First VGC ’14 Regional Date and Locations Revealed (Updated)
Players who aren’t able to make it out to the 2013 Pokémon World Championships might already be looking towards the 2013 – 2014 season. The Premier Tournament Organizers seem to be on the same train of thought because a little bit of digging on the Pokémon website reveals that three locations have already booked their venues and have event details up! The first Regional of the VGC ’14 season will happen on October 27th, 2013. This date is just over two weeks after the release of Pokémon X and Pokémon Y.
Update: It looks like we’re going to get at least two dates for the fall as the NorCal Regional will be taking place on October 13th, 2013 — one day after the release of Pokémon X and Y. Event locations known so far are:
October 13th, 2013
Pleasanton, California
Alameda County Fairgrounds (Building C)
4501 Pleasanton Avenue
94566
October 27th, 2013
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Convention Center (Terrace Ballroom)
1101 Arch Street
19107
Ft. Wayne, Indiana
Grand Wayne Center Anthony Wayne Ballroom
120 West Jefferson Boulevard
46802
Houston, Texas
Hilton Houston North
12400 Greenspoint Drive
77060
If we have fifteen locations split across three seasons like the current season, we still have one location left. All four of these areas also hosted Regional Championships in the fall last year. If the same pattern holds, the last event will be in Toronto.
Credit to Frank S. for the heads up.
About the Author
Firestorm is one of the co-founders of Nugget Bridge and the Community Manager for eSports Tournament Platform Battlefy. He has been playing Pokémon since 1999, competitively since 2007, and attending tournaments since 2010. He lives in Vancouver, Canada with a degree in Interactive Art & Technology + Communications. You can follow him on Twitter at @rushanshekar.
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Let’s go son.
can someone confirm Houston regionals for me?
Secret info:
Spring Regional, Salt Lake City, April 12th, Utah State Fairpark
Fort Wayne regionsls, will be pretty sweet. Haven’t gotten to play, since winter regionals so I’m super excited to be able to play. Now time to construct a team.
Care of Arizona’s PTO:
Arizona’s 1st TCG/VGC Regional championship – October 19th & 20th @ the Phoenix Convention Center.
I am literally the happiest NBer today, this is so awesome
I won’t be able to go because this is the same week end as Anime Banzai. You coming to Utah in the spring (this is me confirming the Utah spring regionals)
April 5th and 6th
Sturbridge Host Hotel & Conference Center
366 Main Street, Sturbridge, Massachusetts 01566
Contact: 508-347-7393 | Fax: 508-347-3944
Online Pre registration will also be available, our new online pre registration system, emails you an event ticket, you will see us using this system in the near future for most of our events. Please bring the event ticket with you. This ticket takes the place of needing to fill out a registration slip.
Room rate: TBA
Masters entry fee: $25.00
We will be doing play mats, badges for top cut, Prize support will be reviewed, additional prize support may be added.
Sturbridge is a great tourist spot, featuring the Old Sturbridge Village,
External
The Sturbridge Host Hotel is a classic hotel located on scenic Cedar Lake. There are many restaurants, in the area. This hotel is located conveniently off of the Mass Pike close to the junction of Interstate 84. This hotel features an 11,000 square feet conference center that features concessions stands, We will have our updated sound system along with multiple monitors set up to provide the ambiance that regional s needs. We do hope that you plan to join us at 4/6/2014 to 4/5/2014
Tom and Judy Shea,
TJ Collectibles
External
We are working on the event schedule, it will be posted.
External
Sweet, Regionals on my birthday. Bring on the cake.
Cybertron, is it the same people running the event as last year’s regional at Gillette Stadium? If so they really REALLY need to start this regional on time, since Sturbridge (for those who don’t know) is in the middle of nowhere in western Massachusetts and it’s a massive pain to get to the major transport hubs (South Station / Logan Airport).
Yes, it’s the same people from last year. Hoping they put half the effort they put into TCG last year this time around…
Only a 2.5 hour drive for me though so I’ll make a showing for sure
Entry fee for masters?
TCG only
Dang, that’s a bit bigger of an entry fee than i thought they’d have especially for Pokemon
So. British Columbia is having its Regional on October 19th but it’s TCG only. We were not told why the VG portion has been removed. This was a decision by TPCi. I am pretty annoyed about this. I don’t understand what this accomplishes considering prizes are not awarded per regional but for the Top 16 after April Regionals.
I think Canadians had a hard enough time making it into the World Championships without this change.
they’ll show YOU not to keep open gaming open passed midnight
This is the sort of thing I don’t like commenting on before I get an explanation, as it tends to wind up with my foot in my mouth, but as I don’t expect to get one…
Given that this is the one area in Canada that has actually been able to send players to Worlds, I’m not happy to see the Regional getting yanked even though I imagine it’s much lower pop than Toronto. I wasn’t super impressed by the competitiveness of the event last year given that somehow a Wailord made the finals, but there’s a solid group of players in Vancouver that need a way to compete in the circuit and this is going to make things a lot harder for them.
i’m…
very very sad. especially since i might be losing my job really soon. which means my pokemon events might be suddenly very limited in this coming season.
this is not a good thing
we didn’t have a lot of people, but they didn’t expect more than what showed up anyway.
just
sad
I’m really hoping they communicate some alternate plan or a reason for all this. I can’t see why they would remove something that happens in the same venue and time as TCG. It seems they also moved TCG to a one day event in BC.
