Pokémon Go Fantasy Cup – Ultra League Edition: Best Pokémon

Find the best team to field in Fantasy Cup: Ultra League Edition
Pokémon Go Fantasy Cup – Ultra League Edition: Best Pokémon
Pokémon Go Fantasy Cup – Ultra League Edition: Best Pokémon /

Are you caught in a landslide with no escape from reality? Worry no longer! Pokémon Go Fantasy Cup – Ultra League Edition will run from August 17 to 24, 2023, providing you with ample time to flee from your daily life and live out your dream of becoming a strong Pokémon trainer. This time frame features triple Stardust rewards for wins in Go Battle League, making a good performance all the more valuable.

This Go Battle League competition runs on a special ruleset limiting participating Pokémon to a maximum amount of 2,500 competition points (CP). It further limits the amount of Pokémon you can use by restricting you to monsters of the types Dragon, Steel, and Fairy. Cobalion and Galarian Stunfisk are banned outright.

Show your opponents that size matters not with the best Pokémon for Fantasy Cup – Ultra League Edition in Pokémon Go based on statistics and simulations provided by PvPoke.com.

Pokémon Go Fantasy Cup logo.
Fantasy Cup returns to Pokémon Go with triple Stardust rewards / Niantic

Pokémon Go Fantasy Cup: 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. Registeel(XL) (Lock On, Focus Blast, Flash Cannon)
  2. Shadow Flygon (Mud Shot, Dragon Claw, Earth Power)
  3. Tapu Fini (Water Gun, Surf, Moonblast)
  4. Galarian Weezing(XL) (Fairy Wind, Overheat, Play Rough)
  5. Lucario (Counter, Power-Up Punch, Shadow Ball)
  6. Solgaleo (Fire Spin, Psychic Fang, Iron Head)
  7. Florges (Fairy Wind, Disarming Voice, Moonblast)
  8. Giratina (Altered Forme) (Shadow Claw, Dragon Claw, Shadow Sneak)
  9. Shadow Registeel(XL) (Lock On, Focus Blast, Flash Cannon)
  10. Dragonite (Dragon Breath, Dragon Claw, Superpower)

(XL) = Pokémon requires Candy XL to reach optimal performance level.

Pokémon Go Fantasy Cup: Best Safe Switches

These Pokémon serve as switch options for your lead – should the opening pairing be to your disadvantage, switch in one of these monsters instead to preserve your lead Pokémon for later. According to this purpose, these are primarily Pokémon that counter some of the most popular leads or are strong leads themselves.

  1. Registeel(XL) (Lock On, Focus Blast, Flash Cannon)
  2. Excadrill (Mud Shot, Drill Run, Rock Slide)
  3. Shadow Registeel(XL) (Lock On, Focus Blast, Flash Cannon)
  4. Tapu Fini (Water Gun, Surf, Moonblast)
  5. Slurpuff(XL) (Fairy Wind, Flamethrower, Play Rough)
  6. Giratina (Altered Forme) (Shadow Claw, Dragon Claw, Shadow Sneak)
  7. Galarian Weezing(XL) (Fairy Wind, Overheat, Play Rough)
  8. Giratina (Origin Forme) (Shadow Claw, Dragon Claw, Shadow Sneak)
  9. Genesect (Burn Module) (Fire Cutter, Techno Blast (Burn), Magnet Bomb)
  10. Escavalier (Counter, Acid Spray, Drill Run)

Pokémon Go Fantasy Cup: Best Closers

These Pokémon are especially strong when there are no shields left in play on either side – they are incredibly tough themselves or end battles with a single hit of their powerful charge attacks.

  1. Registeel(XL) (Lock On, Focus Blast, Flash Cannon)
  2. Genesect (Burn Module) (Fire Cutter, Techno Blast (Burn), Magnet Bomb)
  3. Shadow Registeel(XL) (Lock On, Focus Blast, Flash Cannon)
  4. Slurpuff(XL) (Fairy Wind, Flamethrower, Play Rough)
  5. Galarian Weezing(XL) (Fairy Wind, Overheat, Play Rough)
  6. Tapu Fini (Water Gun, Surf, Moonblast)
  7. Turtonator(XL) (Incinerate, Dragon Pulse, Overheat)
  8. Flygon(S) (Mud Shot, Dragon Claw, Earth Power)
  9. Shadow Garchomp (Mud Shot, Earth Power, Outrage)
  10. Escavalier (Counter, Acid Spray, Drill Run)

Pokémon Go Fantasy Cup: Best Attackers

These Pokémon perform best when fighting a trainer who still has shields, while you no longer have shields yourself – they have the ideal combination of resistances and strong fast attacks to compensate for this disadvantage. For this reason, you rarely see Shadow forms in this category – they take more damage than their regular counterparts, which is very risky at this stage of a match.

  1. Registeel(XL) (Lock On, Focus Blast, Flash Cannon)
  2. Shadow Registeel(XL) (Lock On, Focus Blast, Flash Cannon)
  3. Tapu Fini (Water Gun, Surf, Moonblast)
  4. Steelix(XL) (Dragon Tail, Psychic Fangs, Earthquake)
  5. Forretress(XL) (Bug Bite, Earthquake, Mirror Shot)
  6. Giratina (Altered Forme) (Shadow Claw, Dragon Claw, Shadow Sneak)
  7. Alolan Sandslash(XL) (Shadow Claw, Ice Punch, Drill Run)
  8. Escavalier (Counter, Acid Spray, Drill Run)
  9. Melmetal (Thunder Shock, Double Iron Bash, Superpower)
  10. Shadow Alolan Sandslash(XL) (Shadow Claw, Ice Punch, Drill Run)

Fantasy Cup – Ultra League Edition’s meta is quite different from what we’re used to in other competitions thanks to the big restrictions imposed on participants. Sturdy Steel-types are especially strong in this format, which in turn propels some of their counters into the top ranks. In typical domino fashion, they pull their own counters up, making up a relatively stable cadre of top picks.

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


Published
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