Our first of two major events of the year here in Singapore just wrapped up a few days ago, the 2025-26 Singapore Premier Ball League. A few changes from last year's event, the main one being that the two finalists would earn their Worlds invite for the 2026 World Championships in San Francisco! The other being that instead of a Top 32 Cut, now it was a Top 128 cut!
For those who don't know, my aim for this season is to try my best to get my 2nd Worlds invite, just because it's in San Francisco, a place I'm quite familiar with. Plus it gives me a good excuse to go visit my cousins so why not! And I've yet to play in an official event in the US and San Fran is probably the easiest place for me to go from here in Singapore so I have to try my best.
The format for this event is a bit weird. While everyone else is playing SVI to MEG, we're playing that plus the cards that came out from the Mega Diancie ex and Mega Gengar ex start decks. So these cards which are coming out in the latest Phantasmal Flames set were legal for play for our last UBL and this PBL, aka this was the PTCGO "ladder format":
- Mega Diancie ex
- Meloetta
- Milcery
- Zacian
- Wondrous Patch
- Mega Gengar ex
- Toxtricty
- Seviper
- Sableye
- Dawn
- Grimsley's Move
- Punk Helmet
The biggest threats are Mega Diancie ex which is an upgrade for Gardevoir ex and because it's weak to Metal typing, it means stuff like Charizard ex, Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex and Mega Absol ex can't just take easy KOs on it. The other big card from this portion is Dawn which I suspected some Dragapult decks and a few Charizard decks would play.
What to Play?
Well I do have a comfort deck in Charizard ex/Pidgeot, something I've played for 2 years now, the issue was that Dragapult ex/Dusknoir is still way too popular here in Singapore, Garde now having Diancie makes the matchup more even and Gholdengo ex is a bit trickier now with the Lunatone/Solrock package. So I tried out 4 different decks for the 4 Ultra Ball Leagues leading up to the Premier Ball League to see which one would work best.
Ultra Ball League #1 S1
Deck: Charizard ex/Pidgeot ex/Dusknoir
Score: 4-4 (80th/278) +5 LP
Ultra Ball League #2 S1
Deck: Joltik Box
Score: 4-3 (56th/224) +6 LP
Ultra Ball League #3 S1
Deck: Gholdengo ex/Lunatone
Score: 6-2 (18th/191) +9 LP
Ultra Ball League #4 S1
Deck: Dragapult ex/Dusknoir
Score: 5-3 (47th/274) +6 LP
After playing all 4 I made notes of what I thought of the decks and if I would consider them for the PBL:
Charizard/Pidgeot
+ Well it's my comfort deck,
+ And people always say playing the deck you know the best is better than playing the best deck most of the time
- Most of my losses were out of my control (Bad prizing vs both Grimm and Garde, first Grimm I had a chance to win but my Iono got him Boss, and Pult was last round)
- Still some really bad matchups to consider, especially since Singaporeans love playing Pult
Joltik Box
+ Good into a lot of the expected meta
- Problem is they can still play around the deck since the gameplan is quite linear
Gholdengo
+ Seems like the best deck to counter the top two (Pult and Garde)
- Just still not as familiar with the deck as I'd like to be
Dragapult
+ Can outplay any deck
- But I felt like I kept misplaying with the deck, not playing it optimally since, like Gholdengo, I'm not as familiar with it as I am with Zard
Statistically, it seemed like Gholdengo was the best play for the event, but my heart still wanted to play Charizard/Pidgeot (with Dusknoir). So I went to my excel spreadsheet to figure out some numbers and this is what came out of it:
- Alakazam (what the heck are you doing here?)
- Gholdengo
- Ceruledge
- Charizard/Pidgeot
- Raging Bolt/Teal Mask Ogerpon
First of all, Alakazam numbers has to be fake, how is it the top when it hard loses to the two top decks Pult and Garde? Big nope from me. I don't have Ceruledge and never liked playing Raging Bolt so it was back to the two I was pondering on for the past month or so, Gholdengo or Charizard.
I did have a few other options, one being a 4-Dawn Charizard/Noctowl list that Oscar Madsen had been working on. It was high up on my list at one point after testing the deck so I was rushing to find myself 4 Dawns to play for the event but I never did get any Dawns before the PBL so I had to give up on the idea.
