, Holiday Cup seemed weird…thought I would like it but it got frustrating real quick. My theory is that including Normal and Ghost really screwed it up and created a second meta. There were several 'mon that just didn’t have any good counters. Didn’t feel nearly as coherent as Halloween and didn’t break the mold like Kanto.

Halloween and Kanto were great! Even though Halloween had a lot of meta 'mon from GL (Azu, A-wak, etc.), they didn’t over-dominate and lots of new stuff had room to roam. Kanto was just a whole different thing though! Almost none of the traditional meta and suddenly, stupid stuff like Rapidash become solid choices! :laughing:

Lil’ cup and Flying cup were both fun at first but got boring quick. It was fun to use something different though (when were you ever going to use Aerodactyl outside of Ho-oh raids?) so I’d rather that than the current GL staleness! At least the fights were quick and it didn’t cost much to compete. :man_shrugging:

2 Likes