Official Side Events at US Nationals and Top Cut Expansion
There was a deluge of information on the quickly approaching 2013 Pokémon US National Championships released today! First off, we’ll get to what is probably the most exciting bit of news for the players chasing that shiny Worlds invite: If we reach 350 or more players in any division, we’ll have a top cut of 32 rather than the old limit of 16. The playerbase has been very passionate about the effects of top cut sizes in Pokémon and this should be a welcome change!
For everyone else who doesn’t quite hit the the magic placement after their swiss rounds, TPCi has set up a few large tournaments using alternate formats that will play out on Saturday night and Sunday morning. Aside from the regular On-Demand tournaments you might remember from last year, there will be Pod Tournaments, a Masters Single Cup tournament, and a Triple Cup tournament. All side tournaments will be done as single game, single elimination matches. The finals of the Masters Single Cup and Triple Cup tournaments will be done as a best-of-3 set.
Keep in mind that the Masters Single Cup runs concurrently with the Juniors and Seniors main event. Similarly, half the Pod Events run concurrently with the Masters main event. The Triple Cup tournament on Sunday should be at a time convenient for all age groups.
For full details — especially for those who have not attended a Nationals tournament before — please check out the official page.
Prizes
Masters Single Cup (Max 256 Players)
- 1st place: Nintendo 3DS and 72 Pokémon TCG booster packs
- 2nd place: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon—Gates to Infinity and 36 Pokémon TCG booster packs
- 3rd – 4th place: Nintendo 3DS Carrying Case and 18 Pokémon TCG booster packs
- 5th – 8th place: Nintendo 3DS Stylus Pack and 9 Pokémon TCG booster packs
- 9th – 16th place: 9 Pokémon TCG booster packs
- 17th – 32nd place: 6 Pokémon TCG booster packs
Triple Cup (Max 128 Players)
- 1st place: Nintendo 3DS and 72 Pokémon TCG booster packs
- 2nd place: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon—Gates to Infinity and 36 Pokémon TCG booster packs
- 3rd – 4th place: Nintendo 3DS Carrying Case and 18 Pokémon TCG booster packs
- 5th – 8th place: Nintendo 3DS Stylus Pack and 9 Pokémon TCG booster packs
- 9th – 16th place: 9 Pokémon TCG booster packs
- 17th – 32nd place: 6 Pokémon TCG booster packs
16 Player Pod Tournaments
- 1st place: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon—Gates to Infinity
- 2nd place: Nintendo 3DS Carrying Case
- 3rd – 4th place: Nintendo 3DS Stylus Pack
- 5th – 8th place: 1 Pokémon TCG booster pack
8 Player Pod Tournaments
- 1st place: Nintendo 3DS Carrying Case
- 2nd place: Nintendo 3DS Stylus Pack
- 3rd – 4th place: 1 Pokémon TCG booster pack
16 Player On-Demand Tournaments
- 1st place: 8 Pokémon TCG booster packs
- 2nd place: 4 Pokémon TCG booster packs
- 3rd – 4th place: 2 Pokémon TCG booster packs
- 5th – 8th place: 1 Pokémon TCG booster pack
8 Player On-Demand Tournaments
- 1st place: 4 Pokémon TCG booster packs
- 2nd place: 2 Pokémon TCG booster packs
- 3rd – 4th place: 1 Pokémon TCG booster pack
Rules
Masters Single Cup
This tournament will mirror the format used for the Battle Subway but with the addition of Sleep Clause. The absence of Team Preview and the addition of Sleep Clause should be kept in mind when looking at your Singles Global Battle Union teams!
- IR Battles
- Players will use Pokémon in their party (not their Battle Box)
- No more than 3 Pokémon may be in a player’s party
- Battle for two
- Single Battle
- Players may not use the Wonder launcher
- Players may not put more than one of the opponent’s Pokémon to sleep at anytime
- Pokémon may not hold two of the same item
- Pokémon may not hold the item Soul Dew or know the moves Dark Void or Sky Drop
- Players may not use two of the same Pokémon
- Players may not use any of the following Pokémon:
- Mewtwo, Mew, Lugia, Ho-Oh, Chatot, Celebi, Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza, Jirachi, Deoxys, Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, Phione, Manaphy, Darkrai, Shaymin, Arceus, Victini, Reshiram, Zekrom, Kyurem, Keldeo, Meloetta, Genesect
Players must make a move selection expediently—a judge may issue a warning or game loss if a player is shown to be stalling excessively. It is expected that a move selection will occur in approximately 30 seconds.
