Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Tips for R/S Challenge organizers

C

Chrisbo

Administrator
Staff member
We just held the first of the Ruby/Sapphire "biathalon format" Challenges in San Diego this past weekend and it went really well. Let me share some of the things we did to help make this fun and successful (see pictures at http://thepokebeach.cjb.net/rschallenge.shtml for examples).
  • 1.> GameCube with GameBoy Player and e-Reader attachments. This was by far one of the most impressive things we did. During the TCG rounds we used the e-Reader as a timer (card was "Professor Elm's Training Method"), and during the GBA rounds we held a "featured match" on the big screen. It would've been cool to have two TV's (one for each player in the match), but we could only round up one GameCube anyway. Make sure that both parties are agreeable to the TV match, as some players may not want others to see what Pokemon they're using. Fortunately in our case we had plenty of volunteers eager to "show off" :cool:.
  • 2.> EON Ticket and e-Reader. After registration started but before we were ready to start, we hooked up the e-Reader to the GameCube and started scanning the EON Tickets that everyone had just gotten. In hindsight I probably just killed a half-dozen sales for e-Reader (oops!), but everyone was excited to be doing it while waiting for registration to finish. Even if you don't have a TV setup like we did, a couple of GBA's and the e-Reader will do nicely.
  • 3.> Explain the new changes in TCG format. Most everyone in our group was already familiar with the new Nintendo rules, but it doesn't hurt to remind people of them until they become like second nature to us.
  • 4.> When filling out card lists, write down ALL of the cards that they receive. One change that I was not prepared for is that the tournament rules for this event allow players to alter their TCG decks in between rounds. This is new for the Pokemon environment, but the T.O. tells me that this is the way he's always done sealed and pre-release tourneys in the past. I was a bit wary at first, but since there were only two rounds of TCG, I had no objection to it and it turned out to work pretty well. My guess is that this will probably be true for the upcoming Sandstorm Pre-Release events next month, so we'd better start getting used to it.
  • 5.> Have players write down all of the cards with the quantities in roman numerals ('iv' instead of '4'). When doing a quick deck check, I got screwed up a couple of times when I read "Energy Removal 2" as being two cards. D'oh >_<!! Also, they don't give you much room on the front of the registration form, so I recommend everyone writing their cards down on the backside instead.
  • 6.> If players don't want to play in a certain portion of the tourney, have them tell you up front. We were almost ready to announce pairings for the first round of GBA play, when one of our move checkers found an illegal moveset. Turned out the person just made up some moves because they only wanted to play in the TCG portion of the event. I have no objection to anyone wanting to play in only one aspect of the "biathalon", but if we didn't catch the mistake when we did we would've had to redo pairings and such.
  • 7.> Side events. If you have a lot of people who don't want to play in the biathalon, hold a side event like a booster draft or GBA-only tourney, or something like that just for kicks.
  • 8.> Lunch Break!! The GBA portions of the tourney go really fast, so there should be plenty of time for a break after Round 3 before the second of the TCG rounds.
  • 9.> Playoffs. Be prepared to handle tie breakers. Six rounds is a bit on the short side, so either cut to a Top4/Top8 or some other good way to resolve ties should be planned for in advance. In our case, we had a GBA match to break the tie; others may prefer a TCG match, Rock-Paper-Scissors, or some other combination. But for some reason they didn't like my idea of a karaoke sing-off, I wonder why :confused: / :D.
Well, that's all I can think of at the moment. Feel free to contribute any tips you can think of that may add to the fun of these wonderful and challenging events.

Enjoy,
- CHRISBO
 
Make an announcement either during the registration phase or during your pre-tournament announcements for the GBA Portion:

Have only the 3 Pokemon that you want to use for the Battle Tower in your team.

Go to the second floor of any Pokemon Center and save your game there.

Those two suggestions ALONE cut about 20 minutes off the total run time.

Have a spare Ruby or Sapphire cart with you that has competitive pokemon on them in case someone shows up without either one but still wants to play in the event.

We found the forms clunky and very non-user friendly, so we didn't use them. We are, however, getting opinions and such and forwarding those on to Nintendo.

If you do have a small turnout, run all the age groups in 1 event. It's not hard to get Excel to sort by age groups, records, etc.

Hopefully, we'll have more to offer next week as our crowd was very small (10 players total) this week.
 
