Local Events Return! League Cups Begin April 14th!

By: JustInBasil · Posted Posted onMar 29, 2023 at 8:35 AM · 19 Comments

Pokemon has officially announced the return of local Organized Play events, including League Cups and League Challenges!

The first League Cups will begin on April 14th, with the first season ending on June 30th. Monthly League Challenges will return beginning this April.

Many players anticipated this announcement after Pokemon’s tournament pairing software, Pokemon Events Manager (PEM), was recently shut down. Its predecessor, Tournament Operations Manager (TOM), was brought back from retirement to replace PEM, which should have been the newer, better software. However, it was riddled with bugs and caused numerous issues during tournaments.

For the uninitiated, League Challenges are local-level tournaments that provide Championships Points necessary to qualify for the World Championships, taking place this year in Yokohama, Japan. These are the smallest Championship Point-providing events and League Challenges will have a best finish limit of 2, meaning that players can earn a maximum of 30 points toward their invite at League Challenges.

The Championship Point payout for the Pokemon TCG League Challenge is as follows:

Placement

Championship Points

Kicker (# of participants)

1

15

0

2

12

0

3–4

10

0

5–8

8

24

9–16

6

48

17–32

4

100

League Cups are a significant step-up in terms of challenge and are in many ways a midway between League Challenges and Regional Championships. Like League Challenges, they provide Championship Points to help players earn their invitation to the World Championships. League Cups also have a best finish limit of 2, meaning players can earn a maximum of 100 points toward their invite at League Cups.

The Championship Point payout for the Pokemon TCG League Cup is as follows:

Placement

Championship Points

Kicker (# of participants)

1

50

0

2

40

0

3–4

32

0

5–8

25

24

9–16

20

48

17–32

16

100

33–64

13

200

 

View thread (19 replies)
I haven’t gotten to play at tournaments in a long time because i work all the time. . I’m 31 and i hope someday to try and get to a regional type event. Hopefully i can do this someday. Its on my bucketlist
 
I've used PEM rather sparingly (for prereleases and some events), but I'm surprised we're going back to TOM. One thing I've noticed was that, I assume, it was annoying to use for Leagues where internet access is limited. Perhaps someone who used it more often and for bigger events can shed some light at what PEM's problems were?
 
Yaginku said:
I've used PEM rather sparingly (for prereleases and some events), but I'm surprised we're going back to TOM. One thing I've noticed was that, I assume, it was annoying to use for Leagues where internet access is limited. Perhaps someone who used it more often and for bigger events can shed some light at what PEM's problems were?
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I have a question. Did state championships go away?
 
Yaginku said:
I've used PEM rather sparingly (for prereleases and some events), but I'm surprised we're going back to TOM. One thing I've noticed was that, I assume, it was annoying to use for Leagues where internet access is limited. Perhaps someone who used it more often and for bigger events can shed some light at what PEM's problems were?
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PEM crashed a lot. Failed to pair a lot. Lost entered players a lot. Created ghost players randomly. Ended tournaments before they should have ended frequently. Larger tournaments caused even bigger headaches, with crashing even more common.

But it was the little things everywhere that made it even more infuriating to use. It was horribly unintuitive, with things that need to be done often like *adding a late player* making you jump through a bunch of unnecessary hoops to do it--if you were lucky enough to figure out how in the first place.

For an example bug that I ran into often: at my local League, we have a large enough tournament turnout that we need to use match slips to make result entry manageable. Now, let's say the Juniors division has 16 players, the Seniors division has 6, and the Masters Division has 35. Here's what will happen after the Juniors/Seniors finish: every round after those pods drop, the first 11 tables of match slips just... won't print. It's like PEM was like "11 tables are no longer in use, so there's no point printing the first 11 in my database" and then it proceeds to not print the first 11 you NEED.

Worse still, PEM won't let you edit any sort of mistake in player entry. You typo the name? Can't fix it. Flub the date of birth? You now have to manually change that player's age division EVERY SINGLE TIME they participate in anything run through PEM.
 
Mimikeon said:
Kinda like how Live will probably be replaced with PTCGO 3.0 in a year or two after they give up.
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Lol no, Live is a cruddy bloated mobile app by design. It wasn't an accident or something Pokemon is embarrassed by. It's the model and aesthetic that they, with full knowledge, want moving forward for the virtual tcg.
 
Rallyvincent said:
I haven’t gotten to play at tournaments in a long time because i work all the time. . I’m 31 and i hope someday to try and get to a regional type event. Hopefully i can do this someday. Its on my bucketlist
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I would totally recommend it. Went to Charlotte and even though round pairings and wait times can be annoying, it was awesome the entire time, even if its just for meeting likeminded people. Side events are awesome too and being able to watch the streamed finals in person is great when everybody is invested.
 
