VGC Winter Regionals 2014

[Talon87]

Pokémon.com:

The Pokémon Winter Regional Championships is the second big event in the 2014 Play! Pokémon tournament season. Held in cities across the U.S. in January 2014, each Regional Championships is part of a title-event series where players compete for the title of Regional Champion! Results of the Regional Championships can give a serious boost to a player’s Championship Points and chances of earning Travel Awards to Nationals, or even an invitation to the 2014 Pokémon World Championships in Washington, DC!

I got a message on the Holo Caster this morning, as did you all, I'm sure, which kindly pointed out that the Winter Regionals are to be held this weekend and the following two weekends after that. This got me a bit excited, given that Indiana has been the seat of the Nationals tournament for several years now, and I decided to look and see if there would be any qualifiers held in my city or close by. Sadly, it looks like the only video game tournament being held in Indiana over the next month is a run-of-the-mill tournament at a card shop in Kokomo, some forty miles away. More importantly ...

January 11th–12th, 2014
Exhibition Hall at Meadow Event Park
13111 Dawn Blvd.
Doswell, VA 23047

January 18th–19th, 2014
Saint Charles Convention Center
One Convention Center Plaza
St. Charles, MO 63303

Long Beach Convention Center
300 East Ocean Blvd.
Long Beach, CA 90802

Oregon State Fair and Expo Center
Columbia Hall
2330 17th Street NE
Salem, OR 97301

January 25th–26th, 2014
International Palms Resort
6515 International Dr.
Orlando, FL 32819

It seems like there are only five cities which will be hosting the Winter Regionals, and the nearest of these looks like St. Charles, Missouri, some 280 miles away. (4 hours, 20 minutes each way by car.) If I knew with the certainty of a god that I would be winning, then sure, I'd bite the bullet and take the drive. But since the opposite is closer to the reality , yeah, it just seems like too expensive of a waste of gasoline and too much of a waste of my Sunday to try and do this. So I'm out.

But what about you? :o Is anyone here planning on participating in one of the five winter regional tournaments? I know we have several members in the Orlando area, though I don't know if any of them have the time or interest in VGC. But what about the other four cities? Is anyone here close enough to one of these that you plan to participate just for fun? Is anyone here making a serious bid for Nationals this year and plans to make the drive no matter how far it is? Let us know! It would be cool to root for one of our own members as he/she tries to make it to Nationals and beyond.

Check out what 1st place gets you though just from Regionals alone! :o

• A Pokémon VG Regional Championships 1st Place award
• A Nintendo 3DS system
• A combination of 72 booster packs from current Pokémon TCG expansions
• 120 Championship Points

That's kinda crazy. ~$160 in value for the 3DS. ~$290 in value for the seventy-two TCG boosters. I was expecting that all you got would be the trophy and the championship points. If you were certain you were going to win, 1st place's prizes could easily foot your travel expenses up to $350, no sweat, assuming you traded the booster packs in to a local card shop (UNOPENED) for maybe 60% of their value and sold the 3DS on Craigslist for near full price. On the flip side, if you want to actually keep the prizes, well then there you go: a free 3DS and seventy-two free booster packs just for you! Even 16th place gets you nine free boosters, which while probably harder to sell to a local card shop would still technically be worth ~$35. Not bad.

[Amras.MG]

Seems kinda weird to have the regional prize be a 3DS, considering everyone there will already have 3DSes, eh?

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by Amras.MG

Seems kinda weird to have the regional prize be a 3DS, considering everyone there will already have 3DSes, eh?

I had the same thought. ^^; The people who most want the prize can't, by virtue of their not owning 3DSes yet, participate in this tournament. Meanwhile, the people who least need the prize are the ones eligible to get it. Really, Nintendo should just offer the kids either a cash prize (which would be cool of them to do but there's probably a legal morass involved with awarding children semi-large amounts of money) or else offer them $160 in video game vouchers with a partner company like Toys 'R' Us or Wal-Mart. Obviously the kid with the 3DS could make use of $160 in games; but $160 in a second copy of the handheld console seems like it's only really worth it to keep as either a spare (in case the first 3DS gets lost, stolen, or damaged) or else as a gift for a younger brother or sister who doesn't have a 3DS of their own yet.

Still, though, I don't think many 1st place winners will say "No" to the free gift of what amounts to ~$450 in prizes.

[Jerichi]

There was a VGC Regional in the city I live in last year and I'm hoping there's another Spring Regional here again. I've been playtesting a team for it and am planning to breed it within the next month so I can at least battle casually there in the format.

VGC is a really fun metagame so I encourage people to get into it now that it's even easier to get into the official competitive scene.

[Talon87]

Ooh, we're at slight odds then! 'Cause I'm personally hoping that each regionals does new cities. Reason being that none of the Fall 2013 Regionals cities were super close to me either. (The best one was Fort Wayne, which is 117 miles away or roughly 2 hours 10 minutes by car. More manageable than a drive to Missouri but still awfully taxing on the gas tank @ 4½ hours round trip ...) So I'm hoping that the selections for 2014 Spring Regionals will be different -- and that at least one of the choices will be Indianapolis. I know it's kind of unlikely given that Nationals is already in Indianapolis ... but you never know!

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that either of us will get our wish. Looking at the locations for Spring 2013, Winter 2013, and Fall 2012 from the previous year's tournament cycle ...

Fall 2012: Mississauga, Ontario; Santa Clara, CA; Fort Wayne, IN; Philadelphia, PA; Houston, TX
Winter 2013: Lake Buena Vista, FL; St. Charles, MO; Salem, OR; Sandston, VA
Spring 2013: Vancouver, BC; Athens, GA; Foxborough, MA; Salt Lake City, UT; Madison, WI

If you look at the list, there's a lot of overlap with the locations for Fall 2013 and Winter 2014. Thus, it seems likely that Spring 2014 will largely be a repeat of Spring 2013. That's bad for me since the closest city in Spring 2014 was friggin' Madison, Wisconsin. -.-; That's very good for you if it happens, though, since I see Athens, Georgia listed there as one of the Spring 2013 cities. But there are also enough cities that are different (or even states/provinces that are different) that I think anything could happen.

Not really sure what the VGC's obsession with Fort Wayne is though.

[Jerichi]

If it's in Atlanta or somewhere else within 2 hours driving I might consider going still.

[Loki]

Unfortunately there has yet to be a Wii U Pokemon title, so I don't think they want a prize which doesn't even relate to Pokemon at the current generation. Perhaps after a Wii U Pokemon Title is released, they'll have some Wii Us to give away. I mean, it's not like people really buying them anyway >>;;

[rotomotorz]

Oh. I actually went to the Winter regionals in Virginia. I won all four tournament battles I played in and then had to leave because parents. I also played against a lot of other people, including some friends, and I also got to play against last year's Junior-World-Champion-now-Senior Brendan Zheng, although I lost 0-2.

[Talon87]

Friends in the UK: you've got a tournament coming up. Sorry for the short notice, but apparently it's tomorrow, February 8, from 11am to 8pm. Click the link for more details on the schedule and location. I guess the one thing to note is that they really don't want you bringin' your own food. Apparently people who do bring their own food and are caught will be asked to leave! ^^; So just go ahead and have lunch and dinner there, I guess.

If you place 3rd or 4th, you'll get £20 of Nintendo eShop store credit. If you place 2nd, you get £30 instead and two free games, one of which is Bravely Default. If you place 1st? You win all of that and a 3DS XL. So if you think you have what it takes, hop on over to Manchester tomorrow and check the tournament out!

[DaveTheFishGuy]

>Manchester

Welp.

Not that I have any competitive level 'mon of course.