"If you do have a small turnout, run all the age groups in 1 event. It's not hard to get Excel to sort by age groups, records, etc."

Atta curiosity would that effect the prizes in anyway?
 
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"4.> When filling out card lists, write down ALL of the cards that they receive. One change that I was not prepared for is that the tournament rules for this event allow players to alter their TCG decks in between rounds. This is new for the Pokemon environment, but the T.O. tells me that this is the way he's always done sealed and pre-release tourneys in the past. I was a bit wary at first, but since there were only two rounds of TCG, I had no objection to it and it turned out to work pretty well. My guess is that this will probably be true for the upcoming Sandstorm Pre-Release events next month, so we'd better start getting used to it."

Sounds like a Magic TO where the cards left after building your deck become your sideboard... as Pokemon does not have a sideboard I would not run with this ruling on the format (It's just wrong!).

But we need clarification so I think that's one for Jimmer and OP to rule on but sideboards can change the game too much in my opinion.

Make an announcement either during the registration phase or during your pre-tournament announcements for the GBA Portion:

Have only the 3 Pokemon that you want to use for the Battle Tower in your team.

Go to the second floor of any Pokemon Center and save your game there.

Those two suggestions ALONE cut about 20 minutes off the total run time.

Sounds like a really sound suggestion but can you clarify 2nd Floor? In the UK the Pokemon Centres in R&S only have 2 floors - Ground and then a 1st floor... a 3 story Pokemon Centre !! that I have to see ;) Just kidding guys and gals I have engaged the American English sense checker and know that for 2nd floor we need to read 1st...

Can't wait to give the format a go over here sounds really good fun!
 
Thanks for the heads up on ideas from yours. I might have to see about getting my friends game cube for the event since I only have a PS2 system.
 
QUOTE]Sounds like a Magic TO where the cards left after building your deck become your sideboard... as Pokemon does not have a sideboard I would not run with this ruling on the format (It's just wrong!). [/QUOTE]


I dont think the issue is so much as sideboarding as it is to sneak in cards from another source such as a binder. It would seem that Nintendo is going to allow sideboarding from the cards that were drafted. Thus an entire card list from those cards drafted makes perfect sense. Whose to say that someone wont sneak in a second Mewtwo EX(just for example) in their deck and just say they drafted 2.
 
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I'll ask about that today when I do some emails. I will definitely know on Sunday when I recheck the document, but I didn't see anything about this in the TO packet when I got to look at it.

If you read the thread about prizes, they are not affected. From the overall jist in the TO documents, this is supposed to be run as one tourney anyway, but TO's discresion always is the best play.
 
JohnnyBlaze said:
Hey Chrisbo - Great tips. Just a quick question. How do you hook up a 2 player match using the Game Boy Player?
Click to expand...
Basically one player uses their GBA and hooks the other end of the link cable into the GameBoy Player on the GameCube; the other player gets the TV set. We made the person with the GBA turn their back to the TV so as not to get a peek at which moves were being selected.

SIDEBOARDS : Yeah, the tournament documentation actually stated that the players would be allowed to change their deck in between rounds. For a two-round tournament or a pre-release event where people don't know what's in the expansion yet and want to experiment a bit, I have no problem with that. I'm still undecided on whether or not I like it for multi-round constructed play though. Hmm, time will tell...

Thanks,
- CHRISBO
 
)v(_ipg21 said:
Uh WOULD all teens/kids know their ROMAN Numerals???
Click to expand...



well they would olny need to know 1-4 and thats ez I,II,III,IV im olny 17 and o can get up to 50 my brother is 14 and has know how to get up to 100 for a few years now.
 
Monkey_Without_Wings said:
well they would olny need to know 1-4 and thats ez I,II,III,IV im olny 17 and o can get up to 50 my brother is 14 and has know how to get up to 100 for a few years now.
Click to expand...

Yeah, they only need to know 1-4, if they don't want to have more than 4 basic NRG cards in their deck :p .

"I got screwed up a couple of times when I read "Energy Removal 2" as being two cards."

No offense, but it seems to me that it's you're own fault for not knowing that removal2 was in the set, and that removal isn't(wasn't there a seperate # signifieing how many removal2's were in the deck?).
I can understand a judge not knowing every card that's in every set, so if you don't know, it would probably be a good idea to keep a checklist with you.