Mimikeon said:
Kinda like how Live will probably be replaced with PTCGO 3.0 in a year or two after they give up.
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Well, PEM's failure won't be a big stain on Pokemon's reputation. Especially since the software was aimed at Professors and other established Pokemon fans, that are used to the company acting like some sort of dysfunctional start-up. Switching Live to another game AFTER the massive blunder that was its slow rollout would be a different story.
 
Rallyvincent said:
I haven’t gotten to play at tournaments in a long time because i work all the time. . I’m 31 and i hope someday to try and get to a regional type event. Hopefully i can do this someday. Its on my bucketlist
Click to expand...
I'm also 31 and just went to my first regionals in Arlington this year. I definitely think you should go, they're a ton of fun! I'm hoping to go to locals once some of my LGS announce their tournaments.
 
vexel said:
I'm also 31 and just went to my first regionals in Arlington this year. I definitely think you should go, they're a ton of fun! I'm hoping to go to locals once some of my LGS announce their tournaments.
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Thats awesome!!!! Its definitely a dream of mine to do it!!!
 
Good for fun, but not enough if you're a competitive gamer that has Worlds aspirations yet can't travel outside of the "outside of a select few exceptions, no games of chance for meaningful profit in exchange for a set fee or bet allowed" state of Arizona, where I reside. Though I wish I could find a good deck, even if another Arizona resident gets the deck I find, if they don't know how to travel AND claim their prize OUTSIDE of their home state, I'm afraid of the consequences that said resident could have to endure.

Anyway, max 130? That's not enough CP to qualify for Worlds with Challenges and Cups alone combined. Luckily for me, I don't have worlds aspirations, and yet, I'm comfortable with having fun in Pokémon league and/or Prerelease settings where you don't miss out on something bigger if you lose... Nevertheless, if any deck of mine excels, I'm more than happy to share my deck to someone else so they can have the competitive fun that I'm not comfortable with... That is, until the day my comrades think it's something they can't beat outside the mirror, of course...

^ Even then, I'm keeping my expectations low...
 
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Rallyvincent said:
I haven’t gotten to play at tournaments in a long time because i work all the time. . I’m 31 and i hope someday to try and get to a regional type event. Hopefully i can do this someday. Its on my bucketlist
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mine is more a tournament in another country besides the UK. Its on my bucketlist.
 
Eh, I've never been a fan of the newer Challenge/Cup/Regional/International/World tournament structure. I still prefer the old Battle Roads/City/State/Regional/National/World structure but I suppose Battle Roads can be replaced with League Challenges and Cups since Battle Roads were only held twice a year.
Mimikeon said:
Kinda like how Live will probably be replaced with PTCGO 3.0 in a year or two after they give up.
Click to expand...
Polaris said:
Lol no, Live is a cruddy bloated mobile app by design. It wasn't an accident or something Pokemon is embarrassed by. It's the model and aesthetic that they, with full knowledge, want moving forward for the virtual tcg.
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Yaginku said:
Well, PEM's failure won't be a big stain on Pokemon's reputation. Especially since the software was aimed at Professors and other established Pokemon fans, that are used to the company acting like some sort of dysfunctional start-up. Switching Live to another game AFTER the massive blunder that was its slow rollout would be a different story.
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The way I see it TPCi could've had a true successor to Online if they actually gave the game the the experienced development team, budget, and development time it deserved. But seeing as how much penny-pinching TPCi does they basically got what they put in.

As it stands, I really don't see them doing any sort of meaningful fixes (on my iPhone's end, the app's been crashing regularly since December in addition to other glitches) unless the game is taken off of app stores for being such a glitchy pile of trash and forces TPCi's hand into doing it right.
 
The Binder Guy said:
Eh, I've never been a fan of the newer Challenge/Cup/Regional/International/World tournament structure. I still prefer the old Battle Roads/City/State/Regional/National/World structure but I suppose Battle Roads can be replaced with League Challenges and Cups since Battle Roads were only held twice a year.



The way I see it TPCi could've had a true successor to Online if they actually gave the game the the experienced development team, budget, and development time it deserved. But seeing as how much penny-pinching TPCi does they basically got what they put in.

As it stands, I really don't see them doing any sort of meaningful fixes (on my iPhone's end, the app's been crashing regularly since December in addition to other glitches) unless the game is taken off of app stores for being such a glitchy pile of trash and forces TPCi's hand into doing it right.
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live is just too bright for me. there is no need for the flashbangs when a prize is taken or the fire surrounding the prizes
 
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