- Mewtwo, Mew, Lugia, Ho-Oh, Chatot, Celebi, Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza, Jirachi, Deoxys, Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, Phione, Manaphy, Darkrai, Shaymin, Arceus, Victini, Reshiram, Zekrom, Kyurem, Keldeo, Meloetta, Genesect
- In the event a player violates one of these rules a judge should be called to moderate the dispute. If necessary, the winner’s battle video should be saved and reviewed. A player violating these rules will be issued a game loss. Players must report any rule violation before the end of their match.
Triple Cup
Unlike the Global Battle Union, there is no Team Preview in this tournament and you will only be using four total Pokémon rather than six.
- IR Battles
- Players will use Pokémon in their party (not their Battle Box)
- No more than 4 Pokémon may be in a player’s party
- Battle for two
- Triple Battle
- Players may not use the Wonder launcher
- Pokémon may not hold two of the same item
- Pokémon may not hold the item Soul Dew or know the moves Dark Void or Sky Drop
- Players may not use two of the same Pokémon
- Players must make a move selection expediently—a judge may issue a warning or game loss if a player is shown to be stalling excessively. It is expected that a move selection will occur in approximately 30 seconds.
- Players may not use any of the following Pokémon:
- Mewtwo, Mew, Lugia, Ho-Oh, Chatot, Celebi, Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza, Jirachi, Deoxys, Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, Phione, Manaphy, Darkrai, Shaymin, Arceus, Victini, Reshiram, Zekrom, Kyurem, Keldeo, Meloetta, Genesect
- In the event a player violates one of these rules a judge should be called to moderate the dispute. If necessary, the winner’s battle video should be saved and reviewed. A player violating these rules will be issued a game loss. Players must report any rule violation before the end of their match.
On-Demand and Pod Tournaments
These tournaments will use the same rules as the main event — Modified, commonly referred to as VGC ’13 — but without Team Preview as you’ll only have four Pokémon in your party. It is the same rules as the Battle Subway.
- IR Battles
- Players will use Pokémon in their party (not their Battle Box)
- No more than 4 Pokémon may be in a player’s party
- Battle for two
- Double Battle
- Players may not use the Wonder launcher
- Pokémon may not hold two of the same item
- Pokémon may not hold the item Soul Dew or know the moves Dark Void or Sky Drop
- Players may not use two of the same Pokémon
- Players may not use any of the following Pokémon:
- Mewtwo, Mew, Lugia, Ho-Oh, Chatot, Celebi, Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza, Jirachi, Deoxys, Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, Phione, Manaphy, Darkrai, Shaymin, Arceus, Victini, Reshiram, Zekrom, Kyurem, Keldeo, Meloetta, Genesect
- Players must make a move selection expediently—a judge may issue a warning or game loss if a player is shown to be stalling excessively. It is expected that a move selection will occur in approximately 30 seconds.
- If a player suspects an opponent has violated a rule a judge should be called to moderate the dispute. If necessary, the winner’s battle video should be saved and reviewed. A player violating these rules will be issued a game loss. Players must report any rule violation before the end of their match.
