Nintendo UK Announces Battle Tournament 2014 + VGC National Details
Nintendo UK have announced another tournament series for UK players, this time taking place throughout March and April. Beginning on 1st March and running until 5th April, there will be a number of qualifier tournaments at various GAME stores around the country, with some events taking place in shopping centres with no specific location mentioned at the moment. There are currently no known prizes for regional tournament winners, other than an invitation to the London grand final on 26th April, although travel stipends will be available to winners to make their way there.
If you manage to win a regional tournament, you’ll get to play in the finals in London where you have a chance to win some great prizes, perhaps the most important of which is a First Round BYE at this years United Kingdom Pokémon Video Game Championships National Tournament in May for the winner and runner-up. Other prizes are a week-long trip to Tokyo, Japan for two and lots of other goodies.
United Kingdom National
Along with this announcement, Gordian Knot Games have announced that the United Kingdom National Event will take place on 24th-25th May, in Manchester, England. The venue is Event City, situated across the road from the Trafford Centre. You can discuss it on our forum thread.
UK & Ireland Pokémon Nationals
24th & 25th May, 2014
Event City
Phoenix Way,
Barton Dock Road,
Urmston,
Manchester M41 7TB
Nintendo UK Event Information
There are four divisions for this tournament, with differing prizes for each:
Ultimate Pokémon Expert – The winner of the prestigious “Ultimate Pokémon Expert” title – a category open to those aged thirteen years or older – will earn themselves a week-long trip for two to Japan, the birthplace of Pokémon. They’ll be able to immerse themselves in the Pokémon world by visiting the Pokémon Center and also explore all of the sights of Tokyo. Recommended for seasoned Pokémon players the “Ultimate Pokémon Expert” title will test your Pokémon skills to the limit. The first and second place winners in the Ultimate Pokémon Expert category will receive fast track entry to the second round of the official Play! Pokémon UK VGC event this Spring.
Junior Expert – Younger Pokémon Trainers (12 or under) itching to compete can enter the “Junior Expert” category. In this competition, a weekend trip for the whole family to Alton Towers theme park with hotel stay is up for grabs, for whoever comes out victorious. The first and second place winners in the Junior Expert age category will receive fast track entry to the second round of the UK Pokémon Video Game Championships event this Spring.
Ultimate Team – The “Ultimate Team” competition is exclusively for two family members (one aged 16 or older, and one 12 or under) who want to team up and take on other families in a four-player Double Battle. Successful teams will have the chance to win a £250 Nintendo UK Online Store voucher and a group trip for four to one of the world’s best gaming shows: EGX London 2014. This event takes place in Earls Court London, from 25th – 28th September and offers visitors the chance to play the biggest games before they are released.
Pokémon Apprentice – New enthusiasts can enter the “Pokémon Apprentice” title; where complete newcomers to Pokémon X and Pokémon Y can battle it out to receive a mega bundle of Nintendo 3DS games up to the value of £300.
Crucially, you can only enter one qualifier tournament and one division. So, you’ll have to choose whether you want the chance at single player glory and the shot at a holiday and Nationals Round One BYE, or whether you’d like to play as part of a team with a sibling to win some vouchers and a visit to a great gaming show. Lastly, there is the opportunity for newer players who aren’t confident of winning one of the tougher tournaments to enter the Apprentice event.
Entering a Tournament
Sadly, the entry process of the qualifiers is not great. Think back to the early VGC Days in Europe, in 2009, or if you’ve been around as long as some of us (me), the Battle Master event in 2004 — where you can only gain entry to the tournament via a random selection process. You can enter at this link. You’ll need to enter some of your personal information and choose which division you are entering, along with choosing two qualifier tournaments you can attend. You will receive an e-mail no later than two days prior to the event stating whether you have gained entry or not and only one of your two choices can be the event you go to, which will again, be randomly selected by Nintendo UK based on popularity of each event. I assume a lot of players will miss out, so best to enter the two you can definitely make as soon as possible and get training.