But then my brother made a really interesting point. "Isn't this the last time you can play Charizard ex in a major event?". And he's right. Because my next planned major event is Melbourne Regional, which is in May, which is AFTER rotation hits so this is my last chance to play Charizard ex/Pidgeot and my hope was to finally get a Limitless entry page with my favourite deck! I've got five on there, just not one with Charizard ex/Pidgeot ex so far so this was my last shot at fixing that.
The List - Crafted by Stats
So Charizard ex/Pidgeot ex it is. But what's the 60? Well I could easily just copy paste one of the top performing Zard lists and run with it, but it's me we're talking about and I like to see numbers and stats on what cards are doing well and what numbers of certain cards I should be running. So this is what I did on my excel spreadsheet, to find the most optimal Charizard/Pidgeot/Dusknoir list:
- Charmeleon
- Was going for the 2 100 HP but the last second switch in my list was to go with the 1-1 split thinking there might be a couple of TM Devo decks. Never did run into any of them so this split didn't matter
- Other Energy
- Went with Mist for pretty much the same reason as above, an out vs TM Devo, Clutch plays and Munkidori confusion plays
- Pidgey
- Also went with the 1-1 split, didn't want two 50 HP birds because of the Dusclops threat
- Pidgeotto
- 90 HP since it can survive a hit from Solrock with Vit Band
- Alternate Attacker
- Chi-Yu felt the best choice with Gholdengo's growing presence in the meta
- Shaymin
- Definitely needed it with Gardevoir likely the most played deck and good into Raging Bolt and Tera Box too
- It took the tech spot in my deck, my other consideration was Budew, especially for mirror
- ACE Spec
- I'm still a fan of Max Belt, especially now that Mega Diancie is in the meta and it makes it KOing that much easier as it'll likely have 350 HP
- And with that choice, it gave me a 2nd slot in the deck for a tech choice or a consistency booster -> the 4th Ultra Ball which for me is a must anyway
- Gust Option
- I was initially going with a 3 Boss 1 Counter Catcher split but after talking to my friend Luke Morsa, we figured that would only be good against Gardevoir, so went back to the 2-2 split and I'm kinda glad I did as Catcher saved me a lot of times during the event
- 2nd Stadium
- Town Store as an extra out to get TM Evolution if Arven is not a choice I can use, and also for late game Max Belt and just generally an extra stadium bump
And thus the 60 I played:
Also just for fun, I'd like to point out my card art choices because that's a fun one to talk about!
And if you're wondering, yes I played a full art Briar and the secret art Dusknoir just for prize checking purposes, because some of my games will come down to needed a combination featuring those two cards. As for Pidgeotto, that's my #1 priority when it comes to using TM evolution so the green background really stands out. Pidgeot? I've always used that one.
The only yellow bordered cards in my decks are my two gusting options (Boss and Counter Catcher) along with Ultra Ball and Rare Candy, the pieces I need to get Pidgeot and Charizard up, so they're the most important stuff I need to look through when I'm doing my deck searches. Everything else is just normal.
Premier Ball League 2025-26
Now onto the event!
R1 W vs Ronjo
I went: 1st
Deck: Gholdengo ex/Energy Search Pro
Their final Score: 0-3 Drop (563rd)
He had a super slow start, just a Fezandipit in the active and a Togepi on the bench while I had set a Duskull and Charmander down. I already had Charizard, Arven and Dusclops in hand so it was game. Pop the Dusclops on Togepi, he takes a prize, I find Rare Candy for Zard, and do 210 on Fez, game is over within 3 minutes.
I will say however, this dude weirded me out. When I shuffled his deck, he told me "please don't shuffle my deck that way, it's disrespectful". Brother, if you choose to go to an OFFICIAL event and play your blinged arse cards in them, I will shuffle them however I want, I don't give a shit if your cards cost $5 or or $5000, they're still cards meant to be played at the end of the day. So that did annoy me asking me not to shuffle, especially calling it disrespectful. That's a first!
