This article was originally written for TheNintendoVillage.com, a website I founded and ran from 2018 to 2021.

The latest issue of Game Informer features a mega blowout on the upcoming Pokémon Sword and Shield, and it appears there’s been a pretty large change to the gym structure for Gen 8.

Whereas previous games featured 8 leaders to take down, the new entries to the series will have no fewer than 18. They’ll be split across Major and Minor leagues, so it’ll be interesting to see whether you’ll have to conquer the minor gyms first before taking on the bigger ones.

Gyms will also move between each league every year within the Galar region. It’s unclear yet as to how and why this occurs, but maybe there’s a promotion/relegation mechanism in place for you to exploit.

It’s also worth noting that there are in fact 18 types of Pokémon too - as pointed out by Nintendo Life - so it raises the prospect of a gym for each and every Pokémon type.

That said, we’ve already heard that some gyms will be exclusive to Sword, while others will only be available in Shield. The Fighting-type Gym Leader Bea can only be challenged in the former game for example, whereas Allister's Ghost-type Gym will only be available to players of the latter.

It will be interesting to see therefore, whether there’ll be multiple gyms featuring the same type, or whether the fighting gym appears in both games but with a different leader at the helm.

When we went hands on with the game earlier this year, we noted that rather than receiving badges, players won what appeared to be a piece of a medallion when conquering a gym. We’re now very intrigued to see how this plays into the Major and Minor League aspect of the game.

Are you excited at the prospect of taking down more than a dozen gym leaders? Let us know down in the comments.

Source: Game Informer