Premier

Random news: Water may have been discovered on Mars today, and 4Kids is no longer dubbing One Piece. Once the ACT is over tomorrow, I will be freeeee to work on the website (maybe). Thanks goes to Cascade_Gon_Pory for the Delibird artwork in the header!

Premier Ratings FAQ and Invitation to Worlds – The official Pokemon TCG website has put up a Premier Ratings FAQ, explaining how the rating system works, clearing up misconceptions, and telling us how to get into Worlds. From the document, we know that at least 15 people will get into Worlds from the Senior Division, as well as 21 people from the Junior and Senior Divisions (not including people who make it in through the Grinders or do well at Nationals – this is just for the rankings). From the United States, only eight people from the Senior Division and twelve people from the Junior and Senior divisions will go to Worlds (again, this is only for rankings). [transition -> extreme informalness] This will by far be the smallest Worlds ever, unless of course POP allows a couple hundred people in through the Grinders / Nationals. :p I usually don’t call myself a whiner or try to throw my opinion into news stories, but WHAT THE FUDGE?! I miss Organized Play from the Ruby and Sapphire days when there were loads of prizes at pre-releases and tournaments were more fun; plus, more people could get into Worlds. Now it’s almost impossible to get in, unless you challenge every high-ranking player in the country (we could turn this into an Anime like Yu-Gi-Oh – I WILL find Yami Yugi and take him down! I will find Jason Klaczynski and all other top-ranking players and take them down! I will travel to the ends of each country and challenge these players with my super-dooper Blue Eyes, White Dragon [or whatever you call it] deck!) Bah. I hope POP knows what it’s doing… all we need is another WOTC extinction. I love going to tournaments to play people and all, but where is my incentive now? This season = disappointment (so far). Then again, the page does say the rules are subject to change, and we still don’t know how many people POP will let in through the Grinders and Nationals, so we’ll see… Perhaps Nationals will be pumped up to such an awesome degree that it will offset these new changes.

More Scans Up! – Thanks to Shakespeare, as usual, we now have the following set scans up (digitally remastered). Some of the scans are the older, pre-release scans, and only about two are missing out of all of the below sets, but we will have all of the poor quality / missing scans up for viewing by Monday:

• [EX Team Rocket Returns]
• [EX Deoxys]
• [EX Emerald]
• [EX Unseen Forces]
• [EX Delta Species] (already up from a previous update, but we’ll just throw it in here)
• [EX Legend Maker]