Tournament Rules and Format
All tournaments (bar the team-tournament) will use the official Pokémon Video Game Championships 2014 season rules, opting for the Flat Battle and infrared process used at the previous Nintendo UK events. Tournaments will be single-elimination format, with each qualifier having a maximum of 16 participants, thus four rounds of battles to determine the winner. The team tournament will use a more specialised set of rules with players using pre-set Pokémon and borrowed consoles from Nintendo.
List of Qualifiers
- Bullring, Birmingham – 1st March
- GAME Churchill Square, Brighton – 1st March
- GAME Murraygate, Dundee – 2nd March
- Intu Eldon Square, Newcastle – 8th March
- GAME Hamleys, London – 8th March
- GAME St. David’s Centre, Cardiff – 8th March
- WestQuay, Southampton – 15th March
- GAME Meadowhall, Sheffield – 15th March
- GAME Castle Street, Banbury – 15th March
- Bluewater, Kent – 22nd March
- GAME Back Of The Inns, Norwich – 22nd March
- GAME Victoria Centre, Nottingham – 22nd March
- Intu Trafford Centre, Manchester – 29th March
- GAME Westfield Stratford City, London – 29th March
- Intu Braehead, Glasgow – 5th April
- GAME Cribbs Causeway, Bristol – 5th April
About the Author
Havak has competed in the VGC series since 2009 when it was first introduced to Europe, qualifying for the World Championships in 2011. Since 2009, he has also been a big influence in the United Kingdom's competitive scene by helping run local tournaments.
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I signed up for Dundee and some random place since I can only go to Dundee. No confirmation so I guess I didn’t get in.
Dundee doesn’t appear to be fully booked like the other two so you might still get an e-mail.
I signed up for Dundee as second choice so I’ll be at Glasgow most likely
I can still play the Nottingham one if I get selected for it
It just depends on the timing really, if it’s 3 like Birmingham then I have a pretty good chance to get down there 
Seems as though each person receives a different battle time (well, obviously two people will get the same one as they’re facing each other).
Might not be 100% correct, but it seems likely.
My friend Chris has 9:50am
Russian has 10:10am
Mattsby and WhiteAfroKing92 are both 3:20pm, so I am assuming they will face each other in the first round.
It seems an odd way to organise things. I expect that there will be two separate 8-player tournaments for each division, where one match from each happens at the same time in some kind of 20 minute routine. So each tournament is in two halves, with a morning bracket and afternoon bracket. Kind of sucks for the guys with early battles though, as you’ll probably be done with your games much earlier and have to wait around.
Hopefully it runs well though and there’s fun things to do in-between rounds! Good luck to everyone playing this weekend.
The Birmingham tournament is from 9am to 8pm, hopefully they’ll let me know if they need any spots or someone will drops out ;P getting there around 1 so hopefully will be able to get a place
I know someone I met on tumblr who got a place for Birmingham but can’t come due to circumstances so there will be a no show. Whether that will mean the person who was going to face them will get a bye or if someone else can take their place is another story.
My start time is 11:20am which is fine by me since I live pretty close. It’ll be strange not having to travel to get to a tournament.
It appears that the second tournament for the ultimate pokemon player will be between 3-4 and that it will be straight up knockout,
Anyone feel like hanging around in birmingham city centre?
Okay, from what I can gather, these events aren’t that well run sadly.
You’re given a battle time that you have to stick to, even if you and your opponent are ready before then. My friend’s mum was rushed into A&E, they wouldn’t let him change his battle time even though it shouldn’t make much difference, as if you want to win, you’re going to have to stay there until 8pm anyway. He decided to quickly play his first round game and see if he could make it back later for the next game(s). However, Flat Battle was not enforced by their judge and his opponent had Mewtwo first game. Obviously, he disputed that part (but didn’t think about Flat Battle). So, they started again (rather than a DQ) but the judges seem to do their ‘Team Checks’ during Team Preview, eating up your selection time. Due to this, my friend only selected three Pokémon, and due to Flat Battle not being activated either (he didn’t realise until after the result) it didn’t select a four at random (or his whole team of four at random). He had to battle with three Pokémon — probably should have asked to re-start since his opponent got to due to Mewtwo in their first attempt. Ah well.
