Pokémon Video Game Championship Series Expands to Arena Cup in Germany
It hasn’t been even two weeks since the 2014 Pokémon World Championships ended and we’ve received our first peek at the VGC ’15 season! Amigo, the company in charge of Play! Pokémon activities in Germany and Austria, announced that they will once again be running their Arena Cup series this season. Importantly for us, they’ll be adding a video game component to the event! The Arena Cup tournaments are exclusively done in Germany as a project by Amigo so we don’t expect to see them in other countries. What we have confirmed is that they will be for Championship Points (CP) and will offer Europe’s first chance for CP outside National Championships and International Challenges.
Though the TCG portion of the event will award points similarly to a Regional Championship, the video game event will fall in line with the CP given out in Premier Challenges. Arena Cups for the TCG used to give out CP in the range of City Championships so there’s always a chance that if turnout is high for the video game event that we can then also have Regional-level prizing in the future!
For those unfamiliar with the Arena Cup, it has traditionally been held in four different locations in Germany in the North, East, South, and West. This year’s only confirmed location so far is Berlin but we expect to hear about more — hopefully with video game tournaments of their own — soon. Last season’s events were held in Hamburg, Liepzig, Dortmund, and Ludwigsburg. The Berlin event will be held at the Science and Technology Park, Adlershof, on Saturday September 27th, 2014. There will be a €10 entry fee required. It is unknown at this time whether or not video game players will be eligible for some of the travel award prizes.
We are still waiting on more information about Premier Challenges in other countries in Europe as well as other regions of the world. We are also waiting on finding out whether Arena Cup tournaments will count as Premier Challenges or something completely different. The Championship Point payout for Premier Challenges has not been announced at this time. More as it develops!
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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30 Responses to Pokémon Video Game Championship Series Expands to Arena Cup in Germany
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Basically a premier challenge for 2015, in Europe, in the Summer(I assume Fall from a scheduling perspective), eh? That’s pretty interesting.
Hmm, cheapest flights out of the UK are via Hamburg and then a train coming in at £230 return + Hotel.
Probably not worth it for that amount of CP, but if these events do end up being Germany only then those who do attend gain a significant advantage towards World’s invites.
If only they’d given us a bit more notice, but then that’s the norm for the European Circuit.
I don’t think it makes much sense having more Premier Challenges in Germany when are countries like Spain and others that don’t even have nationals
Ok, I’ll bite. Why should Amigo, a company that deals in Germany and Austria, make events for Spain — a country they do not serve?
Yeah, as long as other companies follow the path that Amigo goes VGC will have a bright future in Europe. But that’s up to TPCi to serve more countries.
Oh look just can’t have a thread about tournaments in europe without some idiot talking about how spain doesnt have nationals.
gettin real tired of your grimer.
Or tournaments in the US
or Asia
NO TOURNAMENTS IN POLAND, PEOPLE!!!111.
Oh wait… I motivated myself and host some smaller ones, the upcoming tourney is even going to be sponsored by Nintendo (indirectly, we have distributor’s support). If TPCi/POP/whoever disappoints you, get your grimer done on your own. All you need is a bit of good will and commitment.
Yes just the chance was waiting for more vgc 14 that counts for worlds 2015
Even though it is just in Germany (which, unfortunately, ends up being too costly for me to attend with flights and hotels and all that jazz), I actually see this as quite an improvement for the future of VGC tournaments in Europe 🙂
I wish u lived here, then I’d like to hear your opinion.
Btw, I think this kind of tournaments are a great adittion for europe but they doesn’t solve the main problems of the european circuit, the inconsistency and the lack of early advertising and information in general. If the european circuit is going to be the same as last year’s one is a huge punch in the face for the rest of european players because we only have 3 tournaments in one month to play and qualify for worlds, and it’s hard to have that much free time in one month plus they give a round 1 bye to the top 16 players in the cp standings coming to the first national of the season, so if only germany have these tournaments is a great disadvantage for the rest of us. And we can’t travel to these tournaments because again, the misinformation is huge, they announce it a couple of weeks before the events.
I’d like to have more events like this one if they announce the whole season structure and locations a year before the events, just like in the US, but if they are going to be like this I prefer to not have any.
My country doesn’t have events nor do many others. We don’t ruin every yamsing news post with whining. All it does is make other people lose sympathy for your cause. You’re literally complaining about not having a year round circuit in a news post that announced more events at a different part of the year for Europe.
i think the language barrier hurts flash a lot here because honestly i cannot see that much whining in his post.
i believe the message he tried to convey is that while news like this is obviously good for the growth of the game in europe, its potentially dangerous to the integrity of the circuit in the short run because having these tournaments with such short notice pretty much favors locals (in this case germans). the general message of his post is that we need the layout of our circuit communicated clearly to us and i actually also made a huge post in the feedback topic about it. its obvious tpci needs to book venues and prepare but is it really that hard to say that there are gonna be 3 nats, some premier challenges and 3-4 international challenges (2 last season) more than 4 weeks in advance?
