The Pokemon Company International (TPCi) has recently announced a Championship event for the digital adaptation of its Trading Card Game (TCG), Pokemon Pocket.
The Event Details
A few months ago, TPCI had released a trailer to mark the official announcement of its annual Pokemon World Championship. This year, the event is to be held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, CA from the 15th to the 17th of August.
While participation in the main events are restricted to invited guests, there are some listed side events for spectators to enjoy. One of which is for Pokemon Pocket.
According to the information provided on the World Championship website, Pokemon Pocket’s first-ever Championship will be held on August 16th, starting at 10AM.
It’s a more casual event where the number of rounds will be determined by the actual number of attending players. The tournament will feature a Double Deck format where top finishers, the top 8 and the overall event winner will be able to win some (unlisted) prizes.
For attendees who just want a more casual experience, TPCi made sure to include some more casual-focused tournaments.
Details on these casual-focused events are little more scarce though, but it’s more than likely that attendees will be given more instructions on the day-of.
Double Deck Format
The Double Deck tournament format is a pretty simple one to follow. While standard deckbuilding rules for Pokemon Pocket are still applied, the caveat for the tournament is that neither deck should have a shared Pokemon in its deck list.
For example, if Deck A has a Buzzwole ex listed, then Deck B should not have a Buzzwole ex as part of the Pokemon roster.
Thankfully, this restriction is not applied to Trainer cards, so players can still use many staple support cards, like Professor’s Research, with no repercussions.
Thanks to YouTube content creator, Spragels Pocket, sharing their video to the public, we managed to catch a glimpse of some tournament rules TPCi had used at the North American International Championship.
While we cannot confirm if the same exact rulings will be used at the World Championship in Anaheim, this document can still give interested participants a heads-up for what to expect in August.
According to the document shown, a Double Deck event will be using a best-of-three format. Once a player has scored a victory with one of their decks, they must score their second victory with their second deck.
Players who lose the first round of the match have the capability of switching to their second deck if they choose to do so. However, a player must win a round with each deck to be declared the winner.
In their video, Spragels Pocket comments that players may be shoehorned into playing very meta-relevant decks for this kind of tournament format due to the need to win with both decks.
While they also mention that having a sleeper (rogue) deck as part of the overall arsenal can still work, we'd have to agree with their assessment that not having at least one meta-relevant deck heightens the difficulty of winning a Double Deck tournament.