Sword & Shield’s latest DLC introduces a new tournament to test your mettle. This new Championship is called the Galarian Star Tournament and offers new battles aplenty with a new twist. To amp up the difficulty, this new tournament has a double battle system instead of the single battles from the base game. Players will pick a partner and take them into high-level Trainer battles to prove who really is the best there ever was.
How To Unlock the Galarian Star Tournament
To unlock the Galarian Star Tournament you must first complete all of the story content in the DLC. That means getting all the way through your Dynamax Adventures and capturing several legendary Pokémon and hunting for the various Legendary Clues. You also need to find the 150 footprints for the three basic Legendary Pokémon that the game has you hunting for Sonia. Once that’s done you get access to the Dynamax Adventure Max Lair, that’s where you need to head next.
Once inside the Lair look for Peonia, she will offer you clues about where to find various Pokémon in exchange for Dynite Ore. Once you’ve spoken to here and bought a location, talk to the scientist and attempt to catch that specific monster. Each of these will be Legendary Pokémon, so at least you get some nice rewards. You need to do this several times.
At some point, when you exit the Lair, Leon will call you and invite you back to Wyndon for the Galarian Star Tournament.
How does the Tournament work?
In the Galarian Star Tournament, you can select your favorite character to team up with. Each Trainer battle is a 2v2 tag battle. However, you cannot control the actions of your partner’s Pokemon. This makes it all the more important that you choose a partner that has good type coverage to help shore up your own weaknesses.
List Of Partners & Their Pokemon
| Hop | Dubwool, Zamazenta or Zacian, Rillaboom or Cinderace or Inteleon |
|---|---|
| Milo | Shiftry, Cherrim, Flapple |
| Nessa | Golisopod, Toxapex, Drednaw |
| Bea | Hawlucha, Falinks, Machamp |
| Gordy | Shuckle, Tyranitar, Coalossal |
| Leon | Aegislash, Dragapult, Charizard |
| Raihan | Flygon, Goodra, Duraludon |
| Melony | Mr. Rime, Darmanitan, Lapras |
| Marnie | Morpeko, Scrafty Grimmsnarl |
| Opal | Galarian Weezing, Togekiss, Alcremie |
| Mustard | Mienshao, Kommo-o, Urshifu |
| Klara [Sword] | Galarian Slowking, Scolipede, Galarian Slowbro |
| Avery [Shield] | Galarian Slowking, Alakazam, Galarian Slowbro |
| Allister [Shield] | Dusknoir, Cursola, Gengar |
| Bea [Sword] | Hawlucha, Falinks, Machamp |
| Piers | Skuntank, Toxtricity, Obstagoon |
| Peony | Perrserker, Aggron, Copperajah |
| Sordard | Sirfetch’d, Golisopod, Bisharp |
| Shielbert | Sirfetch’d, Bronzong, Klinklang |
How to unlock more partners
You won’t have all the partners at the start of your first run. Hop, Milo and Nessa should be unlocked from the start once you complete your first run. Each time you win a run of the tournament you unlock more partners. There are 17 in all, so there’s a fair bit of grind involved here.
There are also two secret Trainers to unlock. Sordward and Shielbert, those two pompous morons from the end of the base game, are back. Version differences strike here as well. The Trainers you unlock as partners will include the Gym leaders and rival from your game. So for Shield, you will have Allister, Melony, and Avery, while Sword will have Bea, Gordie, and Klara.
Sordward and Shielbert will show up once you have won 15 times in the Galarian Star Tournament.
What to expect from the other Trainers
Each Partner and opponent has their own high-level team, ranging from level 65-80, so you’re going to need to bring your A-team to take them on. When fighting the Gym Leaders, each one does still mostly stick to their types. For the sake of brevity, go check out the datamined Trainer list over at Serebii.
There will also be some differences based on the version of the game you’re playing, so account for that.
What do you get for winning?
You get 1 million Pokédollars for winning the whole thing the first time, you can also keep doing runs to farm more money if you wish. You can challenge the tournament many times if you wish. Feel free to experiment with the partner choices to see which one works best for you.
You also get a reward from Ball Guy each time you win, including a Beast Ball chance. The money rewards drop drastically after the first win, down into the realm of 50,000 each time or so. So don’t expect to make these a regular farm for cash when there are better methods.
