Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

News from outside the USA ... and Happy New Year

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That is what really made this game so special.

THE HUMAN FACTOR.
All of us feeling as we were investing our time, our blood, and the sacrifices we made.
And creating INTERNATIONAL friendships!!

My brother and I loved it.
We go to DBZ tourneys and its different. Fun but different. NEVER do we feel will we have that community we had with pokemon. At least we did. We had. and in the GREAT big scheme of the universe, that is what mattered the most.

We still keep in touch and provide different levels of support *wish I could provide more*

AND ok, we are 1-2 days in the new year, ANOTHER language not yet said: QUE TENGAN todos usetedes, sus familiares, y amigos ¡¡Un Feliz Y Prospero Año Nuevo!!
 
We are still waiting for League kits to arrive from USA. As soon as they arrive, we will send out League kits to more than 10 new starting Leagues in Norway, and try to revive an almost dead OP. Interest seems to be building up on the Norwegian message boards, and I think the new OP scene of Norway will be a success.
 
bulbasnore said:
Well, I'm sorry to hear the situation in most of Europe is so pitiful. And this says nothing about Asia, Oceania (& Africa?). Where do they get these distributors? What can those of us in USA do to help?

I really think PKMN benefits from the INTL following.
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(Walks silently at the door as it squeaks...)

Hello to all!!! Belated Christmas and Happy New Year to all!!! I got out of the "box" because of the school break so I was out for a while. (Checking papers and Computing grades)

Well since the topic is about the Intl League, then this is my update. Well good things have come to the league here as this year ends. The store have only three league areas on three different locations, however they all of these leagues are played by all the veteran players because of a very flexible schedule. Players from one area can jump to another area without difficulty. New palyers have been coming around because we have been and teaching them at the same by borrowing our extra decks to teach the basic rules. The theme deck and boosters of EX-Dragons and Sandstorm in our store have been sold out in less than two months (I love it once but at the same time I hated it because I could get the cards I want from these sets :rolleyes: )

Our store will open two new branches in the provinces for the remaining kits for the league.

Furthermore, the only problems we enecountred are the following:

1. One league could not recored the players properly because there is no official score sheet given.
2. We found out from the owner of the store that they have difficulty ordering extra kits from season one because of delays.

But, we have fixed most of these problems already as season two kicks off next week. We are now waiting for the second wave of tournaments this February. That's all folks and again .....HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! :D
 
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Good news from pokeprofRaymond !

Things could go in the right direction in Norway too. But why aren't the kits in the shops now ? Deliberate decision, or did something go wrong ?

If you look at Europe, and if distributors run invitational only qualifiers, you'll see that it will be worse than running 'State only qualifiers' in the USA as some of our countries are smaller than US States.
Will the qualifiers in the US be 'State invitational only' or will players from one State have the opportunity to play qualifiers in another State ?

I know that US is one and only one big market, while Europe is made of a lot of (very) small markets. But like always, I'm talking about the game, the players and the community, and not about big business even if a good game with many players and a good community will bring more money than a game with a few players and no community.

Will we see one more kind of discrimination ? Is that one of the "differences because of the European reality" ?
Sure, as the Pokemon European reality is now a small national view and not a larger continental view.

But it's maybe too early to talk about qualifiers, some countries in Europe don't even know when, and if, POP will start.
 
I don't want any qualifiers in this country as long situations are described below are passing by.
I will copy from another tread I started in the tournaments and OP forum.

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Someone overhere did an Unlimited tournament (with the WOTC playingrules).
Because they didn't had acces to internet and the TMS they provided the outcome of this tournament to the National Distributor.
The OPManagar overthere did the input for sanctioning and ranking.
He did put the results in the rankingsystem as Modified tournament, so these players appear now in the top 50 of the Modified ranking without ever playing a modified tournament.


My opinion:
Unlimited tournaments not played by PUI/POP rules don't belong in any rankingsystem (they should not been sanctioned)
National Head OP (manager or whoever) should at least know the difference between Modified and Unlimited

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See what I mean, what will be next. Getting Nationals without Judges.
Or Judges who never heard of Floorrules.
My worst nightmare will come true, players who are skilled in playing modified and know how the cards work. Are Judged by people who don't know that.
Also a repeated Nightmare, because this happened at the SC, National Distributor advertises for SC, sell at the door starterdecks to kids who never played the game and than let them play in the SC.
This way the Distributor could say, look we had over 400 players at our SC, YEK.
Don't think I'm joking I will remind you on this message as the time is there.

Some things has to change very fast overhere otherwise is set and done with OP overhere.
 