Schedule
Friday, July 5th, 2013
- 2:00pm – 6:00pm: On Demand 8-player and 16-player tournaments
- 4:00pm – 6:00pm: Pre-Registration
Saturday, July 6th, 2013
- 8:00am – 8:30am: Masters Nationals Main Event Registration
- 9:00am – 3:00pm: Masters Nationals Main Event Swiss Rounds
- 9:30am – 10:00am: Pod A (8 x 16 Players) Registration
- 10:00am – 12:00pm: Pod A (8 x 16 Players) Single Elimination Rounds
- 10:00am – 12:00pm: On-Demand 8-player and 16-player side tournaments
- 12:00pm – 12:30pm: Pod B (16 x 8 Players) Registration
- 1:00pm – 2:30pm: Pod B (16 x 8 Players) Single Elimination Rounds
- 1:00pm – 2:30pm: On-Demand 8-player side tournaments
- 2:30pm – 3:00 pm: Single Cup Registration
- 2:30pm – 3:00pm: Juniors & Seniors Nationals Main Event Registration
- 3:30pm – 7:30 pm: Masters Nationals Main Event Top Cut
- 3:30pm – 8:00pm: Juniors & Seniors Nationals Main Event Swiss Rounds
- 4:00pm – 8:30 pm: Single Cup Single Elimination Rounds
- 8:00pm – 10:00pm: Juniors & Seniors NationalsMain Event Top Cut Round 1 and 2
Sunday, June 7th, 2013
- 9:00am – 9:30am: The Triples Cup Registration
- 9:30am – 2:00pm: The Triples Cup Single Elimination Rounds
- 9:00am – 10:00am: Nationals Main event Top Cut Round 3
- 10:00am – 10:30am: Pod C (8 x 8 Players)Registration
- 10:00am – 2:00pm: On-Demand 8-player and 16-player side tournaments
- 10:25am – 11:35am: Junior Nationals Main Event Finals
- 10:30am – 12:00pm: Pod C (8 x 8 Players) Single Elimination Rounds
- 11:35am – 12:35pm: Senior Nationals Main Event Finals
- 12:30pm – 1:00pm: Pod D (4 x 16 Players) Registration
- 1:00pm – 3:00pm: Pod D (4 x 16 Players) Single Elimination Rounds
- 2:10pm – 3:10pm: Masters Nationals Main Event Finals
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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inb4 Scott gets 33th
Top32 is a great change though, just goes to show that if we players voice our opinions, TPCi can actually do something about it.
Interested in seeing how cp will change, or not. Because it makes perfect sense to give out different cp based on resistance after people have already won a round of cut.
Super excited for someone to not get a worlds invite with a top 4 finish just so we can get another complaint thread going.
And maybe with a larget cut I can finally make cut in one of these things, only to continue my streak of losing round 1, which at least means I won’t have to play up to 9 additional games of pokemon that same day.
While I’m allowing myself to stress out over the attendance thing — we still need 350 players to get a 32 player cut for reasons I don’t entirely understand according to the site, which I expect us to hit, but will still be worried about until we hear the final numbers — I don’t think I can remember a time the community has seemed as excited as it has been today after the announcement about this stuff. It doesn’t seem like too much of that excitement has leaked over into the forum, so I thought it might be worth emphasizing a little: almost everyone seems to be really excited about the prospect of the Singles and Triples tournaments, and (obviously) the larger top cut is something we felt pretty strongly about, so uh, thanks.
I started out playing singles for eight or nine years before I picked up doubles for VGC, so it’ll be cool to sort of get back to that a little if I miss top cut, and while I’ve never really played triples outside of a side event last year because there hasn’t really been a reason to, I’m actually super psyched to give it a try. I vastly prefer doubles to any other Pokemon format I’ve played (unless you count multibattles), but I hope the prized side events work out well enough for both TPCI and the players that they continue because I’m really geeked to mess around with this stuff. I’m sure there’s some players who prefer triples over doubles and I know there’s many, many players who prefer singles, so I think it’s a cool step to have something a little more serious for this metagames while still being something that’ll probably be relaxing and fun for those of us who take the CP tournaments a little too seriously. If I learned anything dealing with the 8 billion metagames on Smogon while I was helping to run the show there it is that Pokemon can be played in an almost infinite amount of ways, so it’s nice to see some other rulesets getting some love along with the standard format. Always cool to get more chances to try (and probably fail) at winning some prizes, too!
I particularly like that there’ll still be things for players to look forward too after Swiss, too. Speaking from experience here, missing the cut can be pretty frustrating if you think you have a decent shot of making it, so actually having something to look forward to afterward even if we don’t make it will definitely make the experience better for everyone. I have typically been one of those people that magically disappeared from the venue never to be seen again pretty quickly once Swiss ended in the past (and then again after top cut on Sunday), but I’m really excited to have a lot more Pokemon to play this year… it’ll still be fun to go out in the evenings, but I’m actually looking forward to playing the game as much as anything else now. I don’t think I’ve ever said that about a Pokemon tournament before.
