mysterioustrainer
08/23/2004, 10:36 PM
Okay everyone, I need to write down everything I know of Worlds before I forget it. So let me start. Most of this is from my perspective. My role at Worlds was judging which I wouldn't would have had it any other way. So lets begin!
Thrusday morning. Well I woke up at 4:00am in the morning. For some reason unusually charged so I jumped out of bed and loaded my car and took off for Denver International Airport, raining like Noah's flood down here in Colorado that early morn. Not a spec of light until I got to the parking for the airport. I was afraid that I might be delayed or canceled, but I was plenty ahead on time. My flight was with Ted (A part of United) and they are a great airline to ride with I think. So after 3 hours and 45 minutes on a plane staring at the compendium ex and the Worlds packet. I get to Orlando International Airport.
I never been to Florida so it was hard to see the city of Orlando so impacted by the hurricane. I felt sad for the citizens and I hope they will be able to get back their city to its full glory. I also hoped that the hurricane in no way impacted the event, thankfully it did not.
I arrived at the Wyndam Palace resort and spa around 1:30, I had a bit of trouble checking in but nothing that PUI's Tamera couldn't handle, her efforts in getting us here was amazing. We all got Pokemon Worlds edition room keys which we were allowed to keep in the long run (I'll scan mine if I get the time sometime). I received a small blue Pokemon Center bag with a EX: Hidden Legends pack, a pokemon character pin, a Cubone figurine, and more. Once I quickly settled in I changed out of my more Colorado-enviroment fitted long-sleeve shirt and vest (people say I look like brock while wearning that) into my good old blue Professor shirt.
Then I hunted down Dave and company and started helping them right away. I got to peek into the set ups for each room. It was amazing I will get my pictures up as soon as possible but until then I will have to let you all stick with the www.pokemon.com (http://www.pokemon.com) photos for now. During our setup, the PUI staff for some reason were having fun piling up bean bags in the TV/electronic room and doing jumps onto them. However when they all got me to do it, my jump missed the bean bag chairs and I crunched my back and right shoulder(which I regreted then and when I had to carry my stuff home on my shoulders).
I met alot of new fun people for the first time like Prof Dave's wife and Yasu Usui who works for Pokemon USA with the Japanese relations I believe along with other things. He is a cool guy to hang out with. Tamera I met and others includes those from the New York office.
Soon all of the POP professors were showing up around 6ish. We got our own bites to eat. Our meeting for the staff was most productive and we got to see the rooms and meet some of the other staff. Alot of players were arriving and gathering around the hotel lobby playing and trading. During the meeting we discussed our plans, which thankfully worked, to make Worlds a big sucess. I continued through the night and even played against a Japanese player. I lost miserably to his Ampharos EX deck and relized they were going to give one heck of a run for our money. I think I went to bed around 1:00 a.m.
Friday was fun trying to set up Worlds binders which contain:
One Ultra-pro carring case binder (which is a d-ring binder that also holds 2 decks and 5 pockets for writing utensils, counters, and randomizers. This binder also had the Worlds logo on its front cover.
A Worlds promo world collection (which contains the Tropical Wind promo card with the Worlds 04 print on it in seven different languages)
a set of Ultra-pro card pages
2 German EX: Ruby and Sapphire packs
2 Italian EX: Sandstorm packs
2 EX: FireRed and LeafGreen packs
2 Japanese Flight of the Legends (EX: FireRed and LeafGreen) packs
2 POP Series 1 packs
a postcard featuring Torchic, Treecko, or Mudkip
another pokemon character badge
a FireRed LeafGreen keychain
a small 4-card page binder
a large binder
and a deck box I believe
and a championship hat
Players also got a competitors T-shirt and a orange worlds t-shirt. After the Worlds packages we assembled the league prizes. And shuffled the promos (boy was that an antangonizing process of opening promo packs and randomly mixing them.) Promos included Treecko (003), Torchic (008), Mudkip (010), Multi Energy (EX: Sandstorm speical holo edition) Salamence (EX: Dragons Rare special Holo edition), Flygon (EX: Dragons Rare special Holo edition), and Beldum (022).
