VGC ’14 US National Championship Moves to 3 Day Event
For the first time ever, the 2014 Pokémon US Video Game National Championships will be a three day event. The structure of the competition was revealed today and it’s quite a change from what players may be used to before. We’ll walk through the schedule below. Keep in mind that this is only for the North American competition in Indianapolis, IN, USA. We will have more information on the three National Championships in Europe as well as the newly confirmed National Championships in Australia (run by Nintendo Australia) soon.
Age Divisions are as follows:
- Junior Division: Born in 2003 or later
- Senior Division: Born in 1999, 2000, 2001, or 2002
- Masters Division: Born in 1998 or earlier
Any player regardless of residency is allowed to play at the VGC ’14 US National Championships as long as they are not on the Play! Pokémon banned player list. This is an open tournament with no other qualifying requirement.
Thursday, July 3rd, 2014
Masters Division
- Check-in for VG Masters Division players will be from 7 to 8 p.m. Battle Boxes will be locked when players check in.
Friday, July 4th, 2014
Side events will occur throughout the day. The full schedule will be released at a later date.
Masters Division
- Last-minute check-in for VG Masters Division players will be from 7 to 7:30 a.m.
- Masters Division players will compete in Swiss rounds in two flights beginning at 8 a.m.
- Swiss rounds on Friday will be single game matches.
- Attendance permitting, the top 16 or top 32 players from each flight will advance to play on Saturday.
- Top 32 (16×2) is planned for attendance up to 820 players.
- Top 64 (32×2) is planned for attendance above 820 total players
Junior & Senior Divisions
- Registration for Junior and Senior Division VG players will take place Friday evening from 5 to 6 p.m. Battle Boxes will be locked when players register.
Saturday, July 5th, 2014
Side events will occur throughout the day. The full schedule will be released at a later date.
Masters Division
- Day 2 of Masters Division Swiss rounds will begin at 8 a.m. The top 32 or 64 players (based on the previous day’s results and attendance) will compete in five or six rounds of best-of-three matches.
- A Top 8 cut will be taken at the end of Swiss rounds. The single-elimination Top 8 will be played late Saturday afternoon.
Junior and Senior Division
- Last-minute registration will take place from 8 to 8:30 a.m.
- Player meeting will commence at 9:30 a.m.
- Swiss rounds will begin at 10 a.m.
- Swiss rounds will be single game matches.
- A Top 16 cut will be taken at the end of Swiss rounds, attendance permitting. The single-elimination Top 16 will be played on Sunday.
Sunday, July 6th, 2014
- Side events will occur throughout the day. The full schedule will be released at a later date.
- Single-elimination rounds (Top 16, Junior and Senior Divisions) will be played.
- ALL players must be checked in and ready to play by 10 a.m., or they will forfeit their first game. Players not in their seats by 10:10 a.m. will forfeit their second game, and thereby, the match.
- Junior, Senior, and Masters Division finals (top 2) will occur sequentially beginning at 2 p.m.
Prizes
Prizing is done separately for each age division.
1st Place
- A Pokémon VG National Championships First-Place Trophy
- 480 Championship Points
- A Nintendo Wii U 32GB Deluxe Set
- A combination of 72 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions
- Other great Pokémon-themed merchandise!
2nd Place
- A Pokémon VG National Championships Second-Place Trophy
- 440 Championship Points
- A Nintendo 3DS XL system
- A combination of 72 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions
- Other great Pokémon-themed merchandise!
3rd & 4th Place
- A Pokémon VG National Championships Semi-Finalist Trophy
- 360 Championship Points
- A Nintendo 3DS XL system
- A combination of 36 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions
- Other great Pokémon-themed merchandise!
5th through 8th Place
- 210 Championship Points
- A combination of 36 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions
9th through 16th Place
- 150 Championship Points
- A combination of 18 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions
17th through 32nd Place
- 90 Championship Points
- A combination of 8 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions
33rd through 64th Place
- 30 Championship Points (if division attendance is 128 or greater)
- A combination of 4 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions
65th through 128th Place
- 15 Championship Points (if division attendance is 256 or greater)
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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I posted my thoughts in the other thread, but to repost the relevant portions for visibility:
i guess i’m not coming in on friday anymore. really happy for the expanded event but feeling mediocre about indianapolis as usual. i guess we can play mini golf again…
gene can be on your team this time
You mean while everyone else is celebrating the country we have to play mons? Lame.
Joking aside, this change seems pretty good. With how the attendance for these events is really rising, the division into flights and allowing an extra day for a deeper top cut is definitely healthy.
Guess this means another day of food/hotel costs added on but what are you gonna do
admin abuse
Meh, not a fan of the 3 day format (like feathers I was planning on coming in Friday), but guess we’ll see. That means an extra day now of hotel which sucks, but at the same time it’s not cramming everything in, which is nice.
Wait, anybody can do state? I thought you had to finish high in regionals to qualify for state.