I’m sure we’re all still wondering about whether or not NA will get a few more CP invites, but I imagine this really isn’t the time for that discussion. so I’m just going to be happy that I’m looking forward to this more than any Pokemon tournament i can remember now. I know we’ve kind of complained a lot this season, me in particular because I feel some amount of responsibility that I need to use the opportunities my position on NB gives me to try to lobby for my fellow players a little, but with the cut probably being 32, the addition of the side events, and the CP system in general this season was a pretty massive step up from last year. I’d love to see the invitation thing get nailed out a little still, but the circuit itself and the events in them were nailed pretty amazingly this year.
also i’d totally take 33rd if the +30 sends me to Worlds
I really hope EU Nats get this kinda stuff next year, it looks like a music festival, only replacing live music with battles!
I guess if I where actually going to Nationals, I would be a bit more excited, but top 32 for everyone should make it a lot more fair to get the best players in. I feel sad for the Seniors and especially Juniors, as I don’t think that they can hit 350 people like the Masters can. No Team Preview for this stuff sounds exciting, and if I were going you could have guaranteed a Aron + Liepard trolling festival!
I don’t think they will do a single flight which means that there should be two flights of 8 rounds each. Which would mean after 8 rounds, more than half of the 6-2s will not make it. So hopefully they do 9 Swiss rounds to minimize the possibility of x-2s not making it.
Not that it really matters much to me though because I have a bye. One less round means less chance that the players with byes get 3 losses. So here’s to hoping I don’t pick the same line as every other player with a bye
I don’t really get why they scheduled the finals separately and then made events going on during them. I could either win free packs or stand at a faraway distance to watch a juniors/seniors/tcg match I don’t care about and could watch on YouTube the next day.
Also it is dumb if you can’t play in the singles tournament without dropping early. Even if the Swiss rounds end early, if you make top cut it looks like you wont be able to play
Bring 2 DSs and play both at once
This is why so many of us have sub plushies
Will there be a level 50 cap like in VGC? The rules don’t seem to specify.
Someone explain pod tourneys pls. Thanks.
1) IR battles auto level both up and down to 50
2) Pod tournaments are essentially the same as on-demand tournaments, but there will be some extra prizing for them so they are only at certain times and with a limited number – these are currently only for Junior and Senior division players since they will largely take place at a time when Masters will be playing Swiss or when Masters will have the option to play in the Triple Cup + the night before will have had the option to play in the Masters Single Cup, a tournament that Junior and Senior players will not be able to play in
All around fantastic additions to nationals!! This reminds me of fighting game tourneys where you have the option to play multiple games giving the tourney a wide variety and I couldn’t be more stoked! Just wanted to voice my appreciation! Also wanted to toss in the ‘now let’s just get top cut to be 16 in regionals’ =P
I’m going to have to voice some criticism in this thread even though I’m not really used to it, but I’ll start with what I like.
Prized Side Tournaments are an awesome addition. Even though I’m not going to suddenly make a legit triples team I’ll find something fun to use and I love the idea of having legit prizes for different formats. The pod tournaments are a great idea as well, hope I can walk out with Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, but even if not, great idea.
What I don’t like
The new system for a top 32 cut just seems like a way for TPCi to drag around the issue without doing what the community wants. I feel kind of weird complaining about this since it’s an improvement over flat 16, but I feel pretty strongly about this. I know that AZ has said he does not think X-2s should cut, and there’s nothing wrong with that opinion, but when 90% of the community has very clearly voiced there opinion that there shouldn’t even be an argument about it I just have to feel like instead of giving us the 1/4 cut from TCG we wanted with the current system, he’s putting an arbitrary number of people limit to get a 32 cut. Masters may or may not get a top 16 still, and Seniors/Juniors are completely screwed over. I feel like this is just to get people who don’t read it through completely off his back while keeping his completely misguided idea that X-2 should not cut. I can’t help feeling like he’s being unreasonable on this issue and I’m not going to change my stance on that unless he replies to this in person. I just don’t get his reasoning on this. Half of the 6-2s in Seniors/Juniors will make it, while half will not, and there’s a very good chance of that happening in Masters is well. Is that what he wants in the system?
