Published on February 5th, 2015 | by Firestorm
News Roundup: Regional Stream Details, New Hidden Abilities & Items, and PGL Tournaments
In 2010 and 2011, players took it upon themselves to stream the Pokémon World Championships using their phones (Thanks Alaka, DrFidget, and Danny). In 2012, we received our first ever official livestream at Worlds via GameSpot and NicoNico. In 2013 we saw The Pokémon Company International bring in expert commentators like Scott Glaza and Evan Latt. In 2014, the stream expanded to the US National Championships.
Now it is 2015 and we’re happy to report that the 2015 Regional Championships in St. Louis, Missouri will be streamed officially by Pokémon on their Twitch channel. The video game and trading card game will both span the course of two days over the weekend of February 14th and 15th in what should be one of the biggest events the midwest has ever seen! Your commentators for the video game will be veterans Scott Glaza (Nostrom) and Evan Latt (plaid). On the trading card game side will be the ever knowledgeable Kyle Sucevich (Pooka) and Joshua Wittenkeller (TheJWittz).
Additionally, we plan to stream the Southern California Regional in Lancaster, California on the Nugget Bridge Twitch channel so you can tune in to watch during any downtime. This is also a two day event.
New Abilities & Items
Hot on the heels of the Generation IV starters, the Generation II starters will be entering the metagame with brand new abilities. Meganium, Typhlosion, and Feraligatr will be available with Leaf Guard, Flash Fire, and Sheer Force respectively for anyone who uses Pokémon Bank between February 27th and November 30th, 2015.
Additionally, you can now obtain the Custap, Micle, Rowap, and Jaboca Berry by playing a new minigame in the PokeMileage Club on the Global Link!
Online Tournaments
There are two online ladder-based tournaments on the Global Link coming soon.
Generation Showdown
This follows the ruleset commonly referred to as GS Cup and is the template used for the 2010 Video Game Championships. You will be allowed to use two Pokémon from the restricted list on your team. Registration is open now and the event will happen at the same time as the Missouri, Oregon, Southern California, and Virginia Regional Championships. Check it out on the Global Link.
February International Challenge
Though it will follow the Standard format, this will not award Championship Points like International Challenges usually do. This seems to be more of a test and a concentrated pool to test out your teams in. Unfortunately it will happen during Florida Regional Championships and after all other Winter Regionals in Europe and North America are completed. Check out the full details here.
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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25 Responses to News Roundup: Regional Stream Details, New Hidden Abilities & Items, and PGL Tournaments
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Get that hype buildup going! Johto Starters, streaming, oh my. I’m totally prepared for Scarf Typhlosion Eruption spam, it’s just too bad Meganium is still simply terrible. Thanks for the heads up!
Bulky ddance sheer force feraligatr can work due to his typing. Looking forward to it! 🙂
I can’t wait! I haven’t participated any tournaments yet, so this will be good practice.
I’m so incredibly excited for this – I think the intro to this article really covers it all, looking at where we were just a few years ago. Regionals are huge events that deserve coverage, especially now when so many great players are around in the game. Shoutouts to Chris, his staff, and the rest of TCPi for making this happen. Big step forward for helping the game grow, and it’s great to have Scott & Evan back on commentary. Super eager for next weekend now.
Wow, I am so surprised that a Regional will be streamed with such seasoned commentators. I’m looking forward to tuning in! This is definitely another step in the right direction, and I hope the staff continue to expand Regionals coverage throughout the rest of the season. Great job!
Regionals stream with Scott and Evan? So looking forward to this!
Don’t forget about the NB stream either! Hopefully with the time zone differences we’ll be able to bring you some more Pokemon action after things wrap up in St Louis.
Really great having regionals casted, the growth of the game is incredible and I hope to be able to play on stream in St. Louis
On a side note, is the Pokemon crew going to be casting the Premier Challenge following Top Cut Sunday? (Going to assume the answer to that is no, which leads me to my point).
Would a player-run stream like those at existing PC’s and regionals be possible for that, if anyone with a capture card is attending? If someone is, I’d love to get the chance to practice commentary even if it means sacrificing actually playing in the PC. I think, at least for me personally, most premier challenge streams aren’t overly entertaining to watch due to the lack of commentary, and to someone who is a more fair weather player looking more for the entertainment value, I think commentary certainly helps in that regard. With the Top Cut presumably being streamed Sunday, a lot of that crowd watching could be directed to the Premier Challenge stream, and would certainly help to promote the growth of the local scenes of viewers from around the world.
Just a thought, but I figured it was a good idea to at least throw out there and see what people think.
Almost there… Now I just hear those 3 magic words… Mega Typhlosion Confirmed…
St. Louis will likely have over 227 TCG players meaning they’ll have Day 2 Swiss during VG Top Cut and then TCG Top Cut afterwards. You definitely won’t have a stream for the Premier Challenge. I think the Nugget Bridge stream in California will be on during that time.
Honestly, I was just expecting Aaron to try and stream the event. Wasn’t expecting an official stream. So excited~
I can’t wait until the day when TPCi decides to push it even further and fly our beloved commentators out to Europe and establish stream coverage of the Eurpean Nationals.
Because looking at recent developments this might be a very real thing pretty soon.
I’m hyped.
New berries and Johto starters with hidden abilities?
What a time to be alive.
Any chance we’ll be getting something over in Portland? I see that most of the ‘official’ commentators are over on the East Coast, but maybe we could get something..?
No. Portland is too hipster for commentators.
I may try to use my setup to stream Portland, assuming logistics can be figured out. We’ll see what happens.
There’s no CP for this one but I’m interested in seeing how CP will work out for future Wi-fi tournaments. While we do have an official CP payout scheme for online tournaments, it also looks like it was designed when there were only two CP regions instead of five like there are now. I guess it’s not that much CP so things may stay the same for the rest of the year.
Hipsters are the best.
Well, if you need any scrub newbie commentators, I’d be glad to lend a hand. Somehow I don’t see myself making top cut.
There will be a stream in St Louis and in California at the same time. Both SoCal and St Louis would need to be over by the time Portland starts to stream for it to be worth it and I don’t think that’s enough games to be really worthwhile. We’ll need Regionals to not all be on the same weekend for more streams to be worth it.
Silly me, forgetting there’s only one Nugget Bridge stream, haha. Maybe another year, then.
252 Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Feraligatr Waterfall vs. 252 HP / 44 Def Heatran: 182-218 (91.9 – 110.1%) — 56.3% chance to OHKO
Hype
I don’t hype for maybe sometimes.
That’s a pretty bulky Heatran, after all. xc
HYPE!
For Worlds