I also posted in the other thread, but this is important enough to post here as well:
However, I would like to note one very important thing: If the tournament software that Pokemon uses to run their tournament is anything like the tournament software used in official Magic: the Gathering tournaments (and I suspect it is, as this issue arises from a limitation in the code of the program and not by any intention of the rules), your opponent’s record from Day 1 will NOT be factored into your tiebreakers for Day 2. What this means is: if you are 9-0 on Day 1 and win your first round on Day 2, your opponent’s win percentage will be recorded as 0.00% instead of 90.00%. This means that large tiebreak jumps can and will occur on the second day (although this is less important in Pokemon than in Magic because players cannot view their tiebreakers until after Swiss rounds are completed), and also makes computing one’s tiebreakers by hand virtually impossible (unless you take a picture of the standings after Day 1 and refer to it so you can know all of your Day 2 opponent’s records on Day 2).
I like the idea on paper. Considering how expansive the United States is, turning the Nationals into a full weekend event sounds like a blast! Though I think the Masters semifinals should at least be played on Sunday and not Saturday.
I wonder if I’ll be able to go…
nationals in indianapolis is an open event.
Top 8 out of 410 people is insane, leaves a chance that someone thats 8-1 can miss cut.
Going to take an insane amount of luck to make swiss 2 this year
Seriously though why are they putting it on the 4th of July weekend again? And especially after the riots that occurred last year? Like somebody is definitely going to die this year. My vote is on Enosh.
Technically someone died last year, he just wasn’t a Pokemon player
If it’s possible to seed Day 2 Swiss’ Round 1 round using the Day 1 Swiss results, I think the ideal would be to have Day 2 seeded but the results reset. This would determine top cut placement and seeding completely based on how players did against other players of similar skill (and in best of 3) and tiebreaker scores from Rounds 1/2 the previous day wouldn’t have as much of a bearing on Day 2.
looks like fireworks will have to wait.
Let’s hope I don’t screw someone up again like I did last year. Oh, the love I’ve received… Haha XD
Having an entire day for just signing up seems pretty silly to me (especially for those who don’t live nearby); seems a bit dragged out but the positive reception shows that I’m probably in the minority.
“If America can’t win Worlds any more, make them practice Worlds before Worlds while all others still only get there by a crapshoot!”It’s a change that looks good in theory, but if it will be actually worth it, we’ll see when it’s done. Unordered pros/cons:
+ Less arbitrariness in the later tournament progression.
+ People get to play more good matches, if they get to play them at all.
– The additional night will hurt. Starting on Friday also isn’t nice for people with a job.
– The first stage of the tournament still is just as arbitrary as it used to be. Expect to see a bloodbath of big names while some unknown people will make it into day 2. The numbers of people moving on look very small to me, basically it’s just as if we made a single elimination bracket of the usual size but then decided to just prolong it by playing Swiss instead.
– Prizes are improved for top 4 and cut down for top 8. If we’d be talking about Worlds trips or something I wouldn’t say stuff, but I don’t agree with removing 3DSs and replacing them with cards. Couldn’t they at least, like, send the next new Pokémon (main series) game as a prize?
– It’s very important that Americans get to know they have to be there a day earlier, but other than that, the tourney is still quite a while ahead whereas the European nationals are just around the corner and we still don’t know jack about them.
I can confirm that in the TCG your record from Day 1 carries over (so there is no reason to believe it will be different here), so someone who goes X-2 on Day 1 must win out on Day 2 to have a chance to top 8.
I dont know how i feel about this. Im really happy we get a 3 day national, but thats 3 days of hell for people playing. it is definitely going to be tiring especially with day 2 holding swiss+topcut. Also I put this on twitter but i feel records should be carried over as it rewards good play for day 2. Angel also noted that everyone has a chance in this situation even if you were x-2 day 1. Obviously it would be arguably harder but atleast you arent going to day 2 knowing you wont make cut.
Zach also did a mock tournament where we got an interesting scenario(270 players in each flight) where there was one X-1, one x-2, and 9 x-3 going into top8. Of course there are many other scenarios due to there being no ties in vgc and its going to be really hard to remain perfect for 14 rounds straight not even counting top cut.
I appreciate getting the info fairly early. I’ll schedule another vacation day for that Thursday this morning. Its not a problem for me because I’m definitely going to get some significant financial help for Nats and I get all my vacation days back the month before it. And I see how spreading it out is going to be good competitively. But I can also see how the extra day is going to be an additional financial burden for a lot of people.
If I’m reading this correctly, the actual competition is still a 2-day event. What days your event lands on depends on your age bracket. Does that sound right?
Or is there a chance that Masters playoffs will spill over into Sunday?
AZ posted an explanation over in the other topic, but assuming you get into the final match, it will be 3 days for you and 2 for everyone else basically:
Most people complaining about the 3 day event won’t even be playing on Sunday.
More days to play = better for me but that’s cause I’m a local. Just curious, we can only stick with one team between swiss and top cut right?
every player can afford at least 1 more loss regardless of their record’s day 1.
Having sign ups open for an hour or two the night before to lessen the load the next morning is not a stupid idea.
While that is very true, they have to organize the trip at some point. You’re only safe when you’re definitely there all 3 days, but what if, say, you in fact are playing in the finals but leaving Saturday night? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I heavily assume there is hardly flexibility in departure if you didn’t go to the tournament by car.
My mistake, I skim read the article and thought it was mandatory to sign up the first day. All in all it’s actually a fine idea
Alright, anybody from Texas want to have a road trip there and split prices on a room?