This is a re-cap for the first Great Ball League Season of this season. Yeah, season in a season, it will sound confusing but trust me, that's just how it is here. Most won't have any idea what even a Great Ball League is so let me explain how our South East Asian circuit works.
2024-25 Season
- 3 Seasons in a Year
- Great Ball League -> Unlimited (Winner gets 30 LP)
- Ultra Ball League -> 3 per season (Winner gets 100 LP)
- Premier and Master Ball are once per Year
If you want to know more, you can watch this video.
So the Great Ball League is the smallest official events we have so far, but hey it awards points so people like me will try to join in. But these events also have promo cards just for entering the events so it will attract collectors or people who just want to make a quick buck out of these promo cards.
We've had 9 Great Ball Leagues so far and I wanted to do a short re-cap of all of them!
Great Ball League 1 - Goodness Gracious Games - 32 Players - 16th November 2024
Notes:
- This was the only Great Ball League event in the BRS-SRC format as Surging Sparks wasn't legal yet
- Terry backed up his 2nd place finish at the Premier Ball League with the 1st Singapore GBL win
- 3 of the 5 players who got the walk-in spots finished in the top 5 (Yu Xian, Wayne, Ricky)
- You can watch streamed games from this event here
Great Ball League 2 - Diamonji - 32 Players - 23rd November 2024
Points Scorers:
Notes:
- This was the first GBL to feature Surging Spark cards
- The top 5 finishers in this event were all walk-in players!
Great Ball League 3 - Brick's Play - 32 Players - 24th November 2024
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| Not confirmed but likely to be same list as his Top 8 list from Premier Ball |
Points Scorers:
Notes:
- Going into the last round, Benjamin was the only 4-0 player as the other 3-0 pairing ended in a DGL, Ben ended up beating Jun Hao to keep his unbeaten run
- You can watch streamed games from this event here
Great Ball League 4 - Pikku Play - 32 Players - 24th November 2024
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Points Scorers:
Notes:
- This was the only GBL that wasn't announced at the start of the season, so many players did not know it was even on the schedule
Great Ball League 5 - Cardboard Collectibles - 44 Players - 28th November 2024
Points Scorers:
- This was the first GBL to feature more than 32 players, and only two others events would do the same
- And with that in mind, this featured 6 Swiss rounds, instead of the usual 5
- Winston is the second player to win a GBL after winning the walk-in spot, the first being Ernest. And speaking of walk-in players, 6 of the top 10 finishers all were walk-in players
Great Ball League 6 - Agora Hobby - 64 Players - 30th November 2024
Winning Decklist: Lost Zone Box - Kaizer Sim
Points Scorers:
- This was the biggest GBL event so far, initially planned to have 66 players but ended up being 64 players, which meant a 6 round Swiss instead of 7
- 24 players won the walk-in slots for this event, the most of any so far!
- You can watch streamed games from this event here
Great Ball League 7 - ManaPro - 44 Players - 30th November 2024
Winning Decklist: Charizard ex/Pidgeot ex - Christopher Lim (no decklist sadly)
Points Scorers:
Notes:
- Chris won this event without playing his last round as the other 4-0 player had left before the start of the last round!
Great Ball League 8 - Happyland Collectibles - 32 Players - 1st December 2024
Points Scorers:
Notes:
- This was yet another event where there was only one 4-0 player going into the last round because once again a 3-0 pairing had a DGL. One of them was Samuel and he went on to beat the 4-0 player, Kelvin. This is so far the only event with no players with an X-0 score.
Great Ball League 9 - Active Game Collection - 32 Players - 1st December 2024
Winning Decklist: Lugia VSTAR/Archeops - Bjorn Soh
Points Scorers:
Notes:
- Thanks to Bjorn's win, Lugia broke the streak of a different deck winning every GBL event up to that point.
- Bjorn winning also keeps a very funny streak going in Singapore. Since the transition from TPCi to TPC Japan, except for Isogai, no player has won a Town League/Great Ball League event more than once! We're talking strictly non-Major official events here. And if you're curious:
- 2021-22 (Town League winners)
- Choy Kwok Hoe
- Jeremy Leong
- Gabriel Tjandra
- 2022-23 (Town League winners)
- Lim Jit Min
- Mickey Chia
- Marcus Tan
- Melvin Chan
- Amir Rafie
- Tan Yong Siang
- Teo Yuan Shao
- Jason Phua
- 2023-24 (Town League winners)
- Devansh Sunil Koppar
- Dennis Piay
- Fumiyuki Okunishi
- Koh Wee Siang
- Fayyadh Salleh
- Keenan Jacob Victor
- Jackson Tham
- Raymond Huynh
- Bryan Quah
- Jesse Chow
- The likelyhood of this stat going is quite low as there are 9 Great Ball Leagues usually so there's always a chance a player from this list on the winners of the first few GBLs might be the second to take two official league wins
Fun Stats about the Great Ball League Events!
First up, which decks has won a GBL event so far?
Well we already know this from looking at the graphics earlier and from my notes but yes Lugia is the only repeat winner.
Next up is the fun new stat to keep an eye on, the Top 2 finishers, aka the Pidgeot ex promo winners!
Gholdengo with 3 leads the way and it's all thanks to Terry, winning one GBL and finishing 2nd in two others. Lugia and and Regidrago are also tied at 3 but since Gholdengo had the same guy winning, if I had to give one the outright lead, that would be it.
Next up is the Top 4 finishers, this one is more to show which decks have been doing better than others in our area. Keep in mind it's Bo1, 25 minute swiss, no ties.
Then we've got the top 8 finishers.
Pretty much the same story as Top 4, Charizard leads the way, Regidrago, Lugia and Ancient Box still not far off, but more Lost Box in Top 8 than Top 4 which for me is normal in Singapore.
And now for the Top 16 finishers, aka every deck that scored points in a GBL event in this first season
Now that we've seen what has done well, what about who was playing what decks?
Ok I got a bit lazy for this one and didn't put the Pokémon graphics on here but there are some interesting stuff to look here. Charizard being the most popular deck surprises me a bit, but then again it does makes sense as to why it was the best performing deck if it has that many people playing it.
Raging Bolt/Teal Mask Ogerpon being the 2nd most popular deck doesn't surprise me. What also doesn't surprise me is that it didn't do as well as the other popular decks, I've never been a fan of that deck and it continues to show. Regidrago, Gardevoir and Lost Box make up the top 5 most popular deck. Drago is the BDIF so naturally people will play it and Gardevoir and Lost Box have been local favorites here in Singapore.
Ceruledge is the next most popular and whether it's the fact that it's the shiny new toy or that it's just easy to play, I can't quite understand why it's so popular, it's not very good sadly. Decks that I thought would see more play would be Lugia, Miraidon and Terapagos but I guess the die hards are the only ones still kicking with them.
EDIT
I completely forgot to add one very important thing! How the points have been affected since the GBL events! So here's a picture of the standings before the first GBL, which is just the standings from Premier Ball League event.
And here's the standings after the 9 GBL events:
Terry is now leading the way but it shows how the lottery can really hit many players, a number of them didn't even get to more than one GBL. But the top 5 do feature the 4 guys who finished top 4 at the Premier Ball League, so it shows the points for the bigger events do matter. Ben finished Top 8 and won a GBL and that is why he's jumped into the Top 4.
I hope I can do more of these for the rest of the season and any feedback on what else I can improve on or what else I could show would be greatly appreciated. Had this idea in my mind from the start of the season and I'm still trying to figure out the best way to showcase how our Great Ball League events have gone so far. Thanks for reading!
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