News from Germany:

Sanctioning is starting over here (I´m TO now), that is good news. But there are also bad news: I have information from the German distributor, that based on current information it is not possible to organize March prereleases in Germany. As I was told, the reason is, that it is not possible, that the product will be shipped in time, because Pokemon USA has a logistic problem with this. Well, I can´t understand this reason. Two months are not enough time to ship some boxes of Pokemon??? But in the UK it is possible to get product? But the marketing guy at Amigo also told me, that he will talk to Pokemon USA to try to find a way for the product to come just in time. But he can´t promise anything, so officially it´s a no.

Now my questions to our fellow organizers in Europe:
What do you think of this?
Do you think, I should mail to PUI and ask them, what is going on?
What is going on in the rest of Europe? Will there be prereleases in the Netherlands or Italy or somewhere else besides the UK?

Good advice is appreciated (as I said before, on March 13th the local store is booked for this purpose).
 
Boxes will not arrive in time ? :lol:

PUI could ask Wizards how they run prerelease WORLDWIDE for Magic :p

I bet you'll have the boxes in time in you grey import them, asking for shipping by UPS/FedEx, ...

I don't know if there will be other prereleases in Europe. I suppose there will be one in UK, probably one in Italy, maybe a funny one in Holland and maybe a good non-official one in Holland too ;)
As we don't even know a single word about POP in Belgium, it's far too early to talk about prereleases here.

I think you could email PUI about that, and ask them why Amigo will not have the product in time. Like you said, it's quite strange that boxes arrive in the UK and not in Germany.
It's not a problem running the prerelease one week after UK (even if Magic prereleases are more funny as these are played when people don't know the cards), and it should have a good commercial impact for Amigo.

Congrats to you for beeing To now, and for sanctioning starting in Germany :clap:
 
Two months are not enough time to ship some boxes of Pokemon??? But in the UK it is possible to get product? But the marketing guy at Amigo also told me, that he will talk to Pokemon USA to try to find a way for the product to come just in time. But he can´t promise anything, so officially it´s a no
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Well we can only tell you that the last UK pre-release happened because one of the UK distributors Hobby Games had there Marketing Director in the US and he brought the product back over from the US himself. Without the commitment of this distributor there would have been no EX Dragon pre-release in the UK.

Now we were told that there would be no problem getting the boxes in time this time round but here we are 2 months to go venue booked and we can't get confirmation on the costs yet in the UK .... AGGGGGGGhHHHHH

We are really trying but it is still like cycling through treacle without the seat and someone has unscrewed me wheel nuts!

OP is still not all it should be but at least the first league kits have gone out .. but with rumblings over cost from the distributors things could go downhill fast here.

So far it feels like we (the professors and existing community are doing all the work) and our OP guys are letting us! Still we shall see but it is not easy to run tourneys and leagues outside the US.

To ensure the pre-releases happen PUI need to factor in the shipping delay between the US and Europe .. it's not hard it may onlybe a day or two but they must ensure the product is available for simultaneous worldwide pre-releases.
 
Michel said:
Boxes will not arrive in time ? :lol:

PUI could ask Wizards how they run prerelease WORLDWIDE for Magic :p
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But Wizards have Wizards Europe. We don't have any PEI, Pokémon Europe Inc. That's my dream - that we actually had some European Headquarters and didn't have to communicate with the guys in Seattle all the time. No offense to them, I just mean they have too much to do already. Too few people having to take care of too many Leagues, tournaments, players, TOs, OP programs etc. If we just had our answer to Wizards Europe - Pokémon TCG European Headquarters, I bet a simulteanus prerelease event for USA and Europe would have been much easier.

But that's not an excuse for PUI not doing anything to ensure we get prereleases over here too. I can't see why they don't try to do something about it. They profit from the prerelease tournaments, and it would help Europe in many ways.
 
PUI don't need to ask Wizards how to run a pre-release they are all ex-Wotc guys. They *should* have all the expertise that they require already in place and have plenty left over too!

So the message currently is for reliable supplies use the internet and UPS. Cheaper too :( There is no way that this will result in anything but the further decline of the game in Europe. This kind of behaviour was 'understandable' when Wotc had both brands as they were protecting their core property. But now that the two are competitors??? *shakes head*

Seems like Europe's death by a thousand cuts is set to continue :(

GRRRRRR
 
We are told that the pre-release product will be released from stock on the 1st March. If PUI/NUSA cannot organise UPS/FEDEX shipping to Europen TOs in time for the 6th March for Simulataneous pre-releases then we may as well give up now!

