Pokemon Regionals Tournaments already announced for the 2013-2014 season!

In case anyone is interested in some RL competiton, some locations for the 2013-2014 season has already been... well, not announced, but discovered. The title is a lie, yes... but soon enough it'll be true. :p

Fall Regionals
Official Regional Championships announcement (about time, TPCi)

October 12th-13th​

Winter Regionals





Spring Regionals




Pokemon National Championships 2014

South Africa Regionals and Nationals

UK Qualifiers and Nationals

Pokemon World Championships 2014

2014 VGC ruleset (the rest of the season, that is):
- You must have a copy of X or Y in order to compete.
- Kalos-dex only. The Pokemon in your team must be in the Central, Coastal, or Mountain Pokedex.
- Kalos-native only. The pokemon in your team must be obtained in X or Y. Pokemon migrated from Pokebank is banned from competing.
- Mega Pokemon are allowed.
- Hidden abilities are allowed.
- Egg moves obtained from non-Kalos Pokemon are allowed. (If you use Wish Pikachu, I will laugh at you.)

Side notes:
- TGC takes place on Saturday and TGC finals take place on Sunday morning. VGC takes place all of Sunday. Prepare accordingly!
- TGC Masters must pay an entry fee in order to participate. Please check your regional information for the fee. Juniors, Seniors, and VGC players do not have to pay a fee.
- TGC rules: modified format. Go look that up, I have a vague understanding of it.
- VGC rules: VGC 2013 rules (fall regionals only), the same rules as last year. Go look that up.
- Fall regionals are B2W2 ONLY. If you do not have a copy of Black 2 or White 2, you cannot participate.
- Winter regionals and all events afterwards switch to X and Y. If you do not have a copy of X or Y by the time these events roll around, you cannot participate.

Awesome thanks! I've always wanted to check out some RL tournaments, and you've just given me a good start.

If you want to try to find any RL tournaments in your area, try using this:
https://www.pokemon.com/us/account/events/

Plug in your information, hit Search, and voila! Instant results! Mind, any events taking place are 100% run by volunteers (even the official tourneys) so if there's no one in your area who's willing to run tournaments, you might not find anything within a respectable distance.

In case you missed the Pokemon World Championships stream, the location of '14 World Championships was revealed just a few minutes ago to be in Washington, DC. If you are seriously considering attending this year's event, you will have to participate in as many tournaments as possible. Apparently to qualify to participate in '13 Worlds, you needed over 400 championship points. Better get crackin'!

Edit: Eh, after some sleuthing, all you really need to qualify for last chance qualifiers is 10 Championship Points. You'll still need to do some crackin'.

If you can read the update and understand it without getting a headache, I applaud you. In the meanwhile I'll summarize what I understand for everyone else.

- Regionals are gonna be spread out over three weekends for each season! It looks very likely that we will be having far more than five regionals per season, unless tPCi decides to move around event dates for the known ones.

- Fall Regionals is confirmed to be B2W2. Winter and Spring Regionals will be X and Y only.

- Your best 3 Regionals placement will count towards your travel awards/stipends and worlds invite.

- Masters TGC participants will have to pay an entry fee in order to participate in a Premier Event. No entry fee at all for VGC.

- First place at Regionals will win a 3DS. Other changes to tournament prize structure.

- Other stuff that I'm still trying to figure out. Oh well, maybe later.

Pre-registration open for Philly regionals. Read through the page before registering and make sure to have your player ID ready at hand.
Pre-registration open on the 21st for northern California.

(If anyone's wondering, the only place where you can get a Player ID is at a league, tournament, or championship. If you can't reach any of these places, here's a how-to. Or you can show up at the event and obtain one there. You cannot pre-register in this case, however.)

Getting close to the first of the regionals! Anyone excited yet? I'll be exhausted. I have a field trip two days prior to the event. At the beach. Digging at sand. Hiking. /passesout

Hello, hello... is this thing on?

Ahem. To anyone attending the Northern California Regional in Pleasanton, your Regional is THIS WEEKEND. Prepare accordingly! Remember, Saturday is TGC and Sunday is TGC finals and VGC. Don't forget to check out the side events ahead of time, some of them look interesting! (Especially the race to the first badge one, I wish I was in Cali right about now.)

Stuff you guys should bring:
Player ID card (or at least the number)
Food and water (there's no guarantee of a lunch break)
Maybe a hoodie, depends on how cold they keep the place
A DS (or two) and charger and/or your TGC deck.
Your proof of pre-registration (if you pre-registered)

Good luck from Philly!

Griffy, thanks for sharing this!!!

Looks like I get a winter regional in my hometown, Orlando, Florida. I'll let you get a head start in learning the new metagame, and then hit you up for help! I may actually try to make it out to one of these this year. Looking forward to it. : )

I'll actually be /behind/ in the new metagame. This month's regionals are all B2W2 while winter and spring's are X and Y. /deadbroke

You guys are pretty much on your own for new meta. All I can do is hope Showdown does a decent enough job at getting me up to date. :(

Philly, Houston and Fort Wayne VG regionals all start tomorrow. If anyone's going, GET THERE ON TIME FOR REGISTRATION!