Good to hear! Would’ve been better if there was one in Austria but I guess south Germany is alright. Cheers
I’m jelly of all you overseas guys that get events that offer CP
I would love such a points system and what not set up in Australia. At least where I live, in the leads up to Regional, we use to have monthly VGC14 tournaments that were sanctioned (prior to VGC14 rules being announced, we just played Smogon OU).
When I got my capture card, we started using it for the venue’s TV when topcut was decided, which provided entertainment for those already knocked out etc, aside from the numerous “WOW A 3DS ON TV’ reactions from many others that always asked ‘how do you do this?’ from parents with children and what not.
Out of curiosity, is the amount of CP in say an International challenge different for a premier challenge / various regionals attendances more or less?
You misunderstood Firestorm, actually. He refers to
which refers to Angel’s post referring to JohnnyPt’s pointless whine.
And I must agree with them: there’s Canada and France which are on the same boat as Spain and there are countless countries who never had any form of VGC circuit. Which of the countries whine whenever someone mentions an official event anywhere? Spain does! While I’m really sorry for Spain, France and Canada for losing Nationals,flooding others with same whiny grimer make them fed up with it which leads to turning back on them rather than supporting them and being sympathetic. People told them what to do to get out of their situation, but instead of acting locally, it’s easier to moan online.
That being said, I must say that Angel’s post (albeit the language) is somewhat of a voice of the people: we’re sorry for Spain’s, we’ve learned about it in 2013 season and we don’t need to be constantly reminded especially in the way we currently are reminded.
Glad we have that straight, let’s move on, shall we?
TPCi doesn’t book any of your Nationals venues. Amigo does that in Germany, Guardian Knot Games does that in the UK, and I forgot the name of the company that does that in Italy. TPCi doesn’t book any of your Premier Challenge venues. That’s going to be up to your local tournament organizers. Last season Germany Nationals was announced 6. On the in advance. UK and Italy were around 3 months in advance iirc. Premier Challenges will almost definitely happen throughout the year if it’s anything like TCG League Challenges — which, again if they’re like League Challenges, will probably be announced a few weeks before the tournament because that’s the size of events they are. One of our League Challenges were scheduled to happen during Worlds and announced three weeks before. Just something the TO did.
We just got finished with the 2014 season. Worlds was less than two weeks ago. If you’d prefer maybe Pokémon can take a year off after every Worlds to give you enough notice on what’s going to happen.
Most of the whining lately comes from people from other countries, because they recognize that Spain has always had the biggest VGC in number of players attending, and we have the best results by far from a country without a single event nor organized play. Canada had nats once and the numbers were pathetic, so that’s not an excuse. Imagine a playerbase almost as big as the one you have in the US and that’s the playerbase of Spain, then remove the US from the circuit, what would happen? Multiple people would whine about it, even I’d whine about it because it’d be unfair. That is what is just happening with Spain, multiple people from a lot of countries whine about that, and you are tired of it because there are a lot of people, not because there are only 3-4 people whining about it in every post.
And drug duck explained much better than me the idea of the rest of my post.
They would organize events themselves instead of whining around?
What do you think we do? We organize a lot of tournaments with good prizes whenever we can but they are not official, so you don’t know about them, but it doesn’t mean we just sit here and complain
I don’t have enough information to have a strong opinion about whether or not I think the Spanish players are or aren’t doing a good job of trying to build VGC in Spain.
What I do have enough information to have a strong opinion about is that most of the time the way the Spanish players are handling their situation online is completely inappropriate. If a thread here isn’t about feedback for the circuit or Spain, Spain should not be getting brought up in the thread. Posting in random threads complaining about Spain not having events does not make Spain more likely to get tournaments. Tweeting into random Twitter conversations does not make Spain more likely to have tournaments. What it does do is drive the rest of the community absolutely insane because it is obnoxious to constantly see off-topic complaining in unrelated threads where people are trying to discuss the actual topic of the thread. We’ll be giving warnings and bans if it continues here. Keep it to appropriate threads. This thread should not have been one of them. I am empathetic to the cause here but the random complaining has to stop. You have to go about this the right way if you want to be successful at improving VGC in Spain instead of just irritating the rest of the world.