Anyway, I think the way the day pans out is a bit hard to take. It does look as if you play your round one game, then you’re waiting about an hour for your round two opponent. then 20 minutes at least for your Round three. If you’re in the first flight, that probably means done before 12pm. The second flight doesn’t start until later in the afternoon (3pm), so you’re waiting around for hours and hours with I expect nothing to do. At least it’ll be an opportunity to go for food for some players though I guess.
When you battle, make sure you choose Flat Battle and explain everything to judges and opponent.
I just took Part in the Brighton Tournament.
My advice would be to talk to the organisers – be insistent. Thankfully the organiser guy actually played Pokemon, but even still one of the organisers of Streetpass Brighton had to show him the rules saying Kalos Dex only. Once he knew the rules he manually checked Pokemon (before battles were issued so he didnt run down peoples team choice timers).
I hope the other Tournaments go smoothly.
Winner of Brighton tournament! Golden Tickets again, woo!
Thanks for your post Pokegenics, how did you do? Is the winner you, or did you face him?
How did the event run? It seems as though yours has finished much earlier, did you even have battle times like Birmingham?
I won
(Surprisingly.)
The event was ran similiar to Birmingham in some ways. We were all given a set time to turn up for our first round match – they gave us a 30 minute time limit before a bye was given. We were then expected to stay, and wait for them to call the next rounds. I was really impressed with their organisation actually – apparently it was their first time hosting/organising an event. The morning was dedicated solely to the Ultimate expert and Ultimate Junior Categories. The afternoon starts at 3.30pm (I think) for the first round of the new comers and multi-battle Tournaments.
Awesome, congratulations!
That seems much better than Birmingham. They seem to be doing half of every event in the morning, and half of every event in the afternoon (roughly), with potentially a big lunch break in-between.
Small tournaments like this really should be completed in a couple of hours and battles should be played as soon as there is an available judge and both players are there… Ah well! Hopefully it all works out fine.
Could you post an image of your ticket close up? Both sides if they differ? Cheers!
Worst run tournament I have ever been to.
What’s happened is that out of the 32 people playing in the tournament, a 16 player knockout took place 9-1 and anoth 16 player knockout is taking place now, which started at 3. Only 2 matches are allowed to be played at a time, so 2 matches started at 3, 2 started at 3:20 and another 2 at 3:40 and so on. If you and your next opponent finish your round early you can’t start your match until the specified time. No best of 3, so russian got knocked out in semi’s due to Effect spore hax. In the 2nd round Professoor Birth Mattsby and other were wairing for ages for their next round, and it turns out there was a heal pulse clawitzer and Blissey timestalling a Clefable and Weezing., no disqualifications taking place. When if came to Prof’s next match he didn’t report the opponent for using 3 nin-Kalos dex pokemon and won anyway. Last round is due to start around 7, so the person who won the first 16 player matchup has had to wait until this knockout results, around 7 until he can play to qualify for the finals. Was in reserves, but a bit miffed as there weren’t enought players in the morning so could have got in. Met up with team Walsall though so had a good day!
Oh, so Birmingham was increased to 32-players instead of just 16? But still only with one qualifier for London?
Hmm.
I just came back from the afternoon session. Brighton had a second 16 player Ultimate Expert tournmanet. So I guess they decided to increase the number of tickets awarded to two per area.
Ah, that’s great to know then! Cheers.
Makes a lot more sense than making people wait all afternoon and into the evening for their final opponent.
External
External
Oh God, looks like the number on the back will determine who you face when you get to London again!
Yes so to add to what necrocat said.
There were two tournaments today at Birmingham, a morning one and an afternoon one.
