Pokémon Top Trumps Across All 9 Generations: 46,000 Simulated Games

Which generations, types and Pokémon win when all 1,025 cards are in play

Posted by October 25, 2026 · 4 mins read

My Pokémon Top Trumps game started with the 151 Gen 1 Pokémon. It now includes all 1,025 Pokémon from Gen 1 (Kanto) to Gen 9 (Paldea), and before each match you choose which generations to play with. A bigger card pool raises new questions: Are newer generations stronger? Does Fire still dominate? Who replaces Mewtwo at the top? To answer them, I simulated 46,000 games (440,056 rounds) with the same rules as the live game.

👉 Explore the interactive report 👉 Play the game

The approach

  1. Collect: pulled base stats, types and generation for all 1,025 Pokémon from PokeAPI. The Gen 1 data matched my original Databricks gold-layer data exactly.
  2. Simulate: built a headless copy of the game engine: 6 v 6 knockout, a random stat each round, primary-type multipliers (1.2x / 0.8x) and the blocked-stat rule after a draw.
  3. Validate: re-ran 10,000 Gen 1 games and compared them with my original 10,000-game study: 50.3% vs 49.44% win rate, 9.56 vs 9.51 average rounds, Mewtwo 87.8% vs 87.2%.
  4. Test: 1,000 games for each generation on its own (9,000), 1,000 for each of the 36 generation pairings (36,000), and 1,000 games with all generations together.

What I found

  • 🆕 Newer generations are stronger. Gen 9 wins 60.6% of games against the other generations, with Gen 7 (59.3%) and Gen 4 (58.7%) close behind. Gens 1, 2 and 3 win only about 40%. A Gen 1 team beats a Gen 9 team only 33.7% of the time.
  • ⚖️ Each generation on its own is fair. When both teams come from the same generation, each side wins about half the time (46.6% to 52.6%, within normal random variation).
  • ⚡ Zekrom is the new champion. It wins 89.6% of its rounds, ahead of Arceus (88.5%), Reshiram (88.0%), Palkia (87.1%) and Rayquaza (85.6%). Mewtwo drops to 82.4% against the wider field. 25 Pokémon win more than 80% of their rounds.
  • 🐉 Dragon is the best type. Dragon-type Pokémon win 63.7% of their rounds, followed by Steel (58.6%). Bug (41.3%) and Normal (41.8%) are the weakest types.
  • 🔥 Fire still burns Bug. At 85.7%, Fire vs Bug is still the most one-sided matchup, followed by Flying vs Bug (83.9%) and Fire vs Grass (83.2%).
  • ❌ Baby and first-stage Pokémon are liabilities. Igglybuff (2.8%), Wishiwashi (4.4%) and Azurill (4.6%) are the weakest cards. Pokémon with a stat total under 300 win only 23.6% of their rounds on average.
  • 📈 Stats decide the card. A card’s stat total predicts its win rate almost perfectly (correlation 0.98). The average stat total explains the generation gap: about 380 for Gen 9 against about 340 for Gens 1 to 3.

Recommendations

  1. For a fair match, play a single generation or all generations: both sides draw from the same pool.
  2. For a challenge, pit an older generation against a newer one, and expect to lose about two games out of three.
  3. Gens 1 to 3 are balanced with each other: every pairing between them is within about 1.5 points of 50%.
  4. Build around Dragon and Steel types, and avoid Bug and Normal types when the matchup doesn’t help.

Tools & skills

JavaScript (Node.js simulation engine) · PokeAPI GraphQL · Monte Carlo simulation · data validation · Chart.js dashboard · segmentation by generation and type · game balance analysis

This study follows my original Gen 1 Pokémon Top Trumps analysis. Pokémon data from PokeAPI, collected on October 25, 2026. This is an independent fan project, not affiliated with Nintendo, Game Freak or The Pokémon Company.

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