Season 2 of the 2025-26 season here in Singapore is done and we're straight into Season 3 already with GBLs happening this weekend. But I still wanted to do a quick re-cap of the previous season, where I played Dawn Zard for all but one event, and that one event sure enough was my worst performance of the whole lot because I played Pult Dusknoir, what's new haha.
Dawn Zard exploded onto the scene ever since Nicolai Stiborg's win in Stuttgart back in December, the first event to feature the new Phantasmal Flames cards and also the last TPCi event of the year 2025.
But Dawn Zard isn't new to me, I've actually been testing it out for a while now and had a list ready for the Premier Ball League back in November, big thanks to Oscar Madsen for helping out with the list and all the times I've been testing the deck the past few months.
But I didn't get any of my 4 Dawns in time to play it. But I did for the start of the first GBL of the season and I would end up playing it for the whole season. And I think I can safely say it was my best "season" so far since this new format of seasons within a season started here in TPC Southeast Asia.
The Dawn Zard Lists
I tried all sorts of builds of Dawn Zard but these 13 were the ones I put more time with and tested games online with. There were a few others were I tested maybe a few games with but didn't bother to follow up with after a while so I didn't keep my record with them. But for these lists, I've got at least 300+ games recorded on my excel for them!
But here's the first one and this was before PFL was released, just to show the first build of Dawn Zard and what I wanted to play for our PBL:
v1.1 - My initial PBL 2025 list
v1.2 - Stuttgart Winning List
55 Games on Record: 41-14 (74.55% Win Rate)
The base list, the only thing I didn't like was not having Pidgeotto against item lock decks. It was a good list to learn how the deck worked and all the ins-and-outs of the deck and I picked it up really quickly.
v1.3 - My edit aka the 3 GBL winning list
130 Games on Record: 93-37 (71.54% Win Rate)
Probably the list I spent the most time with, I played this list for 8 of the GBLs I was in and just once in a UBL. I honestly didn't miss the 4th Nest Ball all that much but I did understand needed it for more consistency as I did have a few too many bad starts which got me to change it after a long while. This list did just win the last UBL of our latest season (2.4) thanks to Ian so it still works!
v1.4 - Oscar's fun list that won a Cup
11 Games on Record: 5-6 (45.45% Win Rate)
It was a fun idea but I've got more losses than wins with this deck so need I say more? The Clefairy tech sadly didn't help out the Pult matchup, did help out with stuff like Absol and Khan at least!
v1.5 - Unfair Stamp build
5 Games on Record: 3-2 (60% Win Rate)
I saw this Unfair Stamp build going around and I had to try it out. I didn't like it as much as the Prime Catcher build, I've just never been a big fan of Unfair Stamp because my opponents somehow always draws out of it so I've never trusted it. I'd rather play a more useful ace spec that helps me win than a card that attempts to help make my opponent lose and usually never does that.
v1.6 - Azul's edit from the winning Stuttgart list
7 Games on Record: 5-2 (71.43% Win Rate)
Anytime Azul GG is testing a deck I like, I'll be paying close attention to it! So of course I had to try out his version of the list. It was fine but again, I didn't really like the Unfair Stamp version of the deck. And my biggest issue with the deck was Ditto just not being Klefki, I was missing it a few times and I never really found the need to use Ditto in most of my games, it felt a bit useless when we had so many outs to get Terapagos ex down anyway.
v1.7 - Jackson's list
11 Games on Record: 9-2 (81.81% Win Rate)
When a top Zard player is talking about the list, you better listen to him so sure enough I paid close attentio to Jackson Ford's guide when he spoke about Dawn Zard. It was just the one change and similar to what I had been running but keeping the Nest Ball and cutting the 2nd Iono. Not sure why I didn't put in more game time with this list, it was doing really well for me.
v1.8 - Korea winning list
25 Games on Record: 20-5 (80% Win Rate)
I saw the winning list from the Korean League, and saw just one Fan Rotom which made me think....wait why did I do this the whole time? My first Dawn Zard list only had the one Fan Rotom and it was working fine initially anyway! This list got me very close to a Top 8 finish at the 3rd UBL.
