What is “Extra Battle Day”?
Extra Battle Day is an organized event series introduced by The Pokémon Company since the retirement of Regulation Mark A - the first Regulation Mark - from Standard Format.
What is a Regulation Mark?
Regulation Mark is a letter symbol found on each card that identifies whether it is legal to use in tournament play. In the example above, the Regulation Mark is F as highlighted in the red bounding box.
Regulation Marks were introduced on cards in the Sun & Moon Series in Asia and in the Sword & Shield Series in TPCi releases.
The event is held by Pokémon TCG Gyms every year when a new Regulation Mark was introduced to the Standard Format and an older Regulation Mark was rotated out, which usually occurs between December and January. As the event name suggests, the event is one of the few organized event played in Expanded Format (“Extra Regulation” in Japan).
In each year’s event, players will receive:
- A promo card for participating in the event
- Additional prizes based on their play records in the event, which can be promo packs or playmats
Participation Prize Cards
Participation prizes are Supporter Cards representing the Regulation Mark being rotated out when the event was held:
- Hau in the Mark A retiring event
- Cynthia in the Mark B retiring event
- Mallow & Lana in the Mark C retiring event
- Marnie in the Mark D retiring event
- Raihan in the Mark E retiring event
- Irida in Mark F retiring tournaments held before July 1, 2025
- Roxanne in Mark F retiring tournaments held since July 1, 2025
These cards feature new artwork that are different from their original prints and exclusive to the event, which make them a decent mini goal for card collectors.
Promo Card Pack (Given in Mark A Retiring Event)
The Promo Card Pack distributed in the Mark A retiring event is arguably the reason most foreign collectors would heard about Extra Battle Day. The pack was given to tournament winners and lucky players who won through rock paper scissors, and contained one Full Art Supporter Card which also features artwork exclusive to the event. However, due to the event being cut short by COVID lockdowns and the trend of Full Art Supporters being highly sought after in Japan, cards from this pack had their market prices skyrocketed and were often highlights of discussions in the forum. More details can be seen in the following post:
Playmats (Given in Mark B and C Retiring Events)
In the next two events, the winning prize became playmats:
Promo Card Pack (Given in Mark D and Later Retiring Events)
When The Pokémon Company started to rotate out Mark D, the Promo Card Packs were introduced back to the event in a different direction which favors players over collectors:
- Cards included in the pack became non-holo reprints of cards from previous series which are commonly played in Expanded Format. The purpose of distributing these packs is to give players easy access to popular cards for their Expanded decks since the originals are already out of print and being sold at premiums.
- The packs are mass produced and no longer exclusively given to winners as some events also gave these packs to losing participants. Winners simply receive more packs than other players.
Note that although some cards included in later packs may look the same as cards in earlier packs, all cards were assigned new promo indices which made them reprints instead of exact copies. Collectors who collect promo cards by indices therefore will have to collect all cards from all packs.
Sword & Shield Orange Pack (Given in Mark D Retiring Event)
The package color overlaps with packs given out in later events, however collectors can still tell this pack from others by checking the logo on the top left (which marks “Sword & Shield”) and the total number of cards at the bottom (“10 cards”).
Blue Pack (Given in Mark E Retiring Event)
Scarlet and Violet Orange Pack (Given in Mark F Retiring Event)
The package color overlaps with packs given out in earlier events, however collectors can still tell this pack from others by checking the logo on the top left (which marks “Scarlet and Violet”) and the total number of cards at the bottom (“12 cards”).
Also note that although the participation prize of the Mark F retiring event had been changed in the middle of the event, the same pack with same set of possible pulls was given out throughout the event period.
