Video Games

Pokémon Go Color Cup – Great League Edition: Best Pokémon

Form the best Pokémon team to battle in Color Cup

Marco Wutz

Niantic

Hoist the colors! Wait, we aren’t going sailing or plundering? What’s going on then? Ah, the Color Cup is coming to Pokémon Go, breathing some fresh air into Battle League. Color Cup – Great League Edition will run from January 7 to 21, 2025, with the second half of this timeframe having a quadruple Stardust bonus for all wins in store.

Table of Contents

  1. Color Cup – Great League Edition: Best Leads
  2. Color Cup – Great League Edition: Best Safe Switches
  3. Color Cup – Great League Edition: Best Closers
  4. Color Cup – Great League Edition: Best Attackers

This Go Battle League competition features a competition points (CP) limit for participating Pokémon of 1,500 CP. In addition, the Color Cup ruleset restricts you to only using Pokémon of the Fire-, Water-, Grass-, and Electric-types.

Get ready to make your opponents see only black with the best Pokémon for Color Cup – Great League Edition in Pokémon Go based on statistics and simulations provided by PvPoke.com.

Color Cup – Great League Edition: Best Leads

These Pokémon aggressively apply pressure on your opponent right from the start of a duel and can survive even tough battles for a long time – they are perfect to open a match up, enabling you to score an early knockout or set up a strong counter play.

  1. Gastrodon (Mud Slap, Body Slam, Earth Power)
  2. Alolan Marowak [S] (Fire Spin, Shadow Bone, Bone Club)
  3. Zapdos (Thunder Shock, Drill Peck, Thunder)
  4. Togedemaru (Thunder Shock, Fell Stinger, Wild Charge)
  5. Qwilfish (Poison Sting, Aqua Tail, Ice Beam)
  6. Shadow Jumpluff (Fairy Wind, Aerial Ace, Energy Ball)
  7. Abomasnow [S] (Powder Snow, Icy Wind, Energy Ball)
  8. Hisuian Electrode (Thunder Shock, Wild Charge, Swift)
  9. Emolga (Thunder Shock, Acrobatics, Discharge)
  10. Stunfisk (Thunder Shock, Mud Bomb, Discharge)

[S] = Regular form and Shadow form perform comparably.

Color Cup – Great League Edition: Best Safe Switches

If the opening pairing is to your disadvantage, you should consider switching out your lead for another Pokémon. This is where this category comes into play. They are either strong leads themselves or are specialized in countering some of the most popular leads. In any case, a switch will preserve your original lead to fight later on in the battle and perhaps force your opponent to also adapt their strategy on the fly.

  1. Hisuian Electrode (Thunder Shock, Wild Charge, Swift)
  2. Qwilfish (Poison Sting, Aqua Tail, Ice Beam)
  3. Shadow Zapdos (Thunder Shock, Drill Peck, Thunder)
  4. Golisopod (Shadow Claw, X-Scissor, Liquidation)
  5. Feraligatr [S] (Shadow Claw, Hydro Cannon, Ice Beam)
  6. Magmar [S] (Karate Chop, Fire Punch, Scorching Sands)
  7. Charjabug (Volt Switch, X-Scissor, Discharge)
  8. Emolga (Thunder Shock, Acrobatics, Discharge)
  9. Typhlosion (Incinerate, Blast Burn, Thunder Punch)
  10. Zapdos (Thunder Shock, Drill Peck, Thunder)

Color Cup – Great League Edition: Best Closers

These Pokémon are particularly useful when there are no shields left in play on either side – they are incredibly tough themselves or end battles quickly thanks to powerful charge attacks.

  1. Turtonator (Incinerate, Dragon Pulse, Overheat)
  2. Toxapex (Poison Jab, Brine, Sludge Wave)
  3. Shadow Electivire (Thunder Shock, Ice Punch, Wild Charge)
  4. Emolga (Thunder Shock, Acrobatics, Discharge)
  5. Shadow Quagsire (Mud Shot, Aqua Tail, Stone Edge)
  6. Victini (Quick Attack, V-Create, Psychic)
  7. Amoonguss (Astonish, Grass Knot, Sludge Bomb)
  8. Charjabug (Volt Switch, X-Scissor, Discharge)
  9. Cradily (Bullet Seed, Rock Slide, Grass Knot)
  10. Incineroar (Snarl, Darkest Lariat, Blast Burn)

Color Cup – Great League Edition: Best Attackers

These Pokémon perform best when fighting a trainer who still has shields, while you no longer have shields yourself. They combine important resistances and strong fast attacks to compensate for this disadvantage. For this reason, you rarely see Shadow forms in this role – they take more damage than their regular counterparts, making them a risky card to put on the table.

  1. Toxapex (Poison Jab, Brine, Sludge Wave)
  2. Jumpluff (Fairy Wind, Aerial Ace, Energy Ball)
  3. Tropius (Air Slash, Leaf Blade, Aerial Ace)
  4. Abomasnow (Powder Snow, Icy Wind, Energy Ball)
  5. Araquanid (Bug Bite, Bug Buzz, Bubble Beam)
  6. Alolan Marowak (Fire Spin, Bone Club, Shadow Bone)
  7. Shadow Jumpluff (Fairy Wind, Aerial Ace, Energy Ball)
  8. Ferrothorn (Bullet Seed, Power Whip, Flash Cannon)
  9. Mantine (Wing Attack, Aerial Ace, Ice Beam)
  10. Tentacruel (Poison Jab, Acid Spray, Scald)

Have you noticed? There is not a single Pokémon among the top performers that requires XL Candy upgrades, so you’ll be able to jump into this format without massive upfront investment. Even better, many of the strongest competitors have made appearances in recent cups, so a regular participant in Go Battle League may well have already built up a powerful team.

Apart from Go Battle League, you should check out this month’s Raids and Spotlight Hours to not miss anything going on in the mobile game.

Published |Modified
Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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