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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42 Responses to VGC ’14 US National Championship Moves to 3 Day Event
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Proposed this idea to Chris at seattle, want to get feedback. Pretty clearly the biggest issue with records carrying over is that it equates a bo3 set with a single game, and the issue with it not carrying over is that people who do well in swiss arent rewarded. What I came up with is converting number of wins into points, then having swiss 2 have the normal point structure. What this essentially does is that it gives people who do better in normal swiss an advantage in tie breaks, also solving the issue of resistance as a means of tie breaking. Any thoughts or improvements?
I don’t think any best of 1 game should count for who makes the final 8. What if the brackets have an unequal skill level? Going 7-2 in one bracket might be harder than going 8-1 in the other. Using your method, going undefeated day 1 will guarantee you a top 8 spot for going x-2 the next day. This makes it possible for that player to scoop to a friend when they are x-1 going into the last round. Why would you build a system to prevent scooping on day 1 when it would allow scooping on the more important day 2?
My proposed solution which eliminates scooping incentive is to give prizes to the results after day 1. If they can give free cards to the winners of rock paper scissors all day, why can’t they spare some packs for x-1 finishers? Something like a box for going undefeated is a pretty big incentive to win the last match.
Another potential prize, would be to award a small amount of CP for your finish on day 1. If going undefeated on day 1 gave you 20 CP and going x-1 gave you 10 CP, that would be enough to stop scooping for anyone who has a shot at making worlds.
To add to what Matt said, I don’t understand the concerns about scooping on Day 1. Most people will be at the same record when they play that day making scooping useless anyway. I’d be more afraid of that on the second day where I believe the chances of being paired down/up is higher.
Good thing it is impossible to be paired down in a Swiss event where the number of participants is 32 or 64 (unless multiple people make day 2 and don’t play)
Birch has told us not to have high expectations for how TOM does Day 2 Swiss pairings
To clarify I did mean in the case that records carried over (X-0 would need to be paired down in R2 and maybe again if they win again). It was even more common in TCG where ties added 1 point instead of 3 making for many different records.
Just to be sure, if one wants to attend Masters they *should* be there to register on Thursday evening but *could* register Friday morning instead, right?
Normally I would argue strongly in support of records carrying over, but due to the fact that the format actually changes from day 1 to day 2, and the change in format is not insignificant in the slightest, I agree with the others who are saying that day 2 records should be counted separately from day 1 records. Scott raises a valid concern about tiebreakers deciding worlds invitations, but I think that’s an unfortunate consequence of the way the math works out and is pretty much unavoidable in any feasible system.
It appears they want all the PokeParents out of the VGC Masters competitions!
While many of this season’s changes for Regionals & Nationals are an upgrade (for those who can travel aplenty), I can’t say that I’ve been particularly thrilled as a player parent. I rarely play events anymore, and we gave up cards altogether last year. Not sure staggered VGC timelines for Nationals (with different days for different age groups) will work but so well for any family that has Jr/Sr and Masters players. I can’t justify getting to Indy a day early to indulge my own playing–on July 4th!
I expect the changes to the circuit will work to cultivate strong Worlds competitors, so from that standpoint, the changes are a good thing. Maybe the changes really are expanding the game, as opposed to contracting to a more select set of competitors who can’t kick a fun addiction started years ago, and who are willing to plan the year’s vacations (and all discretionary income) around the circuit’s demands.
I continue to wonder about the purpose of last Fall’s Regionals. We didn’t go to those, mainly due to distance and costs, and because we were a tad disappointed the Regionals weren’t scheduled a little later so that X & Y could be used. Maybe it’d be nice for the whole circuit to take a break when we’re not quite ready to roll out the new game/rules. That might make life a little easier on parents, though I understand such a plan is less likely to be desired by the most serious Masters players.
As an ex-TCG player and someone who has been around for a while you should understand that the Regionals are planned around TCG expansion releases, not video game releases. If there were no Regionals in the fall, that would mean we’d be skipping out on five areas’ events. They can’t really delay those as the expansions are on a 3 month cycle and there is a Regional or World Championship at the end of every expansion now.
Even for the TCG, Regionals have only recently become a three-season affair. As I recall, they were generally in the Spring only–and often run on the same weekend in each region so that you couldn’t attend more than one. There were many TCG events, of course, spread across Fall through Summer, and as you note, in concert with different TCG expansion sets. Battle Roads (fall), Cities (early winter), States (mid to late winter), Regionals (Spring), Battle Roads (early summer), Nationals, Worlds–I think. One generally spent a lot of time in local TCG events (area/state/your region) before deciding whether to travel 500+ miles for a major event.
I understand your point, though. I have no argument against it.
. . . and I’m not really advocating for fewer events–just noting one parent’s perspective.
As someone who didn’t play Gen 5 and don’t even own a cart, I was severely disappointed in the first wave of regionals running on BW2. As someone who isn’t so dedicated to CP acquisition, or monetarily-gifted enough to afford cross-country travel expenses to multiple regionals, Ft. Wayne being the only one within driving distance of me yet I can’t even participate with my shiny new XY cart… real disappointing.
But that ship has long since sailed.
As insanely early as last-minute registration is on Friday morning, it’s effectively a four-day event even if you don’t plan to register on Thursday evening. While I applaud the effort to ensure everything goes down in a timely fashion each day (as opposed to something else both I and AZ are familiar with, Smash tournies), spreading everything out this much just makes for annoying scheduling difficulties with getting time off work/school/whatever, plus extra lodging costs. I’m surely not alone when I say it makes me less likely to attend, not by choice. If I do, I dang well am probably going to be leaving my house at 3am just to make last call.
And as stated in the other thread, I don’t think records should carry over from Day 1 to Day 2 even if the format wasn’t changing from best-of-1 to best-of-3. The way it’s cut first into a neat power-of-two bracket, even if it’s still technically played as Swiss, feels to me like it deserves a clean slate. You qualified after placing well on Day 1, you shouldn’t be penalized for it on Day 2 anymore than you are in the Top 8 cut if you qualified with a loss or two.