I wanted to try something new for this season and do some sort of update post throughout the year to keep everyone updated on what's going on with our upcoming 2025/26 season. We finally got dates for the first events for the first season of 2025/26, which are the Great Ball League events.
As of right now, there's 22 Great Ball League events for the first season. (Updated as of Aug 23)
Great Ball League 2025-26
For those wondering what a Great Ball League is:
- Similar to League Challenge in a TPCi circuit as in
- 4-7 Swiss Rounds only
- Smallest amount of points you can earn from official events
- Winner earns 15 points and also a Round 1 bye for an Ultra Ball League event
- 2nd = 12 points
- Top 4 = 10 points
- Top 8 = 8 points
- Top 16 = 6 points if 33 or more players
- Depending on the size of the event, more players can earn the Round 1 bye UBL
- 16 to 64 = Only Winner earns the bye
- 65 to 128 = Top 2 players earns the bye
- 129 to 256 = Top 4 players earns the bye
And when are these happening?
The first GBL of the new season starts on the 6th of September at Games Haven in Ang Mo Kio and the last GBL of this first season is on the 5th of October at Bricks Play in Toa Payoh (the shop that is closest to me). That's one whole month between the two events.
On a personal note, why the heck are there events on the same day as the Singapore Grand Prix? Come on guys! At least Deckard is near the circuit.
So from the info we have, there have been some changes to how these GBL seasons are being done, so pros and some cons:
Pros:
- GBL events are now held within a 5 weekend period compared to the 2-3 weekend period last season
- Every GBL event is hosted by a different shop
- No event stacking on the same dated
The best new change I think is the fact that these GBLs are no longer crammed into a small time period. For me I always thought it was silly trying to squeeze in 30 events within 3 weekends, it made no sense so to see games happening on 5 weekends are great, more chances for people to play I feel. And this should be the way forward.
Also seeing every GBL being hosted by a different shop is great! The game is growing, the player base is growing and now so are the shops! Before Covid, we only had 3-4 shops hosting League Challenges, and now that number is almost quintupled (5 times)!
And thankfully we don't have many events stacking on the same day which was quite annoying to see last time out, we'd see 5-8 events all happening on the same damn day! At least now it's spread out.
Cons:
- Entry fees increased from $8 to $15
- No event bigger than 64 players
I'll touch on the second bit first, because it's a small issue, but the highest capacity for a GBL is only 64 players which means every GBL event for the first season, only the winning player will get the bye.
The second bit is the one that annoys me, why did it go up to $15 entry free for a small event like a GBL? I can only hazard a guess and think that's because of the increasing prices of these booster packs because of all the idiotic scalpers ruining the game for us, and now their stupidity has affected our events, thanks you bunch of idiots. Sucks to see but not much we can do about it. Heck even the Ultra Ball League entry fees have gone up to $25, which is the highest I've ever seen for any official event here in Singapore.
But no matter the pricing issue, I'm still going to play...that is if I get the chance to play. It's all still lottery based here. But if I do get in, I'm hoping to win one of these GBLs just to make sure I get into a UBL. My goals this season is a bit different to the last two years, aka go for my 2nd Worlds invite. I was never planning to make the trip to Hawaii or Anaheim, but San Francisco is a must for me! I love North California and I have family there so I can make it a trip to see them and hopefully go to Worlds too.
New Promo Cards
And with these GBLs, there's also new promo cards for playing in them and also for doing the best, usually the top 2.
Air Balloon is a great entry promo card, it's very playable and almost every day will likely have 1-3 of it so that's perfect for players.
Reshiram ex as the top placement promo card for this season puzzles me. Let me just set it straight, it's no Pidgeot ex. It's barely playable and even then, not many players will want this, so why this and not, geez I don't know, Fezandipiti ex or Latias ex.
But it's not just for the GBLs, we also got the see the new Ultra Ball League promo cards:
Wally is a new card releasing in the new Mega Evolution set and I'll be honest, I don't know much about it as I haven't paid any attention to the new set, but it seems ok I guess? But if we were to have a supporter card, why not Lille's Determination??? That card is already one of the best new supporter cards I've seen released in a long time. Some might even say one of the best supporter cards ever.
Zekrom ex is the top placement card and....I see what they're doing, they've got both of them as their promos this year. Now it makes sense haha. Still, would be nice to see something actually playable as the top prize promo, but that's just me.
And we already know what our Premier Ball League promos are, we've seen them a few weeks back:
I mean do I need to say anything more about Budew? The most played baby Pokémon in the game right now with the most used attack in Turn 1 in the game right now.
And Team Rocket's Mewtwo ex is quite the opposite. All the hype and it was a big flop, never showed up in the meta. Still a cool looking card I guess, it's a Mewtwo!
That's all I got for the time being, any suggestions to improve on this is very welcome, I'm just winging it at the moment and see how it goes. Thanks for reading!
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