Speaking of Seniors/Juniors, their schedule is complete crap and will turn off so many parents when their Juniors inevitably get to bed at midnight on Saturday. The players meeting starts at 3:30 PM. That wouldn’t be that big of a deal, although 10 is still late for some juniors, but with the track record these things have of going on time (read: they almost never do except seemingly in Utah), everyone is going to be staying up so late and be so burned out of Pokemon by the time they get out. I’m going to have to do a lot of hanging out Friday if I want to actually talk to anyone, because I will be trapped at my DS until 10-12 depending on how good/bad the organization is. I know it makes time for the pod tournaments, but I think with the actual tournament taking so much time and actually affecting everyone in the divisions, it would make more sense to have the pod tournaments after. I don’t mind staying up too late, but I know this is going to be an issue for large numbers of people in both age divisions.
Tl;DR: I like the idea of side tournaments with prizes, but the top 32 system feels like a huge slap in the face to Seniors/Juniors while Masters will still be very down to the wire on whether or not they get the cut. The tournament will also go exceedingly late in both of the younger divisions, and may turn off many parents from wanting to come to these again.
I also miss all top cut on Sunday, but if it makes time for separate finals so be it.
That awkard moment when side events gets almost better prizes than the main event or prizes similar to Worlds lol
I’ve always loved US Nats, they are more than just a tournament, that’s how a national should be, here in Europe we only have the main event so let’s hope TPCi addreses that in the future.
And talking about the top cut change, those are great news, I think they have done the right move here, so the 12 invites goes to the more deserving players and not punishing some of them for an unlucky and crowded swiss.
Now let’s hope they announce better videogame exclusive prize support for worlds because it’s a shame that a side event of a National Championship has as a prize a 3DS XL and none at Worlds. I know that everything they decide to give us as prizes have to be welcomed but you can’t give better prizes at nats than at worlds if you don’t want to be critiziced.
And I’d like to point one more thing. Next time if some changes are announced, even if they are last minute ones, please don’t rage and wait until your nats, or circuit or whatever the changes affect to arrive. I firmly believe TPCi are doing a great job improving the season so the best thing we can do is to be happy about every change they make even if it is a bit unfair to other regions because they are trying to establish an homogenized format for all regions and the changes will eventualy arrive to your region too.
Once I said that I’m really looking forward to US Nats and Worlds and I’m hoping TPCi make a similar announcement for improved worlds prize support, or at least a more videogame oriented one.
It was never a jealousy thing, many of us are still upset over what happened over regardless of new info here. Although we are glad that they made improvements to our circuit, it doesn’t justify the decisions they made in your circuit.
I also believe that our complaining about what happened in europe is what got us the top cut expansion. If we didn’t rage about that, we might not have gotten this.
I do however agree that TPCi is trying to make the circuit better all around the world and that they are doing what they can even if some of their decisions are still questionable. Most specifically the fact that side events have prizes that rival the prizes of the main event.
I don’t think that it is a very good assumption to assume that changes that we end up getting after lobbying for them would have happened if there wasn’t any lobbying toward the end of your post there, Flash.
I think if you ignore Worlds completely, if I look at the NA circuit as a whole, the format of the NA circuit wound up being pretty much perfect in regard to the idea of us having a circuit of tournaments rather than some lead-ins to one tournament that matters and TPCI doing as much as they could have with each event. The main US Nationals tournament is now at least as good as it was last year if we get 350 players, though it’ll be slightly better because players only get one bye this year instead of two and I think I recall someone from TPCI saying that they’re actually going to split byes up reasonably evenly this time if there are flights. The side events at Nationals are a fantastic addition. Regionals conceptually were great even though there were a few administrative problems, and I think Wi-Fi tournaments were about as good as TPCI could have made them be given the awful infrastructure(though even as someone who wound up getting 32 of the 50 possible Wi-Fi points I feel like Wi-Fi tournaments probably shouldn’t have counted for CP this year). The only thing I would have actually done differently related to this stuff is to make the non-CP global link tournaments a ruleset that would have actually been interesting enough that I wanted to play in them, perhaps mirroring the side events at Nationals.