During this time Japanese Nationals were going on. As you may know, finalists from the Swiss rounds in Japan were brought here to finish off their tournament. I didn't have time to pay attention to details but I did notice that they have background music from popular TV series battle themes playing during their match rounds. Which I thought was cool, but I guess that it would get annoying for some players during the tournament. It was cool to listen to it though. Pokemon Card Laboratory (PCL) judges and Yasu Usui was in charge for this event. Many other Japanese players (not National finalists I believe) also attend our grinder.
Now on to a tournament, yes. I must admit that forgot to pack my grandma's meat grinder for this event so I guess you could say we were a bit unprepared. ;) Anyways, I judged the 11-14 age division and it was pretty well what I expected. Which was alot of archtype decks which I am sure you all know what I mean. What rocked and what didn't, hmm Team Magma and Gardy did the best me thinks. That tournament did go pretty quick and thankfully we were in bed before we knew it.
During the tournament, pre-qualified players also were invitied to a special reception where we had a japanese band, tons of food and way too much fun. Each judge at the grinder got a shot to go in so, hey we did. It made me want to get qualified this next year.
Saturday, it was the day. Yes so lets just jump into the tournament. I have seen alot of Team Magma and Gardy rocking but it seems Metagross and Blaziken didn't stand up as well they should have. Yeah, also the concept of archetype was pretty well thrown out the window. There was a variety of different types many that you would expect did come out of the closet. Magneton (EX: Dragons) showed great victory in the battles. Even having one of these proved useful. Delcatty is very textbooked right now. So much more I can't remember. Ah yes it seems that the new Japanese Magma/Aqua basic energys seem to be in style now these days. Yeah they look very slick!
Also on Saturday I saw Pokemon Rocks America, there was three Pikachu beetles, a TCG demo station, a Video Game demo station, four different carnival games, Pokemon Center shop, a giant screen with Pokemon episodes playing on it, A Kyogre flying in the air, a Groudon, a Pikachu bouncing arena, a cooling mister powered by water-type Pokemon (I wish), and fun stage games.
There was also cosplayers. There was a woman from Pokemon USA NY, dressed as May. But we had Pikabellachu and her friends come in Pikachu, Pichu, Raichu, Jigglypuff, Bulbasaur dresses, one other girl dressed as Nurse Joy, and a girl and a guy dressed as Team Magma and Team Aqua. There was also Pikachu, Torchic, Treecko, Mudkip, and Jirachi making an appearence.
A storm came in and shut down Pokemon Rocks for only the last 15 minutes. No big deal. But man is Florida weather severe. It seemed to be filled with so much fun.
Well top 32 were cut, and the battles got more intense but the player through out the entire day were spectacular and extraordinary. I am proud of these players who showed the spirit of the game. Yes not of all of them showed the spirit of the game, but this is something that will come in time I hope.
Sunday, I was on prerelease duty, and lo and behold that the one time that the TMS had to be down right cruddy, it had to be my tournament. It crashed right before we started and was severly delayed. Scoring was also delayed because of multiple events on the same machine. Players were dropping like crazy because they went to do more other things. I think they made a good decision. My tournament wasn't exactly exciting. The night before I did discover a error in the Victrebell card being not very understandable for one-on-one play and POP was glad I brought it to their attention.
As for the main event, I had little involvement besides deck checks. Scoring brackets are avalable at http://op.pokemon-tcg.com. Late night I traded with the Japanese players alot which had to be alot of fun. I made friends that night! And then got to play pokemon tcg with (just a little) and talk with the PCL staff and that was fun. Yasu got me a translation guide that Japanese players recieve and I found that very helpful for my Japanese skills. Hopefully by next year I can be able to speak the language and expand my skills even farther.