Bemoaning the lack of Regionals in your country? Feeling forgotten? Check the events page for your region on pokemon.com!

And on that note, South Africans rejoice! South Africa joins the Pokemon Championships and there are tentative dates/locations for regionals and nationals.

Regionals:

Nationals

PS: XY ruleset rumors abound. It might be Kalos dex only, meaning only things found in the Kalos pokedex are allowed in battle. THIS IS A RUMOR, IT IS YET UNCONFIRMED. Stay tuned...

Griffinbane said:

Bemoaning the lack of Regionals in your country? Feeling forgotten? Check the events page for your region on pokemon.com!

And on that note, South Africans rejoice! South Africa joins the Pokemon Championships and there are tentative dates/locations for regionals and nationals.

Regionals:

March 14th, Cape Town
March 28th, in Pretoria
April 18th, in East London​

Nationals

June 14th-15th, Cape Town​

PS: XY ruleset rumors abound. It might be Kalos dex only, meaning only things found in the Kalos pokedex are allowed in battle. THIS IS A RUMOR, IT IS YET UNCONFIRMED. Stay tuned...

Click to expand...

That would be ridiculous. If that ruleset is true

They've done it when gen 4 and 5 was released, so it's not unusual. The problem is how Kalos dex is basically divided into 3, and the introduction of Friend Safari. There's lots of stuff we have access to that is banned, if Kalos dex rules are enforced. It was much easier in the past... new pokemon only. This time it's a friggin' royal mess!

Griffinbane said:

They've done it when gen 4 and 5 was released, so it's not unusual. The problem is how Kalos dex is basically divided into 3, and the introduction of Friend Safari. There's lots of stuff we have access to that is banned, if Kalos dex rules are enforced. It was much easier in the past... new pokemon only. This time it's a friggin' royal mess!

Click to expand...

Not sure How it would work out. There is what like 60 new pokes. That is not a lot of combos to make teams out of. (Side note 800th post lol)

Pfffft. The last metagame, there was probably 20 pokemon in rotation. Cresselia, Tyranitar, Amoongus, Politoed, Thundurus, Tornadus, Landorus, blah blah blah. Everywhere you looked, you saw at least one of these on every damned team. 60 new pokemon isn't something to laugh at, and there's plenty of combos.

No, the point I'm trying to make is that Kalos dex has the 60-some new pokemon... PLUS like 200 of the old pokemon. And with Friend Safari giving you non-Kalos stuff as well as Kalos stuff with hidden abilities, that's gonna confuse shiz. Illegal pokemon, illegal egg moves, stuff like that. Still... conjecture.

If I may ask. How would some stuff be illegal? (I am not sure how tournaments work).

Well, the way it works is that the cart checkers have specially modded DSes and some sort of weird box that they use to check teams for anything illegal. Movesets, abilities, hacks, that sort of thing. If anything gets flagged, you're disqualified from the tournament.

IF it is Kalos only, here's a few examples on how things will be illegal. The only way to get hidden abilities is to catch Pokemon from swarms. Getting a Pokemon with a hidden ability from Friend Safari that doesn't appear in swarms would make it illegal. (Tbh, we don't know if Pokemon from the Safari that is found in the dex will be included in the stuff that is illegal.) Some egg moves can only be bred from a parent that is not in the Kalos dex. Those babies with that egg move would be illegal too.

When B2W2 came out, a good number of people ended up getting dq'd from the regionals following because they weren't aware that B2W2 move tutors were banned. This is gonna end up as a repeat of that episode. It always happens when rules get changed up or new games are released mid-season.

Anyhow, since there's nothing official yet, keep practicing and keep an eye out. Breed a secondary team if you have to.

UK Pokemon Championships announced! Unfortunately I got this rather late and so the first three qualifiers have already come and gone, but there are still numerous others coming up.

Due to the sheer number of qualifiers and rules that differ from the US regionals, I'll just have to leave this link here. If you are participating, MAKE SURE YOU READ THE THREAD CAREFULLY.

Linky: http://nuggetbridge.com/news/nintendo-uk-presents-pokemon-winter-championships/

If its restricted to "Kalos Dex" then they will be giving us Pokedex numbers to go trough. If I remember correctly, Gen 4's still allowed for the older Pokemon found through normal game play to be allowed. This would be the same.

if they give us Kalos Dex, they can say Pokemon found in the Central, Costal, or Mountain Pokedexes numbers 1-15x. (15x because two Pokedexes do go further than 150)

If they do Kalos restrictions they will tell us specifically what the restrictions are. Odds are, they'd be Central, Costal, Mountain Dex restrictions.




Kinda wish there were more closer for me though. =C Nearest ones are in Florida but I still can't afford to travel that far.

I forgot to mention this but the ruleset for Winter and Spring Regionals are finally out. It is what we thought, Kalos-dex only. However, egg-moves from banned Pokemon and hidden abilities that can only be gotten from safari is allowed. Woo!

Linky to NB article:
http://nuggetbridge.com/news/pokemon-announces-standard-format-vgc-14-season/

Linky to dry reading:
http://assets22.pokemon.com/assets/...14/Play_Pokemon_VG_Rules_and_Formats_2014.pdf