How common is this?(How Leagues are run)

W

Waspy

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I've only been to a couple of Leagues in my time, one in a TRU and one at a card shop, recently our Prof retired, and the store owners took managing league upon themselves. They changed the way we played.

Both the TRU, and said Prof let us choose our opponents and do as many as we like for the day, even if we just battled the one person over and over again. No problem.

Now every league is done the same as a Battle Roads, Pre-Release or City/State/Nats, using the TOM program. How normal is this? I've never heard of it. It kinda sucked the fun right out of league, no rogue, all by the book meta game stuff. It shifted the entire tone of League, from a a random fun time to an overly competitive game filled with by the book meta game decks(Speed Zekrom, Yanmega Prime, Magneboar) you expect from bigger tournaments. No video game either.

Sure there are events where we can use unlimited or an upcoming BW only, which I don't particularly mind, but every week? Not my cup of tea.
 
Never seen it done before. I often help organize league tourneys, but there usually about once a month.

At another league however, I hear they have tournaments almost every other week. Still every week is a bit much.
 
I agree, this is a bit too much. Perhaps, you can show the TRU and prof a REAL league, (there's probably another one close to you depending on where you live). Maybe then they will change.
 
Most league owners nowadays kinda want everyone to play different opponents. It improves your game a lot, but just chatting with a friend is more difficult that way. I dunno, I think this new system will make the younger people improve their game faster, which is cool. A bit of fun is lost, but I have more fun on tournaments anyway (where I usually bring a rogue list and troll people).

About the forced tournaments on leagues, that's kinda new to me as well. I've seen it twice I think, but it was still pretty casual. I agree that it's no fun that way. Leagues should be chilling and practicing imo.
 
I've never heard of any league really being run like this. When I go to league, me and my friends play each other with the random matches against others. Really only reason we attend leagues instead of staying home and play testing (which we do plenty of already) is to trade for cards we need. Also the league promos are a nice little bonus as well
 
Ive never heard of this at my league there are fun optional tournaments that you dont have to play in if you dont want to. Also at league most of the time I just hang out and only do a few battles if any.
 
do others in the league feel the same way
if so have you tried talking with the owners and tell them how you and the others feel
may you can come to some middle ground

i once visited a league
they had normal league once a week, and a tournament once a week
both were on different days
maybe you could try that
 
Here's how I run my League:


- Come whenever you want, leave whenever you want.
- You may only play the same person over and over again if there isn't a lot of people (if like six or so, I ask them to mingle.)
- Matches are reported to me and I personally mark scorecards. That way I know prizes are being distributed correctly.
- Once a month, I host a buy-in tournament alongside typical Pokemon League. You don't NEED to enter the tournament, but I hand out great prizes to winners and participation prizes to everybody.

Hope that helps ^_^
 
There's a little manual that was written for running leagues. At a minimum everything in the document should be obeyed and followed through on. I can't find this manual on PDF format, but I have it on paper. It comes with your first kit of a new cycle. While using the TOM program might be good for regimenting league play to make sure people play different opponents, which the manual says needs to be done, it takes away the free roaming, non-competitive environment that a Pokemon league is supposed to be. If I can find that manual I'll post it here.

Oh, here it is: http://assets.pokemon.com/assets/cms/pdf/op/leagues/League_Instructions_TC.pdf
 
Waspy said:
I've only been to a couple of Leagues in my time, one in a TRU and one at a card shop, recently our Prof retired, and the store owners took managing league upon themselves. They changed the way we played.

Both the TRU, and said Prof let us choose our opponents and do as many as we like for the day, even if we just battled the one person over and over again. No problem.

Now every league is done the same as a Battle Roads, Pre-Release or City/State/Nats, using the TOM program. How normal is this? I've never heard of it. It kinda sucked the fun right out of league, no rogue, all by the book meta game stuff. It shifted the entire tone of League, from a a random fun time to an overly competitive game filled with by the book meta game decks(Speed Zekrom, Yanmega Prime, Magneboar) you expect from bigger tournaments. No video game either.

Sure there are events where we can use unlimited or an upcoming BW only, which I don't particularly mind, but every week? Not my cup of tea.
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Oh man! I would love the idea of having tournaments at my league. Tournaments support practicing for tournaments and serious play, but they do not remove fun nonsensical builds. Play nonsense on the side, or even in the tournament. Now then, most leagues have a tournament, but you can gain league points by playing games on the side as well. Limited events are kinda dumb IMO as they limit the decks that people can play. I go to league to practice for upcoming events, so I obviously don't want to play in a tournament with BW-only cards. I'd pass in that case.

Tournaments with prizes supports serious play which supports practicing for big events. Many players find competition to be fun and playing without purpose to be boring. If there is no need to win, why play in the first place? That being said, players are not disallowed from playing random nonsense in and out of the tournament. If that is your cup of tea, go for it.

Now if only my league would add a tournament >.<
 
I just want it known that if you are in a tournament at league those matches are not suppose to count for getting marks on your league card.
 
I dunno, I think this new system will make the younger people improve their game faster, which is cool.
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or turn them off for life. It could go either way.

I do think that having tourneys at leagues every so often, but I don't think that league should be pretty much exclusively tournament. At my league things are very casual and low-key (it's run very much like MrBreen's, except we don't really have small tourneys in league), and although we do want the young guys at our league to improve (we've got like 6 new juniors at our league now), we don't want to pressure them into playing a game just to win; we want them to have fun but try to win while they're at it.

Technically the League Leader is allowed to run the league how he wishes, but most League Leaders like input, so if it's possible to have a tourney portion as well as a casual portion, that would actually work pretty well.
 
If you are referring to how I said tournament matches can't count towards league, that is something that got brought up on TPCi's forum.
 
If the tournament is SANCTIONED, it can't count for League attendance.

I remember the little passage about "you can run a tournament, but it may not be a sanctioned tournament" thing about running tournaments at League, but if I'm wrong (or lacking information) please clarify.
 
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