R2 W vs David Lim
I went: 2nd
Deck: Dragapult ex/Charizard ex
Their final Score: 1-2 Drop (379th)
Nice fella! He told me he had to leave later on to go on a holiday trip to Malaysia so he would give me the win which is nice. I still wanted to play to practice at least, and it was an interesting game. I was not expecting to see Pult Zard even though it was a last minute consideration for myself too haha.
He got KOs early on with Pult and a late game Iono + Max Belt got me back into the game and the late hand disruption bought me enough time to close the game out while he couldn't set up a 2nd attacker quick enough.
2-0, good start so far!
R3 W vs Koh Jun Yong
I went: 1st
Deck: Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex
Their final Score: 5-2 (67th)
Grimm is typically a very bad matchup for Zard but from the way he played, I could tell he was a newer player and didn't know the matchup that well so I did my usual, target down his Froslass and for some reason he never went to build a 2nd one up. He went quite aggressive with Grimmsnarl so Max Belt ended up getting me the last 4 prizes on two of his Grimms.
3-0 start. I was feeling good, I didn't expect to have a good run with how my testing games had gone the week leading up to the event, I was losing more games than I was winning so this was the confidence booster I needed. And then R4 happens.
R4 L vs Sebastian Fok
I went: 2nd
Deck: Gardevoir ex/Flutter Mane
Their final Score: 6-1 (20th)
First friendly fire of the day, and I knew Seb was likely to play Garde and my suspicions were true when he flipped over Ralts. I went 2nd, did my first deck search to get Arven and TM Evo to get my Pidgeotto set up....and it's prized. But wait...
...where are my Charizards???? They were both prized! And I saw a Super Rod prized too which is something I really needed in this matchup. I got a good chuckle out of this but I was dying inside, how am I supposed to be a Gardevoir deck without my main attacker? So I decided, I guess I'm now a Pidgeot deck that will just keep spamming Dusknoir. The problem is, as mentioned, one Super Rod is prized.
This was a long game as expected, I mean Garde is a slow deck but due to how I had to play, I was forced to take it slow too and build up my board. The first prize I took from my Dusk Bomb was Pidgeotto to help me set up two Pidgeots (the first one will go down anyway since it's attacking).
I got my first Zard as my 3rd prize, from a Dusknoir bomb (I had to use my only Rod to get it) and started to make a bit of a comeback but it was a little too late, he had his board set up to take 3 prizes. I'm still happy with how I played that game, somehow almost winning it with no Zards around until my 3rd prize was taken.
3-1, still in it.
R5 L vs Craig Ong
I went: 1st
Deck: Dragapul ex/Dusknoir
Their final Score: 4-3 (134th)
I knew Craig was on Dragapult Dusknoir as I had sat next to him in an earlier round so of course I was a bit worried, it is THAT matchup. There was quite a lengty delay due to a wrongly submitted score, about 20 minutes. I went first, I got a Buddy-Buddy Poffin to get my stuff set up, and hopefully not prize anything silly, check my deck and errr....
....where are my Charmeleons??? They were both prized! Again? The one match I can't use Rare Candy in because they'll attack with Budew, I need TM Evo to get into my Charmeleons and I can't do that when they're both prized! But it gets worse, I noticed my 3rd Charmander is prized too. Typically in this matchup I want all 3 Charmanders on board, as they tend to do the usual board wipe and might go 2-3 prizes up, so if I can get my Charizard up after that, I should be in a good spot.
But guess what? Even with all of that, I still managed to put myself in a decent spot in this match, Pidgeot being my MVP for the 2nd game in a row taking out some big KOs. But not seeing a Charmeleon or being able to set up a Charmander at any point of the game just killed me off. I did get to within 2 prizes left to win that game somehow! So I was happy again with how I played despite all the rubbish prizing, found my route to win and sure it wasn't enough but I had to give it a try right?
3-2, which is a dangerous spot to be in with 2 rounds left to go. Like last year, anyone with an x-3 score is dropped from the event and I've not dropped from an official event in ages, maybe 2018 was the last time? I didn't want this to be the first one. And yes even when I start 0-3 in GBLs, I will still play it out because it's not easy to get into these events anymore so to me, it's a privilege to be able to play in these events so why ever drop.