The point i’m getting around to here is while the actual events in our circuit were awfully close to perfect this year (assuming there aren’t any surprises in the other direction over the next nine days or so), the CP system and invite structure is still pretty messy everywhere. I think we all expected a few problems on some level — it was a new system for VGC that was bound to have some issues that needed to be dealt with, and the TCG also had to make some pretty major changes after a year of its CP system to make things better for the TCG’s players. One thing i think most of the NA players dislike about the way our CP circuit is set up, for instance, is that US Nationals is dramatically less important than it has been in past years. I don’t think there’s any argument toning down the impact of Nationals had a great effect on Regionals, as before the top placers at Regionals got a completely ridiculous advantage at Nationals while it was a waste of time and money for everyone else for trying to progress through the season, but it has hurt the prestige of the big event at the end of our circuit some by both making the event matter less for who qualifies for Worlds than in the past (Zach doesn’t even need to show up, for instance, and Aaron, Stephen, Duy, and I would probably make Worlds if we bubbled top cut). Again, this isn’t something I think is necessarily bad, but it kind of makes it more important to be sending enough of the right people to Worlds since while from an entertainment perspective US Nationals is looking better than it ever has, the competitive impact it has isn’t quite what it was before and that kind of takes away the big end of season event Nationals was for us in NA and puts it all on Worlds. I don’t really want to rehash the other thread about invites again, but don’t think anyone has changed their minds much since we had that discussion and that while everyone is pretty optimistic now if NA invites stay at 12 we’ll probably have another big fight, especially if it leads to a top 4 Nationals finisher missing Worlds, which is reasonably probable at this point.
I’m not sure I understand why TPCI just didn’t set the bar at 250 to make Worlds to begin with in a similar way to how the TCG’s system works, but I probably wouldn’t advise poking too much at the invite thing because nobody is over it, and I don’t think have a giant Worlds is any more appealing to most of us than it was to two weeks ago even if we get whatever justice throwing a bunch of invites at us too would be. Would love to see TPCI just put a bar at 250 here or extend the invites to about 20 to cover the same range, but I think that’d just be making the best of a bad situation more than actually making what would have been the best decision at the beginning of the season at this point.
Not exactly related but I think we’ll be seeing online pairings for the main event this year!
via: External
I love online pairings, they help a lot when it comes to calculating resistance quickly and getting to your match without checking the actual sheet. This Nationals is really set up to be the best one ever!
Holy……….Yeah the seniors/juniors schedule is ridiculous, im positive that most locals wont be participating. This also means that we have very little chances of reaching 350+ players. This is very disappointing because more than 16 seniors deserve to top cut in my opinion.
Juniors/seniors probably have the best schedule so I don’t know what you’re talking about. If masters had that schedule i’d be able to play tcg and vgc(assuming I don’t cut tcg)
Also I doubt you’d get 350 players even if you combined juniors and seniors. Masters didn’t even hit 350 last year.
top 16 cut is also fine for seniors. No way it deserves a top 32 this year.
Keep in mind that the days we can play VGC and the space they have to work with are locked in and can’t be changed at this time. For 256 to 511 players, the top cut size we’d want is 64, yes. However, that would add an additional hour that they most likely don’t have for a two day event. When we were pushing for the 25% Top Cut size, we assumed we’d have Day 2 to do Top Cut. It turned out we wouldn’t. I think that TPCi understands what it is that the players want and that this is an acceptable compromise for this year. Hopefully next year VGC is a three day event so we can have a better tournament. After all, the space is already paid for!
Now, as far as Juniors / Seniors schedule, it’s about as good as it can be. You can’t start in the morning because there’s no space. As you might remember from last year, about 50% of the space is used for the TCG main event, 25% for VGC, and 25% for side events. The Masters are going to take up the entirety of the VGC area because they’re about the size of Juniors and Seniors combined. Once we’re done Swiss, they can give space to Juniors and Seniors. I am sure you’ll all finish on time. When has US Nationals not run on time? Also, many events ran well this year. It was just the east coast ones you attended that blew. I don’t think we have much to worry about.
I agree that it’s obviously done so Seniors / Juniors cannot possibly get a Top 32 cut, but again, I think that’s more to do with time than due to the X-2 thing that is often quoted.
Well, the top 32 thing in Europe was made to avoid the scenario of a player with travel award and no invite. I think if that happens in NA they will do something to fix it, even if that thing is to give a personal invite to the person who made top 4 and wasn’t in the top 12 CP list. They decided that in Europe because it was the easy thing, they know only a couple of europeans will actually use the invites, but if they do something like that in US I think every person in the CP top 20 or 32 list will attend Worlds so let see how they manage it if it happens.