Well that is it. I am home now getting ready for bed. But here is my pros and cons for the event:
Pros
POP, PUI, PCL, TPC, Nintendo (you get the idea)
Team Compendium for their extraordinary work
Working with Chrisbo
Being able to jump dive into bean bag chairs
Hotel's great service
free getting here to help
Ives
Cons
TMS breaking down on my prerelease
Expensive eating in surrounding area
Me singing opera (I promise I won't do that again)
Ives... nah just kidding
Thrusday morning. Well I woke up at 4:00am in the morning. For some reason unusually charged so I jumped out of bed and loaded my car and took off for Denver International Airport, raining like Noah's flood down here in Colorado that early morn. Not a spec of light until I got to the parking for the airport. I was afraid that I might be delayed or canceled, but I was plenty ahead on time. My flight was with Ted (A part of United) and they are a great airline to ride with I think. So after 3 hours and 45 minutes on a plane staring at the compendium ex and the Worlds packet. I get to Orlando International Airport.
I never been to Florida so it was hard to see the city of Orlando so impacted by the hurricane. I felt sad for the citizens and I hope they will be able to get back their city to its full glory. I also hoped that the hurricane in no way impacted the event, thankfully it did not.
I arrived at the Wyndam Palace resort and spa around 1:30, I had a bit of trouble checking in but nothing that PUI's Tamera couldn't handle, her efforts in getting us here was amazing. We all got Pokemon Worlds edition room keys which we were allowed to keep in the long run (I'll scan mine if I get the time sometime). I received a small blue Pokemon Center bag with a EX: Hidden Legends pack, a pokemon character pin, a Cubone figurine, and more. Once I quickly settled in I changed out of my more Colorado-enviroment fitted long-sleeve shirt and vest (people say I look like brock while wearning that) into my good old blue Professor shirt.
Then I hunted down Dave and company and started helping them right away. I got to peek into the set ups for each room. It was amazing I will get my pictures up as soon as possible but until then I will have to let you all stick with the www.pokemon.com (http://www.pokemon.com) photos for now. During our setup, the PUI staff for some reason were having fun piling up bean bags in the TV/electronic room and doing jumps onto them. However when they all got me to do it, my jump missed the bean bag chairs and I crunched my back and right shoulder(which I regreted then and when I had to carry my stuff home on my shoulders).
I met alot of new fun people for the first time like Prof Dave's wife and Yasu Usui who works for Pokemon USA with the Japanese relations I believe along with other things. He is a cool guy to hang out with. Tamera I met and others includes those from the New York office.
Soon all of the POP professors were showing up around 6ish. We got our own bites to eat. Our meeting for the staff was most productive and we got to see the rooms and meet some of the other staff. Alot of players were arriving and gathering around the hotel lobby playing and trading. During the meeting we discussed our plans, which thankfully worked, to make Worlds a big sucess. I continued through the night and even played against a Japanese player. I lost miserably to his Ampharos EX deck and relized they were going to give one heck of a run for our money. I think I went to bed around 1:00 a.m.
Friday was fun trying to set up Worlds binders which contain:
One Ultra-pro carring case binder (which is a d-ring binder that also holds 2 decks and 5 pockets for writing utensils, counters, and randomizers. This binder also had the Worlds logo on its front cover.
A Worlds promo world collection (which contains the Tropical Wind promo card with the Worlds 04 print on it in seven different languages)
a set of Ultra-pro card pages
2 German EX: Ruby and Sapphire packs
2 Italian EX: Sandstorm packs
2 EX: FireRed and LeafGreen packs
2 Japanese Flight of the Legends (EX: FireRed and LeafGreen) packs
2 POP Series 1 packs
a postcard featuring Torchic, Treecko, or Mudkip
another pokemon character badge
a FireRed LeafGreen keychain
a small 4-card page binder
a large binder
and a deck box I believe
and a championship hat
Players also got a competitors T-shirt and a orange worlds t-shirt. After the Worlds packages we assembled the league prizes. And shuffled the promos (boy was that an antangonizing process of opening promo packs and randomly mixing them.) Promos included Treecko (003), Torchic (008), Mudkip (010), Multi Energy (EX: Sandstorm speical holo edition) Salamence (EX: Dragons Rare special Holo edition), Flygon (EX: Dragons Rare special Holo edition), and Beldum (022).