v1.9 - Trying out Black Belt's Training in online events
19 Games on Record: 15-4 (78.95% Win Rate)
I had seen someone testing Black Belt's Training in Dawn Zard and it got me thinking, was that the missing piece I needed? In theory it felt like a good idea, being able to KO Gholdengo much earlier which can be an issue sometimes and also KOing Absol out of nowhere is always a nice surprise. So I really liked the idea and might explore it more going into the new format. I got 5th out of 289 players in an online tournament with this list, my best "big online tourney" result in a while.
v2.0 - Birmingham Top 8 list aka the one with 1 Pidgey
31 Games on Record: 23-8 (74.19% Win Rate)
So I knew about this change before this event happened as Oscar had mentioned about it. It felt alright but I was a bit worried since I'm playing in a bo1 format and prizing the one Pidgey can be quite painful. After a while I got used to it and it actually didn't feel as bad as I thought, except against decks like Gardevoir since you can't just search out a Jet out of nowhere with no Pidgeot in play.
v2.1 - Merida Top 32 list (Waterpon build but no Sparkling Crystal with 1-0-1 Dusknoir)
4 Games on Record: 1-3 (25% Win Rate)
Ever since I got back from my holiday trip in Japan, suddenly all my friends were on Dawn Zard too but not the one I was playing, they were on the Waterpon build. I had tested it before and never really liked it so I had to try it out again. And well I was right, I still didn't like it.
v2.2 - Toronto 19th list (Waterpon build with Sparkling Crystal, no Dusknoir)
6 Games on Record: 3-3 (50% Win Rate)
I tried out the Sparkling Crystal build and I still didn't like it. My biggest issue was the fact that it was quite a useless Ace Spec and this build felt more like a cheese to win kinda deck. The Munkidori + Psyduck was nice but I still lost to a Pult deck with them.
v2.3 - Toronto 25th list (With Jamming tower)
6 Games on Record: 5-1 (83.33% Win Rate)
I gave up on the Waterpon build, I just didn't like it. I stumbled upon this build with 3 stadiums which made me wonder if that was the answer to my Watchtower issue. It honestly felt alright when I tested it, but I didn't like that this list had no Klefki. The Jamming Tower did come in handy in certain situations which got me thinking of whether I could explore with it more in the future.
2025-26 Season 2 - 11 GBLs + 4 UBLs
As you might remember, I've already spoken about the first few events that happened so I won't talk much about those 3 GBL wins since it's already on this post.
GBL #13 Season 2 @ Dueller's Point - 3rd/48 - 4/1/0 (+12 LP)
- R1 W Gholdengo ex/Lunatone
- R2 L Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex/Froslass
- R3 W N's Zoroark ex
- R4 W Ceruledge ex/Lunatone
- R5 W Gholdengo ex/Joltik Box
I thought my R2 loss to Grimm would cost me a good points day but thankfully my opponent did well and her score dragged me up to a 3rd place finish, and 12 more points which helps my points tally and my push for the worlds invite! Every other game other than that one went really well for me.
After that I missed a number of GBLs because I was in Japan for 2 weeks. So my first one back was literally hours after landing back in Singapore.
GBL #23 Season 2 @ Card Connect - 4th/40 - 5/1/0 (+12 LP)
- R1 L N's Zoroark ex
- R2 W Gholdengo ex/Lunatone
- R3 W Mega Lopunny ex/Dusknoir
- R4 W Dragapult ex/Dusknoir
- R5 W Dragapult ex/Dusknoir
- R6 W Festival Lead Box
This was a bit of a lucky run for me. The first game was not so lucky, I got hit with that racist card Watchtower when I prized one of my stadiums and just got stuck for too long. I needed a lot of luck to win my R3 game and I started off very slow and I got lucky that both my Pult opponents didn't have the best of set-ups/misplayed. And the festival box I had to go outside the box and play very differently to squeak a win out of that one. And thankfully my efforts weren't wasted with another Top 4 finish!