This resulted in 2 winners and 2 people going to London to my knowledge.
Well, although I usually like to try and look upon the positives of tournaments, there’s simply only one way I can describe Birmingham today, it was far and away the worst tournament I’ve ever been to.
There were so many negative points about it that it almost took away all the attention from the horrible lottery system it started with.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that every organiser there was completely inept when it comes to the rules of pokemon, seemingly allowing all manner of illegal pokemon through, as every battle I caught a glimpse of seemed to have at least one non-Kalos pokemon in it.
Moreso, I don’t understand how it takes 9 hours to complete a single-elimination tournament with only 32 players in it, there were constantly empty seats available there, yet when asking whether myself and my opponent could play our match while nothing was happening we were told to “wait for the specific time slot as it wasn’t possible.” This could easily have been wrapped up in 2 hours.
The attitudes of some of the organisers was absolutely disgraceful too, particularly the person who thought he was in charge, who believed it was some sort of crime for me to wait outside for my match, to which he replied “Stop being clever and get back in the pen.” (The “pen” was his term for the miniscule waiting area we had to wait in to be called out before your match began)
I had to hide in how disappointed I was when I was asked to do an interview, as there simply was no effort put in to make this day enjoyable for everyone, and if I’m honest, I’m quite glad I failed to qualify for the finals in London as I really don’t want to be involved in a tournament run as badly as this one again.
The only positive of today is as usual, getting to meet up with the members of this community who also went along, like Necrocat and Justin Miller and have fun chatting with them for the rest of the day.
This post probably comes across as really whiny, when people in other countries would probably just be thinking I should consider myself lucky that we’ve had so many tournaments in the UK recently, but today really was disappointing, and made to be extremely unenjoyable by the organisers.
And then when I asked if we could spectate our friends games replied “I don’t have time for clever comments, now go in the pen” you can all imagine how I reacted to that. also there were bean bags to sit on which the “boss” also decided we weren’t allowed to sit on and ushered us into the pen. In my first match one of the staff members checked our teams During team select!!! And they would not stop asking questions through the battle whilst you were concentrating.
Just bleh!
Im so glad our streetpass organisers know how to get Grimer done.
Oh god I’m not looking forward to this
If I could further stress all the previous points about this ‘tourney’ I would but it has already been said, Me and whiteafroforgetstomega
arrived for the second part around 2, the organisers knew this and would not let us battle as they were having a mothers meeting in the play area, when we asked when to start they just directed us to the ‘pen/prison’ and said to wait an hour and half to start. I counted about 4 togekiss as well throughout the day and the people using them had already won a game at that point, we ourselves had to go on seribii to prove that clefable was not legal.
One thing that i’m sure annoyed everyone still there at the time, was one of the organisers shouting ‘Lets all cheer for the critical hits.’ ugh..
The only thing that saved this shambles was the great company and actually good battles towards the end. Rant over, congrats to samgei on clutching the win and providing one of the best battles I’ve ever had in the semifinals.
Such a shame that tourneys like this can be ruined by rude staff as this series had such great potential for bringing in new players. If the staff at Birmingham were acting as badly as they have been Described here I would have most likely just walked away if I was a new player. Nintendo UK definitely needs to look at getting some organizers who know the rules of the competition they are running and most importantly treat the people who have come for the event with some respect.
Sounds like the tourney at Brighton was a lot better than Birmingham, so I am hoping this will just be a one off and future events run alot smoother
Man, I’m really growing worried about tomorrow. I’m hoping the staff in Dundee know what they’re doing, I feel like I should take a copy of the rules/list of Kalos dex Pokemon just in case. It’s definitely not a promising start but it’s good to hear Brighton went well. So perhaps Birmingham just had some inappropriate staff.
Staff quote of the day: ”Give the cameras a fistpump if you get a critical hit!”
I won the Birmingham Morning ultimate pokemon expert tourny and I’m not here? What is this madness? XD