R6 W vs Justin Pang
I went: 2nd
Deck: Raging Bolt ex/Teal Mask Ogerpon ex
Their final Score: 3-3 Drop (230th)
I can't lie, I breathe a sigh of relief when he flipped over Raging Bolt ex as his starter, I knew this matchup very well. And it went as I expected. I set up a Zard and a Chi Yu to bait him into attack Zard which he did and Chi-Yu just cleaned house and took 4 prizes for me with my 2nd Zard taking the last 2 prizes.
4-2, the match is now the win and in to make Top 128 cut.
R7 W vs Bryan Wong
I went: 1st
Deck: Blissey ex/Centiskorch
Their final Score: 4-3 (192nd)
And of course it's a friendly fire in the most important round of the day. Bryan is a homie but I had no idea what he was playing. I was a bit worried because I knew he had been doing well with Yanmega ex which is not my best matchup. He told me his deck had a horrible matchup to Zard and flips over Sizzlipede (OMG CENTISKORCH WOOHOO) and yes, I figured out it was Blissey it does have a bad Zard matchup. The problem is...
...I started Fezandipiti ex. That's the only thing in my hand going first. I have no Turo in this list. Blissey does 180 and since he was playing Centiskroch, he can easily get damage on his Munki to move damage and KO the Fez so he has a free two prizer on board. This was a scary matchup to leave Duskulls or Pidgeys on board because they were easy targets too.
It turned out to be a long grindy game and we went to time. Bryan had the outs to win but sadly messed up, he had KOed something and tried to Counter Catcher but we were equal on prizes, then forgot Mega Absol's first attack says the active needs to have 60 damage counter to KO it, my Charizard had 90. Then he forgot that Absol's second attack needed two Dark energy, not one. It was painful to watch because I've been in that spot where I'm nervous and making mistakes I shouldn't be doing so I tried to comfort him after the game because it's happened to me before. Don't want to see that happen to a friend too. I tried to lift his spirits up after the game, like I said he's a homie after all.
5-2 and I made Top 128 cut as the 59th seed! Initially it said I was 58th and I asked around to know what my Top 128 opponent was playing, and I heard it was Garde Jelli which sure can be painful but I know if I can set up, I should be able to win. Then the order got switched around a bit and now I'm 59th seed and asking around, I found out my opponent was playing Zard Pidgeot.
Oh great a mirror match, just what I needed. Especially with how my Top 32 game went at the Master Ball League last season, that was also a mirror match (Pult Zard) and i dead drew both times.
Top 128 L vs Eng Thia Kang
I went: 2nd
Deck: Charizard ex/Pidgeot ex
Their final Score: 6-3 (Lost in Top 64 to Jeremy Leong)
And it happened again. I had the slower start despite going 2nd. My opponent only had a Pidgey and Charmander on board and I was hopeful for the best even though my start wasn't the greatest. He got a Pidgeot ex up and a Charizard ex up Turn 2. I wasn't that worried because I know in the mirror match, I'm not supposed to attack first so I didn't mind him doing all of this because that meant I could get the first hit on his Charizard ex, good for my prize trade.
But things just got weirder from there. I was not drawing into stuff I needed to set up the perfect board state. I even had to boss a Duskull to prevent him from getting a 4-prize turn which would kill me off. And since he used a Dusknoir to KO one of my Charmeleons first, I was down to 4 prizes and he's got a damaged Charizard still on board. I went to search through his discard to see what he might need and noticed he played 7 Fire energy which was really weird, which Zard list does that?
My biggest issue is that I still didn't have the perfect combination of cards to pull off the 4-prize turn combo for game. The biggest issue being that my Fezandipiti was still prized so I couldn't draw extra cards so I had only Pidgeot to help me get one card per turn. Normally I'd want the Fez in there so I could have more options and hopefully draw into stuff like Super Rod and Poffin to set my Charmanders up to become Zards later on. But all that was impossible when all I could rely on was Fez.
There was a turn where I think I misplayed a bit, I had Briar in hand but nothing else was helpful to help me set up my board so I went for Lillie to draw more stuff out, but I had almost the same hand but no Briar so now I gave myself even more work to do to pull off the 4-prize turn.