Mostly unrelated to the above, but a comment more on some of the rest of the posts in this thread and some comments I’ve read about it elsewhere. Do we really need to complain every time something changes for the better in Europe? You’ve (justifiably) complained for years that there isn’t anything below a National tournament in Europe, you get some Premier Challenges, which almost definitely implies there will be more tournaments throughout the year throughout Europe, and instead of being happy for this obvious positive sign of change you… still complain for getting an obvious step toward what you wanted? It’s not going to be perfect every time a change is made, but you guys are always super ungrateful when you get positive changes. Take it easy… I am sure things are going to keep getting better in Europe, but it’d probably be more fun for everyone if you didn’t get there by being dragged along kicking and screaming.
Also, I’d love to see the Premier Challenges that got announced a year in advance in the US last year. You know, the ones where we had the trial Premier Challenges that got announced as a tournament format to begin with in the last week of March, took place in May and June on what was usually no more than three weeks of notice in only a handful of locations in the country, and basically just gave free CP to people who happened to live in the right spots. I’m not sure what US circuit you guys are watching, but it’s very different than the one that I play in, and what looks like is going to happen with Premier Challenges in EU is exactly the same as how it functioned in the US last year. You can get growth extremely slowly or you can get it on short notice. I think the latter is obviously what we want.
I know there have been some points where we (and I particularly) didn’t act right, but take a look at who brought the discussion to this topic, a non-Spanish player, we are trying to improve our situation without crying everywhere.
I understand your point of view, it’s normal to be upset when there are a post in every thread whining about Spain not having any kind of tournaments but I think you should at least inform yourselves about the person that makes that post, when, where and how. If there is a person or a group o people that spams every related or unrelated topic with “We want vgc in Spain” or something like that it’s ok to be tired and to complain about it, but if they are a different person from different country every time maybe it’s because they think that we deserve at least some sort of official tournaments and you shouldn’t be posting against “The Spaniards” flooding with grimmer every thread.
About the premier challenges in the US, I know they announced them a month in advance, but a premier challenge in Europe is even more important than a regional in the US, that’s why we complain, but don’t get us wrong, we are happy to see improvements in our circuit, the problem is that not knowing a bit about the circuit format, it can be more detrimental than benefitial to it. But I agree with you Scott, let’s wait and see how many of them they will organize and how our circuit is going to be this year, the only thing I hope is they announce it earlier and that they will be more consistent with their decisions about top cuts, etc.
PS: And I agree as well with you Scott about this not being the thread to discuss about Spain related things, but it was brought to the table by a non Spanish player and I think the responses to it due to missinformation or whatever haven’t been the most addecuate either
I think you’re being pretty disingenuous by saying non-Spanish player over and over (and don’t even get me started on the Premier Challenge is more important than a Regional thing…). You don’t think Portugal is in exactly the same boat wanting Spanish Nationals back for the same reasons? It is almost always a Spanish poster and this one may as well be. It is definitely not just random people from all of the world the way you’re trying to paint this. It is actually almost always the same three or four people. Regardless, this has happened enough that I think people expect it is OK to post this sort of thing now. It isn’t.
We’d all like to see tournaments in Spain, but this is not an acceptable way to try make that happen. These discussions are fruitless anyway — you’re right, most of the responses aren’t very good either, but ultimately none of us are the ones making these decisions anyway. Which is a lot of why this isn’t where that discussion should be happening to begin with.
That top cut complaint, by the way, is ridiculous, and most of what I meant with the second part of my last post. So what should have happened instead? “Oh, we made a bad decision about the format of the first European National. We could fix it, but let’s not. Let’s instead have three tournaments with bad formats and then fix it all next year.” How does that make sense? How is that better? You guys are unbelievable sometimes. There was a problem and an adjustment was made as fast as it could be. TPCI isn’t just going to magically do everything perfectly the first time. That’s not a reason not to fix problems.
I know it’s better to fix the problems asap, I’m just saying that I hope that this year they plan it better from the begining, that’s all. And I attended the two best nats this year in terms of top cut but I know that it’s not fair for the people who attended the first one.
About the importance of premier challenges, here they are like regionals because the top 16 players in cp standings coming to the first national get a huge round 1 bye with its 100% tiebreaker, so it’s a great deal if the format stays like this year because there is no cp gain from any other source.
And again I repeat myself, steps to the right direction are welcomed but they have to be careful because if there are very little tournaments like this one it could be worse than nothing. So I hope they give us more information about the format to plan accordingly
With all x-2 make Topcut, tiebreaker is no longer a thing. So BYEs are no longer “overpowered”.
I don’t even think CP from PCs will give you a Bye, they might only count for the final CP standings for Worlds. It’s still not fair but we have to start anywhere.
Good to hear! Would’ve been better if there was one in Austria but I guess south Germany is alright. Cheers
daflo, massi, drug_duck, billa, lajo, toasdt, fatum, myself and a lot more good players confirmed for berlin. looks pretty stacked to me!
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