Dimension Valley Banned
Effective 4/20/2026, Dimension Valley (Phantom Forces) will no longer be legal for play in Gym Leader Challenge format.
I’ve done a lot of talking about my ban philosophy in Gym Leader Challenge recently. If you’d like to hear my exact thoughts on how decisions get made and why bans go into effect, I highly recommend you listen to the live ban list discussion I hosted a couple of weeks ago on YouTube and Twitch.
As more competitive players take Gym leader Challenge seriously, a metagame develops and the strongest types rise to the top. That’s natural for any competitive game! The GLC league badge system does a great job of pushing players to try and master all 10 types. I highly recommend leagues adopt the badge system if they haven’t already. You can read about it here. In many ways, Gym Leader Challenge isn’t a format that simply asks, which type is best? But a format that challenges players to find ways to win with all types. My goal in making bans is never to try and make all 10 types equally balanced. I think many of us would agree that if I started banning the strongest cards until every type was on the same power level as the worst type, that would be less fun. As the curator of the format, I am most interested in making sure that the games played at the top of the format are skill intensive and interesting, and that no type is abusing a strategy or card that feels “against the spirit of GLC.”
Dimension Valley is a Stadium Card that was printed in 2014’s Phantom Forces expansion and decreases Psychic Pokémon’s attack costs by one colorless Energy. It’s a strong card and I think it existed as a good fit in Gym Leader Challenge for a while, but as time has passed and more Pokémon have been released, it has become evident that Dimension Valley allows Psychic to play by an unfair set of rules. At its core, Dimension Valley is a zero cost board buff for Psychic Pokémon that allows them to skip a turn of Energy attachment to launch attacks more quickly. Many of the best attackers in the Psychic card pool can utilize Dimension Valley to attack for just a single Psychic Energy, such as: Iron Boulder, Zacian, Mimikyu and Blacephalon. This means that Psychic decks can effortlessly stream back to back attacks with no board state or set up so long as Dimension Valley is in play.
The issue with Dimension Valley isn’t that it accelerates an Energy attachment. There are many cards that do that. It’s the “zero cost” nature of Dimension Valley that makes the card problematic, much like Twin Energy and Double Colorless Energy which were banned last year. The simplest illustration, I think, is to compare a card like Dimension Valley to Magma Basin. Both are Stadium Cards that accelerate an Energy attachment, but Magma Basin has a much higher use-cost than Dimension Valley. In order to get a bonus Energy attachment from Magma Basin, you have to first get an Energy in the discard. Then you can only accelerate an Energy to a benched Pokémon, which means you’ll also need a free retreater to make immediate use of it. And on top of all that, you also have to put two damage counters onto the Pokémon you accelerated an Energy to. Dimension Valley on the other hand, only requires that you put the card into play and it immediately applies the buff to your whole board. And if Dimension Valley sticks for more than a turn, it can allow a player to launch multiple cheap attacks, giving them the flexibility in game to build up powerful combos, like with Natu and Munkidori. Because Dimension Valley is a zero cost card, it can also enable turn one pop-offs with Iron Boulder, which should ideally be more difficult to orchestrate. Psychic is a powerful Gym Leader Challenge type right now, but it’ll feel more fair to play against when it isn’t firing off one energy attacks multiple times a game. Dimension Valley has, finally, overstayed its welcome in the format and I am at peace saying goodbye to it.
As always, I invite you to join in on the discussion around Gym Leader Challenge in the Tricky Gym Discord. Thank you so much for reading and for playing Gym leader Challenge! Happy gaming!
-Andrew Mahone