If cost is the issue I’d be more than willing to help host a BC Regional in a free venue.
i would be with you on that one, if you can figure something out with sandy, or if she has any other info about this. i’d rather not play and have it happen than have nothing
i don’t really want to let this regional go
I am sad for my fellow Canadian friends. Sometimes it feels like TPCi don’t want VGC to grow in Canada. No advertisement about the event whatsoever, and they just cancel our VGC events… Hopefully they don’t cancel Toronto Regionals too, so Canada has at least one event this year.
I have done more advertising for the Toronto regional than TPCi has.
There are new games coming out and this could easily set up some real hype but apparently that is not how it works.
Not a decision that affects me whatsoever but a very strange one, I certainly understand the outrage considering the distance that separates our West Canadian comrades from every other regional (including worlds participant Randy Kwa!). I think what makes this decision really irksome is that if you’re going to have the TCG regional anyway, it can’t be that much more of a bother to host the VGC as well. It’s one more day commitment for the staff, but this has a huge impact on the players from that region.
They should definitely host a vgc tournament even if its the same day especially since there are willing (and capable) ayers here willing to host it. We saw how good letting members of the community jump in and help was at nats and worlds (thanks Scott and Evan) I’m sure they’d get the same results if they got help from here again
So for the people who were curious and went to the Worlds 2013 in Vancouver, then decided that they may be interested in playing in VGC… you don’t even get a local regional to play in. Instead, your closest VGC regional will likely be about a 7 hours drive (one way) away in Salem, OR, assuming that regional hasn’t changed.
For people in Vancouver who are trying to, and feel like they have a shot to, be a competitior in Worlds 2014, you have 1 regional about a 7 hours drive away, and anything else is at least about double the distance. I was only able to go to 2 regionals in 2013, due to the distance I’d have to trave to get to anywhere else, and was pretty lucky to be qualified in NA for Worlds dispite of that. This year, with a few added events, and more likelyhood of people being able to go to 3 or more events, it will be pretty unlikely that doing something like what I did in 2013 will work again, unless I expect that I’ll T4 Nationals again. Although there are people who have a worse situation, location wise, the last thing I need, after having finally qualified for Worlds for once, is to have the only event that isn’t a huge distance away taken from us.
Here’s hoping for a good explanation, on this situation.
While this is still better than the time when they outright banned Canadians from participating, I obviously not happy with the change. R Inanimate isn’t the only Worlds player this affects either. Phenac made worlds as well this year and she’s from the area. Including previous years there’s also Chinese Dood and Snake. I’m not sure if all the locations have been confirmed but hopefully they get a new Seattle regional or something to compensate a bit.
at the very least i expect them to put something in seattle after taking away one of two canadian events. after speaking with my parents they seem to be willing to drive my sister and i to oregon or even california, (on top of what looks like pheonix and toronto for me) but others aren’t so easily able to go anywhere really. randy is the best player in canada and he’s the one i’m most worried about. if anyone deserves a regional its him, he deserves to be at nationals and worlds again.
Here’s all the information for Fall Regionals so far VGC-wise for everyone’s convenience.
Format
BW2 carts used, same rules as VGC 2013.
Dates
October 13th: Plesanton, CA
October 20th: Phoenix, AZ (Vancouver, BC TCG only)
October 27th: Philadelphia, PA / Houston, TX / Ft. Wayne, IN
Prizes (via Externalfrom Texas TO)
All participants will receive 3 Play Points and a Regional Championships Promo Card.
More information coming soon for Prize support.
1st Place
A 3DS / Trophy / Goodies / 72 Booster packs
120 Championship Points
2nd Place
Trophy / Goodies / 72 Booster packs
110 Championship Points
3rd & 4th Place
Trophy / Goodies / 36 Booster packs
90 Championship Points
5th Place through 8th Place
18 Booster packs
70 Championship Points
9th Place through 16th Place
9 Booster packs
50 Championship Points
17th – 32nd Place
30 Championship Points (if 64 or more players in division)
33rd – 64th Place
10 Championship Points (if 128 or more players in division)
65th – 128 Place
5 Championship Points (if 256 or more players in division)
Between the stipend change and the prizes, Regional prizes look nice, but what I want to comment on is the CP distribution:
I still wish there was just a CP range for X-2s that don’t cut, X-3s, and potentially X-4. With few exceptions, players think Opponent Win % is trash, why use it when you don’t need it? With that said, if we -had- to to tiebreak by record, there were some changes this year that help the system do it better…
I think this likely does a better job of breaking up those record points… I’m just not sure why the system is using a likely when it could use a definitely.
lol Booster packs. I love how they try to subtly convert us to TCG.
I see they read my rant about how getting more points for 9th-12th than for 13th-16th is utterly retarded,