2025 NAIC Switch Series Recap
Yesterday, June 14th, was the largest GLC tournament of all-time with a staggering 188 players! The NAIC Switch Series was back and bigger than ever, 1 year after the inaugural event at NAIC 2024. With 8 rounds of Swiss and a top 8 cut, the winner played 11 rounds of GLC in one day. The continued growth of Gym Leader Challenge events shows the passion the community has for the best format in the Pokemon TCG.
After the recent Double Colorless and Twin Energy ban, which decks performed the best? Would you be surprised if Colorless was the most represented type in the top 8?
Tournament Meta
This tournament had over 60% representation from 4 types, Dragon, Colorless, Water and Psychic. When it comes to competitive types, it seems that Fighting, Fire, Metal and Grass are having trouble keeping up with the rest. Psychic, Water, Colorless and Dragon have cemented themselves as the “Big 4” of Gym Leader Challenge.
Bracket Runout
The top 8 had 4 Colorless, 2 Psychic, 1 Dragon and 1 Water deck.
Top 8
Binh Tran - Hop’s Colorless
Binh played Hop’s Colorless, the new powerful attacking variant of Colorless, which is low to the ground, has donk capabilities, can hit for huge damage and attack very quickly. During the mid-game, Hop’s Cramorant can hit hard for zero energy giving Colorless time to set up its next attacker or disrupt its opponent while taking a KO. Two of this variant reached top 8 meaning it’s clearly a powerful archetype!
Seismitoad Water
Seismitoad Water made its name at the Full Grip Games locals and has had good success throughout many local GLC scenes. It has powerful attackers in Palafin, Froslass and Basculegion which hit for low energy cost, and it can win games solely by setting up Seismitoad. This is a scary deck to go up against and no surprise it reached Top 8.
Alex Kalbach - Hop’s Colorless
Alex played the second Hop’s Colorless archetype to Top 8, finding success with cards like Ciphermaniac, Max Elixir and Dodrio. This list is full of low cost attackers that hit for big damage and the best draw engine in GLC.
Top 4
Zach Robinson - Ursaluna Control
My personal favorite of the top 8 lists, Zach ran Ursaluna control to top 4! After its recent success at the Full Grip Games Destined Rivals event, Ursaluna is on the map as the best control deck in GLC. With a great draw engine and many ways to dig through the deck, Ursaluna can mill opponents very quickly, or choose to sweep with Max Potion, Lost City, Triple Acceleration Energy and Peat Hunt. This deck aims to race to the bottom as fast as possible and then mill every turn with Lt. Surge + 2x Bellelba & Brycen-Man to discard 6 cards from the opponent’s deck. Great piloting by Zach to take this list to top 4!
Davin Erickson - Dragapult Psychic
Davin piloted this Psychic Good Stuff list, featuring Dragapult, to top 4 out of 188 players. There are many interesting cards in this list not commonly seen in Psychic, such as Team Rocket’s Pertrel, Reset Stamp, Skyla, Arezu and Counter Catcher. Psychic has great board control tools in Gallade and Mimikyu, while running disruptive cards gave Davin a way to make comebacks in the late game.
Finalist
Tyler Matthews - Dragobox
Tyler Matthews, legendary CBW Hall of Famer and creator of the Lost Zone archetype, has moved on to a new deck in Dragobox, a deck created and popularized in the CBW discord server. Dragobox runs all basic Pokemon along with a slew of powerful energy acceleration cards like Crispin, Double Dragon Energy, Turbo Blaze Reshiram, Raihan and more. A turn 1 or 2 Lost City + Raging Bolt is devastating to most decks, and the ability to loop Druddigon and draw cards constantly with Regidrago makes this deck a top contender. Congrats on a great run, Tzubi!
Champion
Jake Crampton - Natu Psychic
I’ll let Jake’s own words describe this deck:
"This 60 has a couple specific interesting pieces. I’ve been working on it for about a year now, and I was super glad for all of my changes. Notably, mew is crazy (it’s insane we have another bench barrier) and Lana’s aid is a shockingly important inclusion alongside tulip. Also, smoochum is a card I’ve learned to love WAY more than cleffa.
The main idea of the deck is to use boulder, mimikyu, latios, and mew to be cheap (d valley busted) and strong early game, slowly set up gallade and use it to attack when those won’t work (or when you want to preserve energy), then win the game with natu, commonly with an arven for devolution spray and a TM. Natu’s ancient trait lets it take 2 prizes, but its attack is pitiful, so it wasn’t interesting until the TMs were released. Now, this deck is consistent, attacks strong for cheap, AND has incredible comeback potential.
I noticed in testing that in 60% of my games I was using vs seeker for my Tulip. It took embarrassingly long to realize that Lana’s Aid fills that slot and lets you start using the really disruptive supporters with vs seeker more often. It also means that you dont run out of resources if you prize malamar nearly as often. You love drawing into them too because often they grab one of your basics and a couple energy, you xatu and attach to the basic and take KO. Very comfy and a must have.
Mew is awesome. Under a d valley, you can have mew and mimikyu or boulder on your bench all needing 1 energy taking KO’s every single turn. Then your opponent KO’s mew and all you need is 1 energy to return KO. It gives you so much time to set up gallade and natu shenanigans, and it lets you play disruption or gust instead of searching for boulder recovery.”
Congrats to Jake for winning the largest GLC tournament of all time!
Conclusion
Thank you to Pokemon for running the GLC Switch Series at International Championships, and congrats to all the competitors who made it to the Top 8! These events are a great way to pool GLC players and see what types come out on top with real prizing on the line and a big player pool.
I'd like to give a special thanks to the crew from Good Games Chicago for their help gathering all the info, Brendan (aka Bcevasco) for posting lists and for everyone else from the CBW discord that contributed to making this recap possible!