So it came down to the last turn of the game. He took out my Zard, my board is Pidgeot ex, Charmander, Tatsugiri, Dusclops and a Pidgeotto (I was half expecting him to go after my first Pidgeot with his super fast start so I had to set the second one up just in case while he only had one bird and I never got to punish him for doing that). On his board there are two easy targets for me to gust up, and his Charizard had 240 damage on it, which means Dusknoir KOs it.
But I had a really tough choice to make with my draws in hand. All I had was Iono, Lillie, Candy and some rubbish cards. Do I Lillie and try to draw into any combination of Candy, Zard, Catcher and Dusknoir and leave Pidgeot to get me the last part? Do I play it safe and just get my Zard up, Iono him, hit the active and force him to set up the Zard. At this point I still didn't know what Ace SPEC he was playing too. The problem with the Iono play was, because he had Pidgeot AND Fez, he can easily set up a Zard and get Boss to KO as he hadn't even used one yet.
Play it safe, or take the risk? My whole tournament run was on the line from this one decision.
I decided to take the risk but also using my Pidgeot first to set up my Zard to gurantee a KO and thin my deck out in the hopes I would draw into any outs to a Dusknoir and one of my two Counter Catchers. So I used Lillie and prayed.
I got the Counter Catcher but no outs to a Dusknoir. Now I was feeling defeated because even if I hit into the Zard, his hand size was way too big to easily set up a Zard and get Boss to KO me. So now I had another decision, KO the Zard and try to make him have all the answers to KO my Zard back (or anything on the bench) or KO the Pidgeot to make sure he doesn't have the exact answer he needs to KO back.
This is where I misplayed and went for Pidgeot. I should have gone for the Zard and make him have the response back. The problem was, I had already seen him use Super Rod, so he'll have Fire energies and a Zard. No Boss used so I have easy targets for him. And sure enough he shows me a Town Store to get Max Belt.
Lost in Top 128. That hurts. Like I mentioned previously, my whole target this year was to get my Worlds invite to go to San Francisco so to lose in the first round just destroyed me. A went and hid somewhere just to reflect on what happened. Did I make the right call to go with Lillie? Should I have gone for Iono? Should I have used an earlier Lillie in the hopes to draw more useful cards? Should I have KOed his Zard and not the Pidgeot?
Still a long season to go so I will need to be better for the 2nd and 3rd part of this season, I cannot keep making silly mistakes that will end up screwing me over. And since I didn't make it to Top 64, I sadly did not get the PBL playmat and it looked really nice. It did annoy me when one guy kept asking me if I wanted to touch it. I do touch stuff I didn't earn.
But hey on the positive, I finally got my first top cut finish with Charizard/Pidgeot after two years of playing and I was doubly excited because finally I'll have my favourite deck featured on my Limitless page. Woohoo!
What's Next?
Well what is next? We have a new set coming out soon in Phantasmal Flames, but I don't think it really changes the meta all that much. Garde, Pult and Gholdengo are still going to be up there. I still have high hopes for Charizard especially now that we have Battle Cage to deal with the spread peeps. Mega Lopunny ex is easily the best new attacker in the game, it can be in pretty much any deck because of it's tying and two amazing attacks.
I can't wait to play in the new format. The problem is....we don't know when our next events are. No dates have been announced for our next Great Ball League or Ultra Ball League. From what I heard it might be mid-December which is not good for me, because that might mean I have to miss more GBLs and I already missed a lot in Season 1.
As for the future, well I have played my last major event with Charizard ex so I was hoping to give it a good sendoff but alas was not to be. My next major is likely to be Melbourne Regional, my one TPCi event of the year, and bo3 so actual fun games to be played. But post rotation so I need to find a new deck to play too. But I did play Dragapult Dusknoir and made Day 2 last year.
Whatever the case is, I hope I can repeat that run. As for the season, aim is still to be at least top 8 in the standings to get the invite, currently I'm like mid-20s area. More work to be done to achieve the goal. Also congrats to my homies Yu Xian and Jeremy for their finals placing in the PBL, two great players and two former Worlds competitors so it makes me happy to see the best getting the top results. Thanks for reading!