PUI/PUSA you have 2 months to sort it ... indeed you have had longer given our concerns over the UK's last minute rush to get Dragons. We were promised then it would not happen again it seems like a lot of promises that one was hollow too ...
 
Maybe a stupid question ... why is the date of release not adapted to the date on which products are available everywhere ?

Is it so difficult to organize ? Even without an office in Europe ?

Sure Tego, Wizards had Wizards Europe, but the product has to be in the shops for the prerelease, and nobody from Wizards Europe goes to get it in Renton.

I do agree with you on the idea of a PUI European office. But they've chosen another strategy, the distributor's one. :rolleyes:

PUI will certainly answer that FedEX/UPS/... are too expensive for hundreds or thousands of boxes.
One solution would be to release the product from stock earlier than March 1st. Don't know if it's possible.
The other solution, if the release from stock can't be done before March 1st, is to choose a date later than March 6 in order to be sure that the set will be everywhere for the prereleases.
That would be ok for Europe, but that would probably penalize the US market. ;)

I'm sure people at PUI are working hard for the game, no doubt about that. I'm sure they're doing their best for us and for the game, no doubt about that too. But people in Europe are waiting for POP, players, TO's, leagues, ...
We're waiting for a very long time, and it seems that, even if things go better in some countries, we can't say that POP has really started (league and tournament) in any European country.
Once again, in some countries, people who are not on the boards believe that Pokemon is dead and OP something reserved for Magic, YuGiOh or Lord of the Rings. Not a single word is said about POP to the public.

In March, we'll be approx one year after the decision taken about the license, and 7 months after PUI's official start in the game. If, at that time, POP is not perfectly running everywhere in Europe, and that includes prereleases in each country, I'm afraid we'll may say that international POP has failed.

We may not forget that around March, Duel Master will be on the market, and Europe will see the Magic JSS too. And as we know how good the Wizards OP machine can work, especially for their own products, ... what do you conclude ? ;)
 
hundreds or thousands of boxes????

Fed Ex too expensive?

Nah!

Firstly its not many cases. Five covers the UK pre-release requirements that we have been planning.

Fed Ex is quite cheap if you get commercial rates. Plus there is no additional handling charge at the distribution level.

Its true that costs mount when you are shipping lots and lots of cases... but equally that implies more revenue from sales too.

I hope we don't get the arguement that because they can't manage a worldwide simultaneous release then those parts of the world outside the USA that are able to provided pre-release play have to miss out.
 
too expensive for hundreds or thousands of boxes..
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NoPoke is right here Michel we are talking small numbers in the scheme of things how many pre-releases planned in Europe? Well the UK and Germany and ???

The amount of goodwill that the pre-releases raise is huge compaired to the cost... BUT if they can't show the will and strength to do this then we may as well all give up and go home.

MtG anyone?
 
too expensive for hundreds or thousands of boxes..

If there was any good coop between the distributor and the Profs overhere we could easily do a few large prerelease so 15 to 20 cases.

As it looks now for Holland official 00000000000000000000 boxes.
If there is any tournament announced the coming weeks, it will be at places were only 1-5 people show up.
The ignored real players of the game, will not attend to any tournament.

For non-official (after-release tournament) I will post next month the plans.
Or I will fly to the US or UK to get boxes and do some kind of after-release tournament, or we do something funny. But Official we are not existing.
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NEWS FROM SPAIN!
League will start next week, and nothing has been said about tournaments yet.
Anyway, Devir Iberia (distributor for Spain, Portugal & Brasil) have sold all of the old cards they had in stock, and now Base1 holos are so cheap it isn't even funny...
 
I must admit I felt weird today giving out Nintendo promos and old WotC Boosters (Neo Revelation) out for tournaments at my league... is this the way forward PUI?

~fK :eek:
 
PUI will certainly answer that FedEX/UPS/... are too expensive for hundreds or thousands of boxes.
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I've never said I did agree with that !!! It was just a possible answer :)

Another topic is talking about Worlds ... people around here still don't know what POP means :rolleyes:
 
Michel,

that's the whole problem the PUI spin is everything is lovely you're getting Nationals and Pre-releases so [Edit].. but we are getting no confirmation of dates, no advertising and now they want to talk about simultaneous pre-releases!

All that is missing is the will to do it... if they do not show willing why the heck should we as To's even bother?

`Pro,you should know better that abbreviations for inappropriate words/phrases are not allowed....
 
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Nationals: sometimes this spring/summer. It's up the distributor when they'll organize it, as long as it's sometime between spring and Worlds. I think the UK's distributor is the only one who's decided the date for their National Championship yet.
 
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