GBL #26 Season 2 @ Deckard Gaming - 3rd/32 - 4/1/0 (+12 LP)
- R1 W Cynthia's Garchomp ex
- R2 W Dragapult ex/Dusknoir
- R3 W Gardevoir ex/Jellicent ex
- R4 L Charizard ex/Noctowl
- R5 W Gholdengo ex/Lunatone
This was the first GBL in the whole season where I finally made a change to my list, cutting an Iono for the 4th Nest Ball to help with some awkward starts I've been having. This was the first event where I finally lost in the mirror match, but it was to Ian who had also won a few GBLs with the list I gave him, I had a slow start and I just couldn't catch up in time. I once again needed some luck in the last round vs Gholdengo to get the win and luckily my opponent didn't get the Turo he needed.
GBL #29 Season 2 @ Concept City - 14th/32 - 3/2/0
- R1 L Alakazam/Dudunsparce
- R2 W Slaking ex/Pidgeot ex
- R3 W Charizard ex/Noctowl
- R4 L Charizard ex/Noctowl/Wellspring Ogerpon ex
- R5 W Mega Lopunny ex/Dusknoir
My worst performance with Dawn Zard so far. I had a complete dead hand vs Alakazam, having to lose 4 prizes after just 3 turns and me not doing much is not a good thing, especially with just 1 iono in the list. My other lost was to the Waterpon version of Dawn Zard, I had another slow start and I just couldn't comeback in time. Just the way it goes sometimes.
UBL #1 Season 2 @ Aloft Novena - 15th/299 - 6/2/0 (+12 LP)
- R1 W Bye
- R2 W Mega Kangaskhan ex/Bouffalant
- R3 W Dragapult ex/Dusknoir
- R4 L Gholdengo ex/Lunatone
- R5 L Greninja ex/Pidgeot ex
- R6 W Flareon ex/Noctowl
- R7 W Raging Bolt ex/Teal Mask Ogerpon ex
- R8 W Raging Bolt ex/Teal Mask Ogerpon ex
This one was a weird event, I had like 5 bad starts and survived 3 of them. But of course the other 2, I just got done in. The Gholdengo played just drew literally everything they needed and I only got my first prize after they had taken 3, so I didn't really have much of a shot of winning that one. The Greninja game was painful, that hand didn't look that good so I chose not to Iono them and it cost me, and they literally had everything in hand to board wipe my two Manders and it cost me the game and I couldn't comeback from that.
Shoutout to Klefki for winning me in R3 and R7 games! I chose to play the one Fan Rotom for this event and honestly, other than one game when it was prized, I didn't mind this change all that much...initially. But hey finally my first Top 16 finish at an Ultra Ball League event!
GBL #30 Season 2 @ Deckard Gaming - 4th/32 - 4/1/0 (+12 LP)
- R1 W N's Zoroark ex
- R2 L Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex/Froslass
- R3 W Roaring Moon ex/Brute Bonnet
- R4 W N's Zoroark ex
- R5 W Dragapult ex/Dusknoir
Another GBL at Deckard, another Top 4 finish but this time I didn't get the points since I had hit my BFL so I needed a Top 2 finish at a GBL to score points. My one loss was to Grimm, again. Another slow start and not much I could have done about it.
Shoutout to my R4 opponent Zach who gave me the win even though he was in the better spot in that game (we went to time). He does have his Worlds invite already so that was a cool thing from him to do for me. Also another shoutout to Nick for winning this event with Dawn Zard, apparently he watched my video and it helped him out a lot so that was nice to hear!
UBL #2 Season 2 @ One Punggol - 28th/303 - 6/2/0 (+9 LP)
- R1 W Gholdengo ex/ESP
- R2 W Alakazam/Dudunsparce
- R3 L Gholdengo ex/Lunatone
- R4 W Ceruledge ex/Lunatone
- R5 W Gardevoir ex/Jellicent ex
- R6 L Gardevoir ex
- R7 W Gardevoir ex
- R8 W Charizard ex/Noctowl
This was the only UBL out of the four I was elected in. I had to use my bye for the first one just to guarantee I could play. Both my losses here really sucked. I dead drew once again to a Gholdengo player, but this time because he used Iono Turn 1 and gave me a hand full of nothing! The other loss to Gardevoir really annoyed me.
His watchtower came at an awkward time and he played a bit too slow to the point where I was rushing to take cards just to make sure we didn't get a DGL and I think that actually hurt me more as he ended up being in a position to win. Had I not rushed, perhaps I might have been in a position to win the game. Still I rather lose a game than take the DGL, my stance on it is still very clear.
