2026 Birmingham Regionals Side Event Recap

Hello all! I'm a bit better-late-than-never with this recap, but hopefully I can at least manage to get this out before EUIC!

I took the trip to Birmingham Regionals on a Spectator pass with one goal in mind: maximising my Gym Leader Challenge side event attendance. For anyone considering doing the same, I'd definitely recommend it! Including the entry cost to each of the side events, buying those plus a spectator pass wound up being the same cost as a competitor pass. The main differences are that you avoid the hassle of the quick-time event that is securing a competitor ticket, and the obligation to turn up at the crack of dawn to waste time on the main event before you can play GLC!

With four Swiss events of three rounds each, that's 12 games to play - here's all the decks I played over the weekend and a brief overview of how things went with each of them:

Side Event Number 1: Grass

I chose to start out day one with a nice, solid, middle-of-the-road pick of Grass for the 11:00 side event, while I got a feel for the kinds of decks I might expect to see over the course of the weekend. This first event was, as you might expect, the lowest turnout of the weekend, but still managed to attract a solid crowd of about 15 players - not bad going!

Game one of my Birmingham "run" was - by complete coincidence - against a list of my own making! The deck in question was Swim Freely Water, which I would definitely wholeheartedly recommend on fun factor alone! Even if it's not the pinnacle of competitive power, the deck can still make things happen! In this game though, Torterra proved too large of a wall for the fish to overcome, and - I advance to 1-0.

My round two opponent was playing a Darkness deck, and held a dominant grip over the early game with Galarian Weezing, severely hindering my ability to set up. Once they overextended to take a Guzzlord KO though, breaking the Ability lock, I was able to fight my way back from a 2-5 Prize deficit to take another win - once again making good use of Torterra's prodigious HP total, going up to an overall record of 2-0!

For the final game of the morning event, however, my luck seemed to already have run out. Against the prolific Fighting "RDT" (Rocks, Dogi, Ting-Lu) deck with Rillaboom prized and Meganium quickly targeted down twice by my opponent, I was never even able to take a KO on Okidogi - a decisive loss, but far from the end for my GLC ambitions for the weekend!

Side Event Number 2: Dragon

This deck is one of my personal favourites - I've had it for a while now, and I feel like I know it through-and-through, weird inclusions and all. Garchomp's Sonic Slip feels cool as ever, and between them, N's Reshiram, Koraidon, and Kyurem can help keep an opponent on their toes a bit, just by being slightly less common picks. Really feels to me like the epitome of a list that aims to be able to take all comers!

This second side event - at 14:30 on day one - managed to double the player count of the first, at more than 30 participants! Of these, my first and second opponents both played their own iterations on the popular Dragobox archetype - an all-Basic Dragon list aiming to win through rapid aggression. Fortunately, with a quick start via Technical Machine: Evolution in game one, and the decision to play by my opponent in game two Colress's Tenacity - activating Kyurem's Plasma Bane Ability - I managed to win out over both of these opposing Dragon decks!

Game three of this event matched me against a low-cost Water deck, the pilot of which chose to play Colress - and expend their VS Seeker on recovering a different Supporter before I could even get the Kyurem to my hand - and didn't run Manaphy. Onwards and upwards to an overall record of 5-1 to close day 1!

Side Event Number 3: Metal

11:00, day two - meaning lots more players. Expecting stiff competition, but still wanting to play something a little more out-there, I settled on this Metal deck very much centred around the Archaludon from Phantasmal Flames as a bit of a meta call, expecting to see plenty of RDT Fighting in the field (I had actually lent one out too, though only after I'd already settled on my deck). Alas, of the 87 total players in this event, I wound up with the bye in round one, though this did give me the opportunity to thoroughly document...

The Metagame:

This event definitely shows a pretty typical split: Psychic, Water, and Fighting make up the most popular picks, in that order. Anecdotally from my snooping around, control-style strategies put in more of a showing than I might have expected at a side event, with Egg Mill Grass, Shock Lock Lightning, and even Fairy's Strongest Soldier with a Doll Stall strategy all represented at least once! The quality of decks overall was also very high, with many players utilising the top strategies you might expect to see at a higher-stakes tournament (no disrespect to the Prize Wall)!

In round two of this event, I came up against a Cherrim/Eldegoss Grass deck starring Wo-Chien - though with my Metal Pokémon largely having Resistance to Grass, this matchup definitely skewed heavily in my favour, even before adding Metal Goggles and Zamazenta's Metal Shield Ability into the mix. Up to 7-1!

The final game of this even saw me paired against my Darkness-playing opponent from day one, though this time, they were playing RDT. Tragically, despite the inclusion of Archaludon in my list making this matchup theoretically quite difficult for my opponent, Coated Attack doesn't do anything to help with a lone-Galarian-Meowth start with no search cards available in hand... A quick donk puts me to an overall record of 7-2. We even played out another game after this, and once again, I couldn't manage to find a route to victory - that time starved for Energy though, rather than Pokémon in play.

Side Event Number 4: Psychic

My final deck of the weekend, and definitely one of my absolute go-tos, this Psychic list has myriad routes of play open to it in any given matchup - perfect for trying to close out the weekend with a solid record! My first matchup this side-event was the reverse of the previous game I played with Metal: a donk in my favour, made possible by Green's Exploration finding both the Energy and the Dimension Valley needed to take a KO on a lone Purrloin for a win over my opponernt's Darkness deck.

This gave me the opportunity to run to Lost & Found to pick up a playmat I had misplaced earlier, before taking the opportunity to once again survey...

The Metagame:

This second side event on day two had a much more unconventional meta breakdown, with Lightning proving relatively popular compared to its usual position, at nine out of the 66 total players - with the players choosing this type no doubt glad also to see so few Fighting players in this event!

If I had to pick a highlight of the weekend overall, game two of this event might just be it! A super-close game against a mostly-basics Dragon deck - but still playing Garchomp - pretty closely-aligned with my own tastes from day one. Despite taking a strategic Dusknoir KO simultaneously with an Iono to one and a KO on the Active, my opponent managed to find the Teammates needed to hand them the win with Regidrago's Giant Fangs! Down to an overall record of 8-3, with one game to go!

My final game of the weekend was fittingly against the very same archetype that I started the weekend by playing: a Rillaboom/Meganium Grass deck. In this game though, a slow start for Grass combined with an early Lost City allowed Blacephalon and Dusclops to coordinate the permanent removal of Grookey, closely followed by Grotle - quickly sealing up this game in my favour!

The Prize Wall Haul

An overall record of 9-3, plus a helpful chip-in of 20 tickets from a friend gave 800 tickets overall to exchange at the prize wall! After a minimum of consideration, this became two (very nice - stitched-edge) playmats, some fun Pokémon socks and exactly one pack of PFL to neatly use the entirety of my available funds. To go with this, as I've made a tradition of doing at each event I attend, I picked up an upgrade for a card in each of the decks I played over the weekend from the vendors - besides Psychic - most of the upgrade options for that deck are getting pretty expensive! (the single prize wall pack did offer me something though, in a happy coincidence!)

Thanks and well played to everyone I had the pleasure of playing against or chatting with over the weekend, as well as the (super-chill) judging staff for making it all possible! I really appreciated everyone's positive comments about CardBoard Warriors (even if I would insist I'm just a small a part of keeping things running smoothly over here)!

As I write this, preparations are fully underway for EUIC this coming weekend, so I hope to see even more of you there or at future (side-)events, and I hope you found this recap interesting! Until next time!