During this time Japanese Nationals were going on. As you may know, finalists from the Swiss rounds in Japan were brought here to finish off their tournament. I didn't have time to pay attention to details but I did notice that they have background music from popular TV series battle themes playing during their match rounds. Which I thought was cool, but I guess that it would get annoying for some players during the tournament. It was cool to listen to it though. Pokemon Card Laboratory (PCL) judges and Yasu Usui was in charge for this event. Many other Japanese players (not National finalists I believe) also attend our grinder.
Now on to a tournament, yes. I must admit that forgot to pack my grandma's meat grinder for this event so I guess you could say we were a bit unprepared. ;) Anyways, I judged the 11-14 age division and it was pretty well what I expected. Which was alot of archtype decks which I am sure you all know what I mean. What rocked and what didn't, hmm Team Magma and Gardy did the best me thinks. That tournament did go pretty quick and thankfully we were in bed before we knew it.
During the tournament, pre-qualified players also were invitied to a special reception where we had a japanese band, tons of food and way too much fun. Each judge at the grinder got a shot to go in so, hey we did. It made me want to get qualified this next year.
Saturday, it was the day. Yes so lets just jump into the tournament. I have seen alot of Team Magma and Gardy rocking but it seems Metagross and Blaziken didn't stand up as well they should have. Yeah, also the concept of archetype was pretty well thrown out the window. There was a variety of different types many that you would expect did come out of the closet. Magneton (EX: Dragons) showed great victory in the battles. Even having one of these proved useful. Delcatty is very textbooked right now. So much more I can't remember. Ah yes it seems that the new Japanese Magma/Aqua basic energys seem to be in style now these days. Yeah they look very slick!
Also on Saturday I saw Pokemon Rocks America, there was three Pikachu beetles, a TCG demo station, a Video Game demo station, four different carnival games, Pokemon Center shop, a giant screen with Pokemon episodes playing on it, A Kyogre flying in the air, a Groudon, a Pikachu bouncing arena, a cooling mister powered by water-type Pokemon (I wish), and fun stage games.
There was also cosplayers. There was a woman from Pokemon USA NY, dressed as May. But we had Pikabellachu and her friends come in Pikachu, Pichu, Raichu, Jigglypuff, Bulbasaur dresses, one other girl dressed as Nurse Joy, and a girl and a guy dressed as Team Magma and Team Aqua. There was also Pikachu, Torchic, Treecko, Mudkip, and Jirachi making an appearence.
A storm came in and shut down Pokemon Rocks for only the last 15 minutes. No big deal. But man is Florida weather severe. It seemed to be filled with so much fun.
Well top 32 were cut, and the battles got more intense but the player through out the entire day were spectacular and extraordinary. I am proud of these players who showed the spirit of the game. Yes not of all of them showed the spirit of the game, but this is something that will come in time I hope.
Sunday, I was on prerelease duty, and lo and behold that the one time that the TMS had to be down right cruddy, it had to be my tournament. It crashed right before we started and was severly delayed. Scoring was also delayed because of multiple events on the same machine. Players were dropping like crazy because they went to do more other things. I think they made a good decision. My tournament wasn't exactly exciting. The night before I did discover a error in the Victrebell card being not very understandable for one-on-one play and POP was glad I brought it to their attention.
As for the main event, I had little involvement besides deck checks. Scoring brackets are avalable at http://op.pokemon-tcg.com. Late night I traded with the Japanese players alot which had to be alot of fun. I made friends that night! And then got to play pokemon tcg with (just a little) and talk with the PCL staff and that was fun. Yasu got me a translation guide that Japanese players recieve and I found that very helpful for my Japanese skills. Hopefully by next year I can be able to speak the language and expand my skills even farther.
Well that is it. I am home now getting ready for bed. But here is my pros and cons for the event:
Pros
POP, PUI, PCL, TPC, Nintendo (you get the idea)
Team Compendium for their extraordinary work
Working with Chrisbo
Being able to jump dive into bean bag chairs
Hotel's great service
free getting here to help
Ives
Cons
TMS breaking down on my prerelease
Expensive eating in surrounding area
Me singing opera (I promise I won't do that again)
Ives... nah just kidding