Oh, and I know nothing has changed about the invites thing, I was just trying to point that they are listening to people and trying to improve the circuit for all of us, I know the european change was bigger than the US one because it changed the output of players showing at worlds. I only wanted to express that is fine to complain but in better forms, at the end of the day we are a community and I assume everyone wants the best for the community, so if one year one region gets better prizes just complain to make TPCi know but do it politely withour raging because they are trying to even the circuits in every region.
The point I agree with you most is the one about the CP mess, here in Europe it was even worse. For the first tournament of the year we had, (Italian Nats) the wifi tournaments were all that mattered for the byes, and then for the last 2 tournaments (Germany and UK nats) the byes were towards the top 16 finishers of the other nationals, this is plain ridiculous and then the CP system doesn’t mean nothing here because the people who will pay their travel to worlds will do it even without invitation.
Do we really have to do this again?
Really?
Vancouver isnt cheap for anyone, and there are a lot of people who simply cant afford the trip plus lodging. When worlds was in San Diego, there were some people who got an invite but just couldnt afford to pay out of pocket. Blanket statements are probably the 2nd worst things to say in an argument, outside of personal attacks and yo mama jokes.
Also if someone wants to fly out to play in lcq, whatever, they have to go through 5+ rounds of b2o3 games among solid players to make it into worlds. Thats a pr good test imo, at least better than essentially top 16ing a NA regional
Ya mutha.
Everyone who was invited in VGC 2011 to worlds showed up…
I don’t see how I am not allowed to complain about things that are dumb and unrational, but anyone from Spain gets to complain about not having a nationals.
I complain because somethings are too idiotic for me not to complain. Maybe we need another year of tournaments that end at 11 pm on Sundays for people to realize that something is wrong with how things are done.
I am pretty excited to buy my invite next year though by travelling to European nationals. Hopefully, next year wifi tournaments would count for more points, I am sure there are plenty of people who would love to be able to cheat for CP. But under no circumstances should prizes be given out in masters division for less than top 2, we don’t want people to get greedy or actually have a reason to spend $1000s of dollars to travel to tournaments
This thread is not about Europe. This thread is about the expansion of NA top cut and side events. Please keep further discussion on invites etc. in their proper threads.
Argh. I just realize having top cut on the same day as swiss means we can’t do our top cut bracket contest
Now what do I do with my copy of Pokemon Rumble Blast?
I heard something about how I don’t have to show up, and how that’s potentially a problem because keeping the competition up to par is a big deal.
I agree that this could become a problem. I totally understand where you’re coming from, and I hope this is never as major of an issue as it could be. But you know what? I’m not that guy. I’m going to give this more effort than I’ve given any tournament yet.
You know why? I’ll tell you why. I’m a man on a mission with consciously selfish but hilariously enjoyable ambitions. Apparently people can top 4 an event or something and get in their local newspaper, or even win just one regional and make it on the front page of Pokemon.com
Me? Hah, right. I got interviewed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in February, and after the interview I told the woman I wasn’t even in college anymore, instead starting my own company. “Oh I saw here you were a student, this was for the education section. We’ll see if we can find a spot for it though!” said the people who placed an article about a fantastic new eggplant roaster in the technology news section of the next Sunday’s newspaper…
So you know what? I’m winning morally either way it ends up this time. Either I fall short and make everyone who didn’t bother to give me an article have a justified reason for their decision, I do well and no one bothers to do an interview yet again and I continue to read how local kid i defeated two regionals in a row now top 4s an event and gets full page article because he’s good at things, or someone figures out that I exist and takes care of this so I don’t feel so damn awkward being the guy who tries hard to get VGC local publicity but keeps getting avoided by the people who could help me do so.
Maybe I just suck. I realize that’s a likelihood. But really, it’s not even because I need moral support to grow my e-ego. I just want to publicize these events so more local players are aware of it while maybe having a bit of fun on camera or in an interview.
So there you go, Scott. The competitiveness is not going to be lacking. I also wrote like 7 paragraphs or something so I definitely am considering MMing you in a multi-paragraph post showdown.
tl;dr if you’re in my situation next year, find a reason to stay competitive. Don’t sandbag for days. Sandbags are for punching.
It’s ok Zach is just jealous of Technoz getting an article.
Sory Zach, you used morality in your justification for your argument. My moral compass is equivalent to the global utility made by a decision, which is to say I don’t believe in traditional morals. Sorry, your argument is invalid from my perspective :3
Play to win or don’t play at all.