No offense was meant in any way by this post.
 
jdb728 said:
Yeah, they only need to know 1-4, if they don't want to have more than 4 basic NRG cards in their deck :p .
Click to expand...


forgot about energy. well i see no reason as to why they couldn't use american numbers for the energy i mean i dont think theres a fire energy 2 out there do you? in any case if ya want them to know roman numerals for there deck list i'll do ya a fave and write them you just copy paste to text doc and print for them to use.


Roman numerals
1 I
2 II
3 III
4 IV
5 V
6 VI
7 VII
8 VIII
9 IX
10 X
11 XI
12 XII
13 XIII
14 XIV
15 XV
16 XVI
17 XVII
18 XVIII
19 XIX
20 XX
21 XXI
22 XXII
23 XXIII
24 XXIV
30 XXX
40 XL
50 L
60 LX
70 LXX
80 LXXX
90 XC
100 C

there are go just copy, paste ,print and give to the players i did all the work fo ya though im sure you really didint need it but i wanted to do it ways. BTW just for the heck of it i posted up to 100. the other way to do it is just have them watch all the wrestlemainas or rocky movies
 
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Chrisbo said:
SIDEBOARDS : Yeah, the tournament documentation actually stated that the players would be allowed to change their deck in between rounds. For a two-round tournament or a pre-release event where people don't know what's in the expansion yet and want to experiment a bit, I have no problem with that. I'm still undecided on whether or not I like it for multi-round constructed play though. Hmm, time will tell...

Thanks,
- CHRISBO
Click to expand...

if other TO's are planning to have their players write down every card they get, then i suggest they print out a checklist like this:

play have
___ ___ 1/109 Aggron
___ ___ 2/109 Beautifly
___ ___ 3/109 Blaziken
___ ___ .../109
___ ___ ......
___ ___ 106/109 Water Energy
___ ___ 107/109 Psychic Energy
___ ___ 108/109 Fire Energy
___ ___ 109/109 Lightning Energy

cards we get in the packs would be kepted track of on the right collumn, and cards we would play with in our decks would be marked on the left collumn. so for example, if got two copies of card number 3 and only wanted to play with one of them, your checklist would look like this:

play have
___ ___ 1/109 Aggron
___ ___ 2/109 Beautifly
_1_ _2_ 3/109 Blaziken
___ ___ .../108
___ ___ ......

this will save the players a lot of time in writing down their cards are will also make a deck list at the same time.
 
I think writing down what cards they get is a pretty good idea, don't want someone later on sneaking a card from their personal stash into it ;)
 
TrEkIeV said:
if other TO's are planning to have their players write down every card they get, then i suggest they print out a checklist like this:

play have
___ ___ 1/109 Aggron
___ ___ 2/109 Beautifly
___ ___ 3/109 Blaziken
___ ___ .../109
___ ___ ......
___ ___ 106/109 Water Energy
___ ___ 107/109 Psychic Energy
___ ___ 108/109 Fire Energy
___ ___ 109/109 Lightning Energy
Click to expand...

I have writen a Excel spreedsheet with a sinilar idea with the cards names so the players can list how many of what carsd they have faster. It also has the player name and age group on it so you can keep track of it better. If anyone is wanting a copy or think it would help with there R&S Challenge just email me at [email protected] and I will email it back to you.
 
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Ooooh! I love the idea about 'featured match' up on the big screen, it reminds me of the Summer Training Tour '99, where people got to battle up on 2 big plasma TV's running the N64 playing against some guy from Nintendo... hmm, i bet that would be a fun thing to try some day.

Did Pokemon USA, Inc. send out fun table number cards for organizers/judges to use to mark 'table: ##'? Just wondering if I need to design something for boston...

-marril
 
Magic TO's among us...

Chrisbo said:
SIDEBOARDS : Yeah, the tournament documentation actually stated that the players would be allowed to change their deck in between rounds.
Click to expand...

I believe your TO read it wrong or just wanted to make it more "Magic like". I believe this is the section he misread:
TCG Concerns
  • Players should register all of the cards they get, so it should be obvious if a player has cards from outside the event.
  • Be lenient on players that are new to the game; if a player did not include exactly 60 cards in their deck, allow them to adjust their deck between rounds.
This says something quite different and is from the latest draft of the TO FAQ.

BTW - loved your other ideas - I gotta figure out a way to pack all that stuff in to the convention center.
 
60 cards? I thought it was 40 cards in the deck????
 
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