UBL #3 Season 2 @ Nee Soon CC - 10th/300 - 7/1/0 (+12 LP)
- R1 W Gardevoir ex
- R2 L Dragapult ex/Dusknoir
- R3 W Ceruledge ex/Lunatone
- R4 W Raging Bolt ex/Teal Mask Ogerpon ex
- R5 W Mega Kangaskhan ex/Bouffalant
- R6 W Gardevoir ex
- R7 W Greninja ex/Pidgeot ex
- R8 W Gholdengo ex/Lunatone
So going into this event, I didn't even know what to expect since I had been ill for the past week, and I actually had a fever the night before the event so I didn't even know if I could make it! Trying to play 8 rounds and dealing with all those issues sucked, it was not fun at all. So imagine my surprise to go 7-1 while dealing with a headache, a runny nose and coughs!
My first X-1 score in a UBL but sadly, I only finished 10th because I lost in R2 and my Rounds 6 and 7 opponents dropped immediately after I beat them, can you people stop doing that! Not much I could have done in the R2 game, I just dead drew and my board got destroyed, especially since I prized Charmeleon in that game. The 1 Fan Rotom didn't cost me much but I did prize it one game where I finially realized how painful it can be since I can't search out for Noctowls from it too. Sure I can get the Basics out but without the Fan Rotom, we can't get the evolutions out as well.
UBL #4 Season 2 @ Nee Soon CC - 22nd/300 - 6/2/0 (+9 LP)
- R1 W Joltik Box
- R2 L Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex/Froslass
- R3 W Gardevoir ex
- R4 W Miraidon ex
- R5 W Tera Box
- R6 W Dragapult ex/Dusknoir
- R7 W Dragapult ex/Dusknoir
- R8 L Tera Box
What is it with me and losing to Grimms R2, it's the third time it's happened and once again I had a slow start and because I prized my other Boss, I couldn't deal with her 3rd Froslass and that cost me game. Also my R1 opponent hit a Watchtower Turn 1 which wasn't nice but in the end had to bump his own stadium just to use Bloodmoon Ursaluna which got me the win.
I played the 1 Pidgey list that got Top 8 in Birmingham and while the idea is nice in a Bo3 format, I didn't really like it in a Bo1 format, especially since I prized it in half my games!
The R8 loss to Tera Box hurt, especially as that was the win and in for top 8 and this time my resistance was good unlike yesterday so I knew if I won, I would finally get my first Top 8 finish at a UBL and score more points. But I went 2nd and had a slow start, slow enough that I knew I would be down 4 prizes before I could do anything. And sure enough that's what happened. A few misplays on my part too, especially when I should have attacked with Terapagos ex and not Charizard ex since it's quite easy for him to get Crispin + Vessel to get his Teal Mask Ogerpon set up in time (I wasn't expecting him to hit his 3rd Noctowl in a row).
That loss really hurt and took a lot out of me, I couldn't even physically move at one point because of how down I felt. I was so close and once again didn't get the job done. But still, to get Top 32 finishes in all 4 UBL events, going x-2 in all of them is a pretty decent achievement I guess. But it just isn't enough for me, I wanted to do more, and I needed to get Top 4 at the very least to be more safer in the fight for the Worlds invite.
As it stands, I'm now 7th in the standings, 5th of the 8 who don't have the invite already. It may look safe but I still don't feel it is just yet. After my 4th 12 point score, I hadn't added any yet and I'll need to win a few more GBLs in the 3rd season to be in a much safter spot to be in contention for Worlds in San Francisco, which has always been my plan. I didn't bother with the last two Worlds because I wasn't interested in going to either places but for SF, I have to try my best!
And just for fun, I wanted to share my record against the meta decks in this format for the games I have recorded:
Season 3 starts this weekend and I already know Dawn Zard is not in the best spot because Dragapult is about to be very popular, and that's one of my weaker matches. Another deck I expect to be stronger are the Froslass decks, and that's one of my weakest matchups across the board so I might have to start testing other decks to get those GBL wins I need to make it safely to the